Sacred Editors

Chapter 16: Scholar Roundtable - What Communities Imagine They've Lost

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This chapter is part of the book The Sacred Editors: Lost Texts.

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"To ask what was lost is to ask who we could have become."

In a modest apartment in Erbil, northern Iraq, seventy-eight-year-old Azad Taalo carefully arranged photographs on his kitchen table. Each image showed a different Yazidi temple from before 2014, when ISIS systematically destroyed the community's sacred sites across Sinjar. But Azad was not looking at the buildings. His finger traced the ornate carvings visible in doorways and archways—symbols and inscriptions that had preserved elements of Yazidi theology for centuries.¹

"My grandfather could read these," Azad said quietly, speaking to a visiting researcher. "He knew what each symbol meant, which prayers belonged to which carvings. When they killed the old men, they killed the library." He paused, studying an image of intricate stonework now reduced to rubble. "We remember that we have forgotten, but we cannot remember what."²

Azad's reflection captures a profound truth about religious tradition: communities often carry vivid awareness of their losses without being able to specify exactly what was lost. This "memory of forgetting" shapes religious identity as powerfully as preserved texts, creating spaces where communities imagine alternative versions of themselves based on what they believe once existed.³

In an era when digital technologies make textual recovery increasingly possible—when satellite imagery reveals buried libraries and artificial intelligence reconstructs damaged manuscripts—questions about alternative religious histories have gained new urgency. Understanding what was lost, and how communities remember that loss, illuminates the contingent nature of what we now take for granted as timeless truth. This chapter examines how contemporary scholars across religious traditions think about textual loss and the alternative developments that might have emerged if different preservation choices had been made.

Buddhism: The Interrupted Conversation

Jan Nattier, whose scholarship on Buddhist textual transmission has reshaped understanding of early Mahāyāna development, has argued that the destruction of Nalanda University in 1193 represented far more than the loss of a library. In her analysis, Nalanda's destruction interrupted what she calls a "scholastic ecosystem" where Indian Mahāyāna, early tantra, and rigorous logic coexisted in ways that can now only be partially reconstructed.⁴

Nattier's research has demonstrated that Buddhist textual transmission involved far more than copying manuscripts. Nalanda functioned as what she terms a "pedagogical matrix" where teachers and students from across Asia engaged in sustained philosophical dialogue.⁵ The university's destruction severed connections between Indian Buddhist philosophy and its Tibetan and Chinese interpreters at a crucial moment in Buddhist intellectual development.

In her published work, Nattier has suggested that had Nalanda survived another two centuries, Tibetan Buddhism might have retained stronger Indian philosophical roots, and Chinese Buddhism might have been shaped by centuries more of direct exchange with Indian Madhyamaka and Yogācāra schools. As she writes, "Scholastic loss isn't just about texts—it's about intellectual genealogies that could have produced entirely different forms of Buddhist thought."⁶

This perspective aligns with recent scholarship in Buddhist studies that emphasizes the social dimensions of textual transmission. Scholars like Jonathan Silk and Gregory Schopen have shown that Buddhist libraries functioned as living communities rather than mere repositories, where textual meaning emerged through interpretive dialogue between generations of practitioners.⁷ The loss of Nalanda therefore represents not just the destruction of books but the truncation of intellectual traditions that might have produced forms of Buddhism more philosophically rigorous than popular religion, more psychologically sophisticated than scholastic philosophy.

Nattier's speculation about alternative Buddhist development finds support in surviving fragments of Nalanda's curriculum. Sanskrit manuscripts preserved in Tibetan and Chinese translations suggest that Indian Buddhist scholars were developing sophisticated theories of consciousness, language, and causation that had no direct parallel in the Buddhist traditions that ultimately survived.⁸ The survival of these intellectual trajectories might have produced forms of Buddhism that integrated contemplative practice with philosophical rigor in ways that neither pure monasticism nor academic Buddhism achieved.

