ABSTRACT
Except in the case of some New Religious Movements, there usually exists a significant gap of decades, even centuries, between the time the words were first spoken, recited, sung, composed, and/or written and the time they became encapsulated within a text that was unalterable and recognized as "scripture". That is, the processes of compilation and canonization are often chronologically distant from the origin of the material. Later Muslim theology, in identifying the Quran with the "preserved tablet" and "mother of the book", could be said to maintain that the canonization of the Quran occurred with this original, eternal, heavenly archetype. Christianity and Judaism, material thought to be revelations from God were written decades or centuries later and certainly only canonized at least a century and a half later or more in the case of Christianity. And it was carried out by the Church.
