The Encyclopedia of World Religions

scripture S 411

sovereign over the world of change, and that this God has revealed himself in the world in particular times. In the Christian N EW T ESTAMENT , this revela tion is in the person of Jesus C HRIST . Responding to the growing individualism of the times, the scrip tures of these then-new religions emphasize ways to individual salvation and living an individually responsible life. The establishment of the “canon” of scrip ture, that is, which books are officially regarded as part of the sacred list and which are excluded, was not always an easy task. In early Buddhism and Christianity, for example, it was decided in the end by councils of monks and bishops respectively centuries after the founding of the religion; while some books had been long accepted by general consensus, others, like the epistle to the Hebrews and the Revelation of St. John in Christianity, were long disputed. By now, however, the tradition of the whole religion has long since approved an accepted canon. Scriptures have many functions in religion besides being regarded as a source of authorita tive truth, and even their truth can have different meanings. Some conservative Christians regard the Bible as literally true, even on historical and scientific matters; others recognize it as contain ing important principles but accept that its books were written in the context of the world view of ancient times and may contain myth, poetry, and outdated ideas as well as relevant truth. Many Buddhists regard their more philosophical texts as suggestive of insights beyond words that must be then realized in MEDITATION . Scriptures are studied, meditated on, preached out of, read aloud in ser vices, chanted (in Hinduism and Buddhism, the very sounds themselves are key seeds of religious experience), sung as hymns, used as sources of folk wisdom. Scriptures are also important as symbols of the identity of religious communities; members are people who have this in common. They promote the spread of literacy. They seal the authority of religious leaders, who are their proper interpret ers, and validate the religion’s paths to individual SALVATION . Yet they also can legitimate independent

Vedas were not committed to writing until compar atively modern times, having been, because of their great sacredness, transmitted orally from father to son, or master to disciple, for many generations. Otherwise the written form of the scripture came early as the sacred text is considered important as a book or set of books, though the spoken word is always in the background, and scriptures are often considered most powerful when spoken or chanted aloud, sometimes in the original tongue, like Hebrew in Judaism, Arabic in Islam, or San skrit in Hinduism. But the background, content, and role of scriptures in different religions varies considerably. First, it must be noted that the existence of written scripture obviously depends on the inven tion of writing, and could not have come into being before that event two or three millennia or so before the common era. Before then, the lore of religions was oral, passed on by word of mouth in the form of myths and traditions. Thus scriptures were made possible by the invention of writing. Scriptures came into being in a time of gathering empires, of a growing sense of individualism, and of awareness that we live in historical time—that is, that things change and do not change back. Above all, it was the time of the great religious founders: M OSES , the B UDDHA , C ONFUCIUS , L AO -T ZU , J ESUS , and M UHAMMAD . All these men had messages to help people contend with the new world of writ ing, empires, history, and individualism. Scriptures were part of that message, and vehicles of it. Scriptures contain many things: histories, as in the Hebrew scriptures and the Kojiki of S HINTO Japan, to help people see that G OD or the gods are working in history and so one need not be afraid of change; laws and rituals, as in parts of the Hebrew scriptures and the Confucian books, to help people keep alive traditions of the past in the face of change; rules and attitudes for right liv ing, as in the Qur’an; wisdom and poetry for the sake of fullness of life and praise to God; philoso phy as in the U PANISHADS part of the Vedas and the Buddhist Sutras to help people realize the timeless in the midst of time. The scriptures of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam show that there is a God