In Watts’s view the tendency for written texts to develop precise forms in transmission
was a result of the ritualisation of those texts. This process of ritualisation was in turn due
to the fact that these texts were known in temple circles because of their prominence in
the process of education. According to this view, the use of specific texts in ritual con-
texts explains the origin and development of the phenomenon of sacred texts. A concern
with absolute accuracy in the execution of ritual promoted a strict adherence to the par-
ticular codification of that ritual in an exact written form.^1336 In Watts’ view this process
was to some extent self-perpetuating: the ritualisation of texts increased the concern for
the text’s accuracy in transmission, and the perceived fidelity to an ancient textual ances-
tor increased a text’s status as a ritual object.
“... texts were used in a variety of cultures to establish correct ritual performance and to
legitimize the ritual practices of priests, kings, and temples. Thus the idea of enacting rit-
ual instructions, that is, ‘doing it by the book,’ involved first of all doing rituals. There is
also some evidence that texts began to be manipulated and read as part of the rituals
themselves. Therefore as texts validated the accuracy and efficacy of rituals, rituals ele-
vated the authority of certain texts to iconic status.”^1337This proclivity for ritual texts to become ritual objects, and to thereby become stabilised
on account of their iconic status, fed into a secondary process in which other texts that
were not originally ritual instructions also became included into the ritualised textual ob-
jects and so entered the same process of stabilisation. By the second century B.C.E. “the
(^1336) J. Watts, "Rhetoric of Scripture," 198-99.
(^1337) J. Watts, "Rhetoric of Scripture," 208.