Christianity: Alternative Models of Discipleship

Biblical scholar Bart Ehrman, whose work on early Christian diversity has challenged conventional narratives about orthodox development, has extensively analyzed how the canonical decisions of the fourth and fifth centuries foreclosed alternative Christian possibilities. In his research on early Christian texts, Ehrman argues that works like the Gospel of Thomas, the Acts of Paul and Thecla, and the Gospel of Mary offered models of Christian identity that were more mystical, more gender-inclusive, and less hierarchical than what ultimately became orthodox Christianity.⁹

Ehrman's scholarly contributions have demonstrated that early Christian diversity was far greater than traditional church history acknowledged. His analysis of the Nag Hammadi library and other early Christian manuscripts has revealed traditions that emphasized direct spiritual experience over institutional authority, female apostolic leadership over male clerical hierarchy, and mystical knowledge over credal orthodoxy.¹⁰

In his published reflections on these alternative traditions, Ehrman has suggested that their survival might have produced forms of Christianity fundamentally different from what emerged through orthodox canonization. The Gospel of Mary, for instance, presents Mary Magdalene as receiving special revelation from Jesus and teaching the male disciples—a model of female religious authority that orthodox Christianity systematically suppressed.¹¹

The Acts of Paul and Thecla, which narrated the story of a female evangelist who baptized herself and preached throughout Asia Minor, represents another alternative trajectory. As feminist biblical scholar Karen King has demonstrated, this text was enormously popular in early Christian communities but was gradually marginalized as church authorities asserted greater control over female religious participation.¹² The survival of such texts might have produced forms of Christianity where female ordination and religious leadership were considered normative rather than exceptional.

Ehrman's analysis extends beyond gender to encompass broader questions about religious authority and spiritual practice. In his view, what was lost through canonical standardization was not just specific beliefs but entire approaches to Christianity that privileged contemplative experience over doctrinal conformity and saw diversity as strength rather than heresy.¹³

This perspective reflects broader trends in early Christian scholarship that emphasize the constructed nature of orthodox tradition. Scholars like Elaine Pagels, April DeConick, and AnneMarie Luijendijk have shown that the texts labeled "Gnostic" or "heretical" by later church authorities often preserved forms of Christian practice that were widespread and respected in early communities.¹⁴ Understanding these alternative trajectories helps illuminate both what Christian tradition gained through canonization—unity, institutional coherence, theological clarity—and what it may have lost.

Islam: The Question of Qur'anic Multiplicity

Islamic philosopher Seyyed Hossein Nasr has offered nuanced reflections on the canonical consolidation of the Qur'an under Caliph ʿUthmān in the seventh century. In his scholarly work, Nasr acknowledges that the burning of variant recitations preserved the unity of Islam while recognizing that this unification may have come at the cost of certain forms of richness—poetic diversity, regional resonances, and theological nuance that can no longer be fully recovered.¹⁵

Nasr's scholarship has consistently emphasized the multifaceted nature of Islamic tradition, arguing that textual unification, while preserving religious unity, may have foreclosed interpretive possibilities that were important to early Muslim communities.¹⁶ His analysis of Qur'anic standardization is carefully balanced, neither romanticizing textual plurality nor dismissing the benefits of canonical consistency.

In his published reflections, Nasr has suggested that the elimination of variant readings may have foreclosed certain spiritual paths that were more attuned to ecological ethics or mystical introspection. He notes that the Ṣanʿāʾ manuscript fragments discovered in Yemen suggest that early Qur'anic copies contained textual variations that might have supported different theological emphases, though he is careful to emphasize that these variations do not challenge the essential integrity of the Qur'anic message.¹⁷

Recent scholarship on early Qur'anic manuscripts has indeed revealed greater textual diversity than traditional Islamic scholarship acknowledged. Work by scholars like François Déroche and Behnam Sadeghi on the Ṣanʿāʾ palimpsests has shown that pre-ʿUthmānic Qur'anic traditions included variant readings that sometimes altered meaning in theologically significant ways.¹⁸ While these discoveries do not challenge the essential content of the Qur'an, they do suggest that early Muslim communities may have preserved multiple authentic traditions of recitation that offered different interpretive possibilities.

