Canon, Transmission and Criticism

How a scripture came to be (composed, compiled, transmitted and finally fixed as canon), is often a long and studied history, and the atlas distinguishes the tradition's account of a text's origin from the findings of textual scholarship. Oral transmission, multiple authorship, editing and translation lie behind many scriptures that a tradition receives as a unity.

The entries note the text's language, rough date and structure, its status within its tradition, and, where relevant, the main lines of scholarly study, keeping confessional and historical-critical views clearly apart. The esoteric and occult literature is treated separately under the esoteric-text category.