for you, or in the Hereafter, because its reward is greater on account of the hardship of bearing it.”

He said: “What is meant is: ‘Whatever ruling of a verse We abrogate,’ just as in His words, ‘Their hearts were imbued with the calf because of their disbelief’—meaning, love of it.” He said: “That this is so is indicated by His words, ‘We bring one better than it or similar to it.’ It is not possible for any part of the Quran to be better than another, because all of it is Allah’s speech. Nor is it permissible to say of Allah’s attributes that some are more excellent or better than others.”

He extended this reasoning to Allah’s names, denying that any of His names could be greater, more excellent, or grander than another. He said: “The ‘greatest name’ means the ‘great name’; all His names are equal in greatness. Rather, it is people’s states when supplicating that differ in excellence. Thus, a name is ‘greatest’ in relation to the circumstances of the supplication, not because it is intrinsically greater.”

What he said concerning Allah’s names parallels the second interpretation concerning the superiority of some of Allah’s speech over other parts. This second interpretation, offered by those who deny such superiority, is that describing something as ‘more excellent’ or ‘better’ means that it is excellent in itself, not that it is more excellent than something else.

This view is reported from Abū al-Hasan al-Ashʿarī and those who agreed with him. They said: “It means that it is great and excellent.” They also said: “Calling something ‘more excellent’ entails that what is less excellent falls short of it, whereas Allah’s speech cannot be divided into parts.”

They say this concerning His speech because, in their view, it is a single entity within which neither equivalence nor differences in excellence are possible. As for their denial that some attributes are superior to others, this rests on their view that the attributes cannot be distinct from one another. They do not say this concerning the Arabic Quran, for in their view the Arabic Quran is created and, according to the majority of them, is not Allah’s speech. They said: “For speech