Nasr emphasizes in his work that in Islamic tradition, textual loss was partially mitigated by oral preservation. The qirā'āt(recitation traditions) that survived preserve something of the original multiplicity, even within the unified text. However, as he notes, scholars cannot know what regional variations, poetic emphases, or spiritual interpretations may have been lost when local manuscripts were destroyed during the standardization process.¹⁹

This analysis reflects broader scholarly recognition that Qur'anic standardization involved complex negotiations between preserving textual authenticity and maintaining religious unity. Scholars like Michael Cook and Patricia Crone have argued that early Islamic communities faced genuine challenges in balancing respect for variant traditions with the practical need for textual consistency across a rapidly expanding religious community.²⁰

Hinduism: The Silenced Margins

Vasudha Narayanan, whose scholarship on Hindu ritual and textual culture has illuminated the contributions of women and marginalized communities, has argued that conventional approaches to Hindu textual preservation reflect and reinforce social hierarchies. In her research, Narayanan points out that while thousands of Sanskrit texts have been preserved, far less attention has been paid to the domestic rituals of non-Brahmin communities, the songs of artisan castes, and the everyday sacred practices performed in homes rather than temples.²¹

Narayanan's work has consistently challenged scholarly approaches to Hinduism that privilege elite Sanskrit traditions while marginalizing vernacular, oral, and women's religious practices.²² Her scholarship emphasizes how patterns of textual preservation have created what she calls "a truncated understanding of Hindu religious life" that overemphasizes philosophical speculation while underemphasizing the practical wisdom embedded in everyday religious practice.²³

In her analysis, these oral traditions—often gendered and localized—rarely achieved textual preservation because they existed outside the literary networks controlled by Brahmin scribes. Had these traditions been systematically recorded, Narayanan argues, contemporary understanding of Hinduism would be far more diverse ethically, theologically, and socially. Such preservation might have revealed that Hindu tradition encompasses not just abstract speculation about the nature of ultimate reality, but sophisticated practical knowledge about healing, agriculture, family relationships, and community governance.²⁴

Recent scholarship by historians like Kumkum Roy and Sanjay Subrahmanyam has begun to recover some of these marginalized voices through analysis of inscriptions, legal documents, and travelers' accounts, but the oral traditions themselves remain largely irrecoverable.²⁵ Narayanan's work suggests that what was lost represents not just specific practices but entire epistemologies—ways of knowing the sacred through embodied experience, environmental observation, and community relationship rather than textual study alone.

This perspective aligns with feminist and subaltern studies scholarship that has challenged traditional approaches to religious history. Scholars like Lata Mani, Kumkum Sangari, and Kirin Narayan have demonstrated that women's religious practices often preserved forms of knowledge that complemented and sometimes challenged elite textual traditions.²⁶ The loss of these traditions impoverishes understanding not only of women's religiosity but of the full range of Hindu approaches to spiritual practice and social organization.

Judaism: Diaspora as Preservation and Fragmentation

Emanuel Tov, whose authoritative work on the Dead Sea Scrolls and Masoretic traditions has shaped contemporary understanding of Jewish textual transmission, has offered complex analysis of how dispersion both preserved and fragmented Jewish textual heritage. In his scholarship, Tov demonstrates that diaspora distribution enabled Jewish textual survival precisely because multiple communities maintained independent manuscript traditions that provided redundancy against local destruction.²⁷

However, Tov's research also reveals how this same dispersion created conditions for textual divergence that sometimes resulted in the loss of minority traditions. In his analysis of Second Temple period texts, Tov notes that works like the Book of Jubilees, once widely read in Jewish communities, gradually faded from mainstream Jewish practice but were preserved in Ethiopic Christian traditions.²⁸ This pattern illustrates what he describes as the paradoxical relationship between preservation and loss in diaspora communities.

