456 a note on the three orientationsTh e point about context goes together with a thesis about agents. Th e
writing about the Axial Age innovations assigns the leading role to a col-
lective agent: the creators, compilers, and masters of a scriptural
canon, following close on the heels of heroic intellectual innovators.
Such a canon rec ords and develops the new ideas. It also provides a
basis on which to claim worldly as well as spiritual infl uence.
Th e truth, incon ve nient to our preferences and preconceptions, is
that, for the making of religion, the marriage of visionary teaching to
exemplary action in the life of a single individual has always been
worth countless thousands of intellectuals. Suff ering humanity heard
the message of such visionaries, codifi ed and conveyed, and oft en bled
of much of its vitality and meaning, by bookish men. No priest or
scribe has ever founded a religion.
Th e commanding purpose of the religious revolutions of the past
was not to advance a disinterested view of the world. It was to rescue
mankind from its lack of imagination and of love.