Yet I offer a bold rebuttal: none of these definitions is what makes a text sacred. It isn’t about the author or the inspiration. As my mentor, Harvard Divinity School professor Stephanie Paulsell, explains, a text is sacred when a community says that the text is sacred. It’s that simple. When a group of people returns year in, year out, to the same text, wrestling with it by investing their questions, struggles, and joys—that’s what does it.
