The Approach of the Menâr School to Verses That Are Accepted as References to the Ascension and the Return of Jesus

The belief that Jesus was raised to the sky before he died, that he would live until the end of the world and that he would come down to earth as a savior near the doomsday is conceptualized as the Nuzûl-i Isa (return of Jesus) in the Islamic tradition. This belief took place in different Islamic sources including tafseer books and there are a lot of verses related to it. The interpretations about these verses were aimed to build a basis for above mentioned idea until 19th century. However, the positivist trend rising in the west during this century has caused some changes in the epistemological paradigm in the Islamic world. With this change in the paradigm, some theological schools alongside with the Menâr school which included people like Muhammad Abduh, Jamaluddin Afghani, M. Reşid Rıza ve A. Mustafa Meragi, have decided to refuse this belief. In this study, the approach of Menâr school to the verses that refer to the ascension and the return of Jesus as savior has been dealt with within the classical tafseer sources. In this regard, firstly the verses and secondly the interpretations of these verses in our classical tafseer sources were mentioned. Later on, the evaluations of Menâr School about the issue were laid down. As a result, it was obtained that this school do not believe that the fore mentioned verses are related to this belief at all.