Descriptive Semantics of the Nominal Hapax Legomenon of the Word Menhaj and the Pathology of its Three Translations (Meybodi, Makarem Shirazi and Ansarian)

Understanding the Quran depends upon appreciating meanings of the single words and concepts that are interconnected and interrelated like a chain. Nominal hapax legomenon in the Quran is a word that occurs only once in the holy Quran. Hence, such words need semantic scrutiny since they are difficult to understand. Accordingly, understanding hapax legomenons calls for examining and identifying their structures and roots, exploring their meanings in dictionaries and examining their syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations so that both an accurate and appropriate means of understanding the Quran can be provided, and the translations and interpretations which have errors due to not taking the meaning of these words into account can be scrutinized, and thus an appropriate model for their meanings and translations can be provided. Thus, in the case of the word menhaj, in verse 48 of the holy Surah al-Ma'edah, as a nominal hapax legomenon, the above-mentioned steps were followed, its real meaning was extracted from lexical resources considering its root and structure, its meaning was evaluated considering its context and its syntagmatic relations with the term sher’eh and its paradigmatic relations with the words which are semantically similar to it, including the words serat, sabil, najd, fajj, hobok, jodod, and ri’ were studied. The result was that although some words are synonymous with some others, this relation is not absolute; it is rather relative. In fact, semantically speaking, each word has a meaning which is independent of that of other words, and the word menhaj means ‘a clear, bright path’. Finally, the three translations (Meybodi, Makarem Shirazi and Ansarian) of the word menhaj were pathologized, and the author's suggested translation was offered.