ABSTRACT
Studying foundational texts of religious traditions has been around for a long time—it is one of the oldest forms of the study of religion and predates modern religious studies by hundreds of years. In a number of religious traditions that developed scriptures or sacred texts, the study of the texts was typically practiced by insiders with the goal of understanding the nature of the deity and how to live in relation to that deity. This way of reading texts is, in a sense, part of the field of theology. The study of religious texts—whether foundational texts or not—is no longer the domain of insiders or the province of theology. In the field of religious studies, the ways in which texts can be studied and explored defy simple classification. It includes historical contextualization, questions regarding historical sources, and a broad range of literary approaches, some of which are discussed in this chapter.