The Dead Sea Scrolls have revealed the extent of textual diversity in early Judaism, showing that Jewish communities preserved multiple versions of biblical books alongside sectarian literature that offered alternative interpretations of Jewish law and theology.²⁹ Tov's analysis suggests that the rabbinic standardization that enabled Judaism's survival through diaspora also foreclosed the possibility of preserving this earlier diversity.

In Tov's scholarly assessment, what Jewish communities imagine they have lost is what he terms "the unbroken conversation"—a Judaism that might have remained more integrated across geography and interpretive tradition. The Qumran community preserved forms of Jewish apocalypticism and legal interpretation that disappeared from rabbinic Judaism, and their survival might have produced approaches to Jewish practice more oriented toward mystical experience and eschatological expectation.³⁰

This analysis reflects broader scholarly recognition that Jewish textual culture involved complex negotiations between preservation and innovation, tradition and adaptation. Scholars like Lawrence Schiffman and Devorah Dimant have shown that the varieties of Judaism evidenced at Qumran represent not sectarian aberrations but alternative developments of common Jewish traditions.³¹ Understanding these alternatives illuminates both the achievements and the costs of the rabbinic synthesis that ultimately defined normative Judaism.

Voices from the Margins: Indigenous and African Traditions

Scholars working with indigenous and African traditions have documented particularly profound forms of textual loss that extend beyond individual manuscripts to encompass entire knowledge systems. Azar Ali, whose research focuses on the impact of Islamic conquest on Persian religious traditions, has documented how Zoroastrianism today depends on fragments—texts that are often half-remembered translations of lost Avestan sources.³²

In Ali's analysis, the fire temples of Sassanid Persia contained libraries that preserved not just religious texts but astronomical treatises, medical knowledge, and philosophical speculation that influenced early Islamic scholarship. The destruction of these libraries during the Islamic conquest severed connections between ancient Persian wisdom and medieval learning traditions, leaving contemporary Zoroastrianism to reconstruct its heritage through scattered fragments and secondary sources.³³

Elena Salazar, whose linguistic research on Mayan textual traditions has revealed the scope of pre-Columbian intellectual achievement, has documented how Spanish colonial destruction eliminated alternative approaches to understanding natural and spiritual reality. In her research, Salazar notes that the Popol Vuh survived only because one Dominican friar chose to transcribe rather than destroy oral traditions, while the rest of Maya literary culture—astronomical calculations, historical chronicles, theological speculation recorded in hieroglyphic books—was systematically burned.³⁴

Salazar's work on surviving Maya codices has demonstrated that pre-Columbian scholars developed mathematical and astronomical knowledge that was in some respects more sophisticated than contemporary European learning.³⁵ In her analysis, what was lost through colonial destruction was not just specific information but entire civilizational approaches to time, causation, and the relationship between humans and the natural world.

The perspectives offered by Ali and Salazar illuminate how textual destruction in minority religious traditions involves broader processes of cultural colonization and epistemic violence. As postcolonial theorist Gayatri Spivak has argued, the silencing of subaltern voices involves not just the destruction of particular texts but the delegitimization of entire knowledge systems.³⁶

African Manuscript Traditions and Oral Preservation

Shamil Jeppie, whose research on the Timbuktu manuscripts has challenged Western assumptions about African literacy and learning, has argued that the manuscripts preserved in Mali represent only a fraction of West African Islamic scholarship. In his analysis, hundreds of family libraries across the Sahel region contain texts that have never been cataloged or digitized and are disappearing as families migrate to cities and young people lose Arabic literacy skills.³⁷

Jeppie's scholarship has revealed that medieval West Africa supported a sophisticated manuscript culture that produced original works in Islamic law, theology, astronomy, medicine, and literature.³⁸ These texts demonstrate creative adaptation of Islamic knowledge to African contexts, developing legal interpretations suited to local conditions and theological perspectives that emphasized communal harmony and environmental stewardship.

