Ahh....that makes so much more sense now.

I greatly respect Doniger's work and am totally on board with how she goes about it (especially given the ridiculous right-wing batshit craziness she's had to deal which if I'm not mistaken has resulted in her actually being barred from the country) -- however, her take on all these things is to examine it from a progressive or modern (by current standards) lens rather than a by-the-book strictly-historical sort of treatment.

I think of it a bit along the lines of Daniel Ladinsky's 'interpretations' of Hafeez's poetry -- folks reading the actual text wouldn't at all agree but they're pretty awesome and somewhere I think, he actually said that he likes to be true to the spirit, rather than the letter of the poem.

(Although yes, translation is a different discipline etc...).