SCRIPTURE is the generic concept used in the modern West and, increasingly, worldwide, to designate texts that are revered as especially sacred and authoritative in all of the largest and many smaller religious traditions.

As a General Concept

In popular and even in scholarly use today, the term scripture is commonly used as though it designated a self-evident and simple religious phenomenon readily identifiable anywhere in the world, namely the idea of a "sacred book." However, as a concept adequate to encompass the functional roles of the great sacred texts of history, scripture is a term of considerable ambiguity and complexity.

In the first instance, the specific form and content of scriptural books vary sharply from tradition to tradition and even within a single scriptural corpus. Ritual books, legal maxims and codes, myths and legends, historical accounts, divine revelations, apocalyptic visions, ecstatic poetry, words of teachers and prophets...