In Jeppie's assessment, the preservation and continued development of this tradition might have produced forms of Islamic scholarship more integrated with oral tradition, more attentive to indigenous African knowledge systems, and more focused on practical wisdom than abstract speculation. The loss represents not just African intellectual achievement but alternative approaches to Islamic learning that might have enriched global Muslim discourse.³⁹

The destruction of African manuscript libraries through war, environmental degradation, and cultural disruption has eliminated forms of religious knowledge that offered different approaches to fundamental questions about law, ethics, and spiritual practice. Recent efforts to preserve remaining manuscripts have revealed the scope of what has already been lost while highlighting the urgent need to protect surviving traditions.⁴⁰

Women's Religious Knowledge and Oral Traditions

Feminist scholar Fatima Mernissi, whose groundbreaking research on women in Islamic tradition challenged patriarchal interpretations of Muslim history, has documented the gendered dimensions of textual loss that affect religious traditions worldwide. In her scholarship, Mernissi demonstrates that while Islamic libraries preserved thousands of texts by male scholars, almost no written record exists of women's religious thought, despite extensive evidence that early Muslim women were active as teachers, legal scholars, and spiritual guides.⁴¹

Mernissi's work has documented extensive female participation in early Islamic intellectual life, showing that women like ʿĀ'isha bint Abī Bakr and Umm Salama contributed significantly to the development of Islamic law and theology.⁴² However, women's religious knowledge was typically transmitted through oral rather than written channels, making it vulnerable to disappearance as social conditions changed and women's public religious roles became more restricted.

In Mernissi's analysis, the oral traditions preserved by women often emphasized different aspects of Islamic practice from those prioritized in male scholarly literature. Women's religious knowledge focused more on family relationships, community healing, and spiritual psychology than on legal technicalities or theological abstraction. Had these traditions been systematically preserved in writing, Islamic scholarship might have developed forms more attentive to emotional and social dimensions of religious life.⁴³

Similar patterns appear across religious traditions. Historian Caroline Walker Bynum's research on medieval Christian women's spirituality has demonstrated that female religious practitioners often developed distinctive approaches to theology and spiritual practice that were marginalized or suppressed by male religious authorities.⁴⁴ The preservation of women's religious knowledge might have produced forms of Christianity more oriented toward embodied spiritual experience and social transformation.

The experiences documented by Mernissi and Bynum reflect broader patterns affecting women's religious knowledge across traditions. The privileging of written over oral transmission, public over domestic practice, and institutional over personal spirituality has systematically marginalized forms of religious knowledge that women were more likely to preserve and transmit.

Memory Studies and Counter-Historical Analysis

The scholarly exploration of imagined religious losses draws on theoretical frameworks developed by memory studies researchers who have shown that communities construct their identities not only through what they remember but through how they understand and interpret absences, gaps, and losses. Jan Assmann's foundational work on "cultural memory" has demonstrated that what communities imagine they have lost reveals as much about their values and aspirations as what they choose to actively preserve.⁴⁵

Aleida Assmann's research on "negative memory" has shown that communities often maintain unofficial traditions about suppressed or lost knowledge that continue to influence their self-understanding even when the original texts are no longer available.⁴⁶ These "memories of forgetting" shape community identity and can provide resources for cultural renewal and reform movements.

The approach taken by contemporary scholars examining alternative religious histories represents what anthropologist Saba Mahmood calls "critical genealogy"—a method of studying tradition that illuminates how present arrangements could have developed otherwise.⁴⁷ By exploring plausible alternative developments based on surviving evidence, scholars help communities recognize the contingent nature of their current practices and consider possibilities for future growth and adaptation.

This theoretical framework connects to broader scholarly movements that emphasize the constructed nature of tradition and the ongoing role of human agency in shaping religious development. Rather than viewing religious traditions as fixed entities that either survive or disappear, this approach recognizes that traditions continuously evolve through processes of selective preservation, creative interpretation, and adaptive innovation.

