ABSTRACT
A systematic, and by nature philosophical, religious statement or document presents its ideas as though they began with its author or authorship, rather than claiming to start “way way back,” as a tradition, or even alluding to, let alone citing in a persistent way, a prior writing. The form of a systematic statement ordinarily will be autonomous. The order of discourse will begin from first principles and build upon them. “The systematic authorship begins by stating its interpretation of a received writing in words made up essentially independent of that writing, for example, different in language, formulation, syntax, and substance alike. The social group, however formed, frames the system; the system then defines its canon within, and addresses the larger setting, the polis without. The whole works its way out through exegesis, and the history of any religious system—that is to say, the history of religion writ small—is the exegesis of its exegesis.
