Scripture

Scripture. Texts regarded as sacred (usually revealed: see REVELATION), having authority and often collected into an accepted canon. Despite the origin of the word (Lat., scripto, ‘I write’), most religious scriptures began as recited texts, being preserved in orally transmitted forms: the Vedas of the Hindus were written down only because the world moved into the degenerate Kāli yuga; oral law (Torah she beʿal peh) was as much revealed on Sinai as was written Torah; the Qurʾān was not written down until after the death of Muḥammad; and the Pāli canon was not committed to writing until (theoretically) the First Council, though in fact much later. When scriptures were eventually written down, it often remained a primary religious act to recite (rather than read) scripture. The definition of scripture may be a long (and sometimes contested) process: thus the canons of Jewish and Christian scripture took many centuries to achieve; and in the Christian case, agreement has not yet been reached. The historical embeddedness of scripture (i.e. the fact that however eternal the Word may be, it is manifested in a language in the midst of time) gives a natural bias to at least a species of fundamentalism, since it relates present-day life to a supreme moment of revelation.