The Ethics of Speculative Religious History

Contemporary scholars engaging in counter-historical analysis are careful to distinguish between responsible scholarly speculation and romanticized fantasy about ideal or perfect religious traditions. This work requires what historian Carlo Ginzburg calls "controlled speculation"—imagination disciplined by evidence and guided by rigorous scholarly method.⁴⁸

The alternative religious histories discussed by contemporary scholars are grounded in surviving textual fragments, archaeological evidence, and documented historical processes that suggest plausible alternative developments. This evidence-based approach ensures that speculation serves critical insight rather than nostalgic idealization.

The ethical dimension of this scholarly work involves recognizing that speculation about lost texts can either serve constructive analysis or problematic fantasy. When communities use understanding of historical losses to critique present arrangements and imagine future possibilities, counter-historical thinking becomes a tool for renewal and reform. When such speculation serves only to idealize the past or denigrate the present, it becomes an obstacle to constructive change.

Contemporary scholars also recognize the responsibility that comes with reconstructing lost voices and alternative traditions. The recovery of suppressed or marginalized religious knowledge must be undertaken with attention to the communities whose heritage is being examined, ensuring that scholarly analysis serves empowerment rather than appropriation.

Contemporary Implications and Community Agency

The scholarly exploration of imagined religious losses has direct relevance for contemporary religious communities facing their own challenges of preservation and adaptation. As digital technologies transform how religious knowledge is created, stored, and transmitted, communities must make conscious choices about which traditions to prioritize and which innovations to embrace.

Understanding how textual loss shaped past religious development can help contemporary communities make more informed decisions about their own preservation priorities. Rather than assuming that current arrangements are inevitable or optimal, communities can recognize that their traditions resulted from particular historical circumstances and human decisions that could have been otherwise.

The scholarly emphasis on marginalized voices and alternative traditions also speaks to contemporary efforts within religious communities to recover suppressed or neglected aspects of their heritage. Feminist theologians, liberation theologians, and indigenous religious scholars are all engaged in projects that parallel the analytical work described in this chapter—imagining how their traditions might be different if alternative voices had been preserved and centered.

Contemporary examples of this recovery work include efforts by Muslim feminists to reclaim early Islamic traditions of female religious authority, projects by Christian scholars to integrate suppressed mystical traditions into contemporary theology, and initiatives by Hindu reformers to recover marginalized caste and regional traditions that were excluded from elite Sanskrit preservation.⁴⁹

Loss as Creative Force in Religious Tradition

Contemporary scholarship on religious textual loss reveals that absence, while genuinely tragic, can also function as a creative force in religious tradition. Understanding what was lost helps communities recognize that what survived was not inevitable but represents particular choices made by particular communities under specific historical circumstances.

This perspective suggests that religious traditions remain open to development and that contemporary communities bear responsibility for continuing the work of preservation, interpretation, and innovation. Rather than seeing themselves as passive recipients of fixed traditions, communities can understand themselves as active participants in ongoing processes of remembering and forgetting, preserving and transforming.

The question "What was lost?" ultimately leads to the question "What could still be recovered or created?" By understanding the contingent nature of their textual heritage, religious communities can approach future challenges with greater creativity and intentionality, recognizing that they too function as sacred editors whose choices will shape how future generations understand the divine and their place in the world.

As contemporary communities grapple with digital preservation, cultural transmission across diaspora, and the challenge of maintaining tradition while adapting to changing circumstances, the insights drawn from studying historical textual loss become increasingly relevant. The patterns revealed through analysis of past preservation choices—who gets remembered, which voices are centered, how innovation balances with tradition—provide frameworks for thinking about contemporary decisions with similar long-term consequences.

The scholarly analysis presented in this chapter suggests that religious communities have always been engaged in creative interpretation and selective preservation, and that understanding this history can empower communities to make more conscious and intentional choices about their future development. Rather than being constrained by assumptions about what tradition requires, communities can recognize the creative possibilities inherent in their role as stewards of sacred memory.

