can traditions fall into the oral/illiterate category. In the modern period, Christianity and Buddhism are also world religions, with adher ents located around the world in a variety of political, social, educational, and racial structures, although Christianity is concentrated in Europe and the U.S. and Buddhism in Asia. The religion of the American Plains indigenous peoples, including but not limited to Lakota/Teton peoples, is comparitively tribal and insular.
Reliance on text is at the core of Christianity, which was very much derived from written Jewish/Hebrew tradition; Judaism has a strand of oral tradition as well (Keane 49). In this regard, it may be noted that the Koran, the principal text of Christianity's great religious rival Islam, refers to the Jews as the people of the book (Campbell 422). Now Christianity appropri ated Judaic texts as its own and adapted Judaic ritual to its purposes, while also generating texts that served as doctrinal and ritual foundation for its development and expansion. The ef fect of text on the ritual life of Christian
...