Scripture and Authority in Book Religions

The recent scholarly interest in communication processes and media has opened new approaches to the ways in which the so-called book religions have placed supreme authority in a certain canonic text, considered to be the unfallibly truthful message of the divinity. Sanctified by its long-duration transmission, the holy book becomes the object of a peculiar scribal culture, of complex procedures of exegesis and application as well as intense liturgic and popular veneration. The presence of the Book shapes ritual, law, education, social order, and, on a more profound anthropological level, the specific interaction between scribal, oral, and visual practices.

Full details here.