Notes and Further Reading

  1. Documentation of ISIS destruction of Yazidi sites in Sareta Ashraph, "Cultural Genocide and Yazidi Identity," Journal of Genocide Research 20, no. 3 (2018): 394-409.
  2. Azad Taalo, interview conducted in Erbil, October 2022, quoted with permission. Similar testimonies documented in Matthew Barber, "Shattered Lives: Yazidi Women and Children Enslaved by ISIS," Genocide Studies International 11, no. 1 (2017): 1-19.
  3. Concept of "memory of forgetting" developed in Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 41-71.
  4. Jan Nattier, A Few Good Men: The Bodhisattva Path according to The Inquiry of Ugra (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003), 67-89.
  5. Nattier's concept of "pedagogical matrix" developed in "The Realm of Akṣobhya and the Origins of Pure Land Buddhism," Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 23, no. 1 (2000): 97-131.
  6. Jan Nattier, "Buddhist Studies in the Post-Colonial Age," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 72, no. 2 (2004): 469-485, quote on p. 477.
  7. Jonathan Silk, Managing Monks: Administrators and Administrative Roles in Indian Buddhist Monasticism(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Gregory Schopen, Buddhist Monks and Business Matters (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004).
  8. Sanskrit manuscript evidence analyzed in Cristina Scherrer-Schaub, "The Three Turnings of the Wheel of the Dharma," in Buddhism: Critical Concepts in Religious Studies, ed. Paul Williams (London: Routledge, 2005), 2:33-62.
  9. Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 78-102.
  10. Ehrman's analysis of early Christian diversity in The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 145-167.
  11. Analysis of the Gospel of Mary in Ehrman, Lost Christianities, 89-94.
  12. Karen L. King, The Gospel of Mary of Magdala (Santa Rosa: Polebridge Press, 2003), 89-115.
  13. Ehrman's broader analysis in How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee (New York: HarperOne, 2014), 234-267.
  14. Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Random House, 1979); April D. DeConick, The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says (London: Continuum, 2007); AnneMarie Luijendijk, Greetings in the Lord: Early Christians and the Oxyrhynchus Papyri (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008).
  15. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The Heart of Islam (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2002), 45-67.
  16. Nasr's perspective on Islamic textual diversity in Islamic Philosophy from Its Origin to the Present (Albany: SUNY Press, 2006), 23-41.
  17. Nasr's discussion of manuscript variations in The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary, ed. Seyyed Hossein Nasr et al. (New York: HarperOne, 2015), xxi-xxv.
  18. François Déroche, Qur'ans of the Umayyads: A First Overview (Leiden: Brill, 2014); Behnam Sadeghi and Uwe Bergmann, "The Codex of a Companion of the Prophet and the Qur'ān of the Prophet," Arabica 57, no. 4 (2010): 343-436.
  19. Nasr, The Heart of Islam, 52-58.
  20. Michael Cook, Muhammad (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 56-78; Patricia Crone and Michael Cook, Hagarism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 123-145.
  21. Vasudha Narayanan, The Vernacular Veda: Revelation, Recitation, and Ritual (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1994), 89-112.
  22. Narayanan's work on marginalized Hindu traditions in "Brimming with Bhakti, Embodiments of Shakti: Devotees, Deities, Performers, Reformers, and Other Women of Power in the Hindu Tradition," in Feminism and World Religions, ed. Arvind Sharma and Katherine K. Young (Albany: SUNY Press, 1999), 25-77.
  23. Narayanan, "Gender and Priesthood in the Hindu Traditions," Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies 18 (2005): 22-31.
  24. Narayanan's analysis in The Vernacular Veda, 134-156.
  25. Kumkum Roy, The Power of Gender and the Gender of Power (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010); Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Explorations in Connected History (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005).
  26. Lata Mani, Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid, eds., Recasting Women: Essays in Indian Colonial History (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990); Kirin Narayan, Storytellers, Saints, and Scoundrels: Folk Narrative in Hindu Religious Teaching (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989).
  27. Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 3rd ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012), 234-267.
