About Sacred Editors
For nearly thirty years, I've practiced an annual bhāvanā—a Sanskrit word meaning cultivation, or intentional development. Each year, I choose a subject that challenges my thinking and pushes me beyond my comfort zone. Early adventures were physical: marathon running, scuba diving, windsurfing across five European countries. Later explorations became more complex: a complete house remodel that taught me patience, a deep dive into Buddhism that took me to Bhutan, even starting, growing, and selling a thriving company.
In 2014, my project was exploring the history of the Bible—not as devotional study, but as historical inquiry. What I discovered was a fascinating world of power struggles, translation challenges, and political decisions behind texts that many consider pure divine revelation. The politics surrounding which books made it into the canon would make an excellent Netflix series. The compounding translation issues across languages and centuries revealed how much interpretation shapes what we think we're reading.
That exploration opened a door I couldn't close.
The Journey Across Traditions
What began as curiosity about Christian scripture evolved into a seven-book exploration of how sacred texts developed across the world's major religious traditions. I found myself asking the same questions in Buddhist monasteries and Islamic libraries, in Jewish study halls and Hindu ashrams: Who decided what counted as sacred? What voices were amplified, and which were silenced? How did human communities serve as guardians of what they believed to be divine revelation?
Each tradition revealed its own editorial drama. The Buddhist councils where monks debated which teachings to preserve. The Jewish scribes who developed elaborate systems to prevent textual corruption. The Islamic scholars who memorized entire Qur'ans to safeguard against manuscript loss. The Hindu lineages that maintained perfect oral transmission for centuries before allowing their sacred sounds to be written down.
I discovered that behind every sacred text lies an extraordinary human story of preservation, often against impossible odds.
Method and Approach
I make no claim to scholarly expertise in ancient languages, theology, or religious studies. I am what I call a "respectful synthesizer"—someone who draws entirely on the work of credentialed scholars to tell stories that might otherwise remain buried in academic journals. My role is to weave insights from textual critics, archaeologists, theologians, and historians into narratives that thoughtful general readers can follow with clarity and curiosity.
In recent years, I've used modern research tools—including artificial intelligence—to help cross-reference claims, follow complex scholarly debates, and map connections that span traditions and centuries. But the substance of these books rests entirely on human expertise: the painstaking work of scholars who have dedicated their careers to understanding how human communities preserve and transmit their most treasured wisdom.
The Stakes of the Story
These aren't just academic questions. Understanding how sacred texts developed affects how millions of people approach their own spiritual traditions. It illuminates ongoing debates about religious authority, gender roles, interfaith dialogue, and the preservation of ancient wisdom in our digital age.
More personally, this exploration has taught me that sacredness itself is not diminished by understanding the human processes behind its preservation—it's deepened. The devotion of countless scribes, translators, memorizers, and communities who risked everything to preserve these texts makes them more remarkable, not less. Every sacred text we can read today survived because someone chose to remember, someone chose to copy, someone chose to hide it from destruction, someone chose to translate it for new audiences.
That recognition transforms how we read these ancient words: not as artifacts from a distant past, but as living traditions maintained by human hands and hearts across centuries of change, loss, and recovery.
What You'll Find Here
The Sacred Editors series explores seven distinct but interconnected stories: how the Christian Bible was assembled through centuries of debate; how Jewish communities preserved their textual heritage through exile and diaspora; how Islamic scholars developed sophisticated systems to safeguard the Qur'an; how Buddhist teachings spread across Asia through translation and adaptation; how Hindu traditions balanced eternal wisdom with regional expression; how women's voices were systematically erased from sacred literary traditions; and how texts have been lost, buried, and recovered across all traditions.
These aren't anti-religious books, nor are they apologetics. They're an invitation to understand the profound human effort that has preserved the spiritual wisdom that continues to guide billions of people today. Whether you approach these texts as sacred scripture or historical literature, understanding their human story reveals the extraordinary devotion that made their survival possible.
Kevin Meyer - Morro Bay, California USA