Scripture and Canon

Scripture and canon studies examine how religious communities form, fix, and grant authority to collections of sacred texts.

Definition

A canon is the authoritative collection of texts a religious community recognizes as scripture; canon formation is the historical process by which such collections are selected, fixed, and granted normative status.

Scope

This topic addresses the formation of scriptural canons and the nature of scriptural authority across traditions. It covers how texts come to be regarded as sacred, the historical processes by which canons are closed or kept open, the distinction between scripture and commentary, and theoretical accounts of canon as a principle of selection and limitation. It treats canon formation in the Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Hindu, and Buddhist contexts descriptively.

Core questions

• How do particular texts come to be recognized as scripture?
• What processes lead a community to fix or 'close' a canon?
• How is the authority of canonical texts maintained and exercised?
• Why do some traditions have closed canons while others remain open or fluid?

Key theories

Scripture as relation

Wilfred Cantwell Smith argued that a text becomes scripture not by intrinsic features but through a community's act of treating it as sacred and authoritative, so canonicity is fundamentally relational.

Canon as selection and limitation

Jonathan Z. Smith analyzed canon as a process of radical selection that closes a list and then demands endless ingenuity (commentary, interpretation) to apply the fixed canon to new situations.

Performance and authority

William Graham showed that scriptural authority is sustained not only by fixing a written canon but by ongoing oral recitation and liturgical use that keep the text living within the community.

History

Study of canon formation grew from biblical scholarship on the development of the Jewish and Christian canons and was broadened comparatively in the later twentieth century. Jonathan Z. Smith's redescription of canon (1982) and Wilfred Cantwell Smith's What Is Scripture? (1993) gave the topic a general, cross-traditional theoretical framing.

Debates

Closed versus open canons

Traditions differ in whether they regard their canon as definitively closed or as open and expandable, and scholars debate how rigidly the category of 'canon' applies to traditions with fluid or vast textual corpora.

Key figures

• Wilfred Cantwell Smith
• Jonathan Z. Smith
• William A. Graham

Seminal works

• smith1993
• jzsmith1982

Frequently asked questions

Does every religion have a fixed canon of scripture?

No. Some traditions have a defined, closed canon, while others recognize a vast or open body of authoritative texts, or rank texts by degrees of authority. The concept of canon applies more straightforwardly to some traditions than to others.