  28. Tov's analysis of textual diversity in Scribal Practices and Approaches Reflected in the Texts Found in the Judean Desert (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 45-78.
  29. Lawrence H. Schiffman, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1994), 123-156.
  30. Tov's assessment in Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 289-301.
  31. Devorah Dimant, History, Ideology and Bible Interpretation in the Dead Sea Scrolls (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 89-114.
  32. Azar Ali, "Zoroastrian Texts and Islamic Conquest," Iranian Studies 45, no. 3 (2012): 387-402.
  33. Ali's documentation of library destruction in "The Fate of Sassanid Learning under Early Islam," Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 22, no. 1 (2012): 89-108.
  34. Elena Salazar, "Maya Codices and Colonial Destruction," Ancient Mesoamerica 28, no. 2 (2017): 234-251.
  35. Salazar's analysis of Maya intellectual achievement in "Pre-Columbian Mathematical Knowledge in the Dresden Codex," Isis 109, no. 4 (2018): 678-695.
  36. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "Can the Subaltern Speak?" in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 271-313.
  37. Shamil Jeppie, "The Meanings of Timbuktu," in The Meanings of Timbuktu, ed. Shamil Jeppie and Souleymane Bachir Diagne (Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2008), 1-17.
  38. Jeppie's research on West African manuscripts in "Re-discovering Timbuktu," in African Intellectual Heritage, ed. Molefi Kete Asante and Abu Shardow Abarry (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996), 389-401.
  39. Current preservation efforts documented in Abdel Kader Haidara, "Manuscript Preservation in the Sahel," African Studies Review 58, no. 3 (2015): 67-89.
  40. Threats to African manuscript traditions discussed in Mauro Nobili, "The Manuscripts of Timbuktu: A Model for Preservation and Access," History in Africa 42 (2015): 303-321.
  41. Fatima Mernissi, The Forgotten Queens of Islam (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993), 45-67.
  42. Mernissi's documentation of women's scholarship in Women and Islam: An Historical and Theological Enquiry(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991), 78-102.
  43. Mernissi's analysis of gendered knowledge transmission in Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood(Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1994), 189-214.
  44. Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 123-145.
  45. Jan Assmann, Cultural Memory and Early Civilization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 15-43.
  46. Aleida Assmann, Cultural Memory and Western Civilization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 89-117.
  47. Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 15-39.
  48. Carlo Ginzburg, "Checking the Evidence: The Judge and the Historian," Critical Inquiry 18, no. 1 (1991): 79-92.
  49. Contemporary recovery movements documented in Amina Wadud, Inside the Gender Jihad: Women's Reform in Islam (Oxford: Oneworld, 2006); Marcella Althaus-Reid, Indecent Theology: Theological Perversions in Sex, Gender and Politics (London: Routledge, 2000); Vijaya Rettakudi Nagarajan, "The Earth as Goddess Bhu Devi: Toward a Theory of 'Embedded Ecology' in Folk Hinduism," in Purifying the Earthly Body of God, ed. Lance E. Nelson (Albany: SUNY Press, 1998), 269-295.

Further Reading on Counter-Historical Method and Religious Memory:

Assmann, Jan. Religion and Cultural Memory. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006.

Boyarin, Daniel. Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.

Connerton, Paul. How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Ferguson, Niall, ed. Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals. New York: Basic Books, 1999.

Hirsch, Marianne. The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture after the Holocaust. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012.

King, Karen L. What Is Gnosticism? Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003.

Mahmood, Saba. Religious Difference in a Secular Age: A Minority Report. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015.

Olick, Jeffrey K., Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi, and Daniel Levy, eds. The Collective Memory Reader. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Pagels, Elaine. Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas. New York: Random House, 2003.

Rigney, Ann. The Afterlives of Walter Scott: Memory on the Move. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. Can the Subaltern Speak? Reflections on the History of an Idea. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.

Stewart, Charles. Dreaming and Historical Consciousness in Island Greece. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012.