Several researchers, such as A. Johns, T. Nagel, and A.-L. de Prémare, have already studied this dimension of self-reference of the Quran but without real exhaustiveness.
The terminology used by the Quran often shows a "readaptation [...] of Jewish or Christian religious technical terms sometimes having a new meaning that is difficult to detect due to the fact that the Quran seeks to bring them a dimension of mystery and this in order to place itself de facto in the lineage of the previous holy Scriptures and to confer on itself a status of authority".
Thus, if the term "revelation" seems, for Boisliveau, improper, the Quran uses a vocabulary to designate the action of descending, which allows it to impose its authority.
[2] Other Quranic terms express the idea that it emanates "unilaterally from God for the benefit of men, and at the same time as a clear and accessible word".
[2] The second strategy concerns the Holy Scriptures and joins the question of the self-referential vocabulary of the Quran which designates itself by specific terms which place it in the continuity of these.
[5] Nevertheless, for Terrier, the basic hypothesis of the absence of later modifications of the text and the use of the chronological orders of Al-Azhar and Nöldeke shows that this study still maintains "an ambivalent relationship with the Muslim tradition, being often less critical and more dependent on it than they want to say.
[6] She noted the presence of two types of text, the divine order to recite a liturgical prayer and those to "recall aloud the actions of God".
This finds a parallel with the research of Sinai which showed that the idea of the celestial kitab is absent at the beginning of the Koran and appears progressively.