A semantic analysis of "immortality" in the Holy Quran

Document Type : Original Article

Abstract

in the context of the Holy Quran , the root of "khald / Kholood" in a detailed description is used as an equivalent of 'human immortality in the sequence of space and time of the other world.
A lot of valuable researches have been conducted about Quran essential lexical terms but the lack of a unique research about “immortality “is observed so the present study tries to review its semantic relationship with other Quran essential terms including "piety" and "belief" ,"life" and "death", "permanency" and "deterioration", "durability", and "eternity" , "heaven" and "hell". This study also aims to reveal the various meanings of immortality and its time and space referents.
The final result of the present study indicates three different pictures of "immortality" in the Holy Quran including conditional immortality, unconditional immortality and Torah physical immortality.
A review of the meanings of immortality in the Holy Quran reveals that it has a semantic association and relationship with both “durability “ and “eternity’ terms as its time referents and also it has a semantic association with “faith” ,”piety” and “life”.
On the other hand immortality is in association and sequence with “paradise”, “Gardens of Eden”, “ Gardens of Nuaim” as space referents based on positive immortality and also it is in association and sequence with «Hell», «Geheim», »Fire», «Hotameh», «Saier» and …. as space referents based on negative immortality. So that each one of these semantic groups in relation to the paradise or Hell is in contradiction to its opposite group.

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