Such interpretations assign a particular meaning to the wording. Sometimes that meaning is false; sometimes the wording does not indicate it; sometimes the wording indicates its very opposite; and sometimes several of these defects occur together. Such is the way of those given to distortion and heresy. We seek refuge in Allah from error and deviation, and ask Him for guidance and sound judgment.

Although these interpretations had already been advanced before the author under discussion—and even if he took those he transmitted from the book of Abū Bakr ibn Fūrak and others like him, they too had predecessors in such interpretations—those who came before them offered better interpretations than these. For the further back one goes, the closer people were to soundness in their affirmations and analogical reasoning, whether scriptural or rational. The early Jahmiyyah were more knowledgeable about what the Messenger brought and better at interpretation than these later figures, as previously discussed in the report he cited from al-Marwadhī, relating from Ahmad that he was told of a certain hadith scholar in Basra that he