> Baha'u'llah invited Zaynu'l-Muqarribin, the eminent scribe and copier of
> Tablets, to ask Him questions about the laws of the Aqdas.
While this is true, it seems that some of the Q&A were not based on actual
questions raised by Zayn and are extracts from previously-revealed Tablets
that Zayn pulled into Q&A, That is, the Q&A seems to be a mix of questions
that Zayn asked after reading the Aqdas and also compilation of what he
considered to be relevant texts pulled from other Tablets. I think this is
a great research topic to determine what parts were actual questions and
what was already revealed in other Tablets.
> Muqarribin was
> a mujtahid before becoming a Baha'i -- and I believe that is the same
rank
> called "ayatollah" today.
Actually, of much lower rank. He was trained as a seminarian, steep in
knowledge of Arabic, grammar and jurisprudence, but never had the
opportunity to develop deep scholarship and insights that an ayatollah
would necessarily have attained. (I'm not knocking him as a mujtahid, it's
just there are ranks among them and he wasn't so high on the food chain.)
> In the Questions and
> Answers, he deigns to answer the questions of a Muslim jurisprudent, and
> the agenda and priorities are those that arose when Muqarribin was
> functioning in that role. I may well be wrong in my views, but that's
how
> I see it.
And I think you've got it completely right. Baha'u'llah's immediate
audience was looking first and foremost for a book of law, similar to
Islamic Shariah, and Zayn had the perfect credentials to ask all those
types of questions. But one can imagine that if someone else, say, Nabil
Akbar, who was the most learned Baha'i during Baha'u'llah's ministry, was
offered the opportunity to ask questions, he would have raised very
different set of issues, not so much concerned with the details of laws and
jurisprudence, but deeper philosophical and theological matters. But
Baha'u'llah knew that. So the very fact that he turned to a seminarian
kind of person, suggests He was trying to deal with the concerns of that
quarter.
Regards,
ahang.
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