The Problem of Transmission: Why Divine Revelation Through Books Makes Little Sense

For centuries, religious traditions grounded their authority in sacred texts that claimed to originate from divine revelation. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all rely, in different ways, upon the idea that God communicated guidance to humanity through historically transmitted scripture – a sacred book.

What interests me here is not whether spiritual experience itself exists. Human beings are capable of profound inner experiences: visions, inspiration, altered states of consciousness, existential insight, and intense feelings of transcendence. Such experiences may be psychologically, philosophically, or even spiritually meaningful on an individual level.

The problem begins when personal revelation is translated into a universal authority.

Moreover, the problem lies in the mechanism of transmission itself.

Medieval Legitimisation and the Construction of Authority

One of the most useful insights from medieval textual studies is that texts rarely legitimise themselves in isolation. Instead, they construct authority by grounding themselves within already accepted traditions.

This can be clearly seen in medieval historiography.

If we look at the twelfth century, for example, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae (c. 1136) presents itself as a continuation of the older historiographic tradition. Geoffrey legitimises his narrative by appealing to earlier recognised authorities such as Gildas and Bede, while simultaneously claiming access to 'a very ancient book in the British tongue' (Prologue). Through this strategy, the text situates itself within an inherited chain of authority rather than appearing as an entirely new creation.

As scholars like Michael Faletra (2020) and Julia Crick (1992) have demonstrated in their work on Geoffrey of Monmouth and medieval historiography, medieval texts frequently established legitimacy through appeals to prior textual traditions, inherited authority, and claims of privileged access to older knowledge. For the authority of those older texts has already been long established and widely accepted.

This mechanism is not unique to Geoffrey.

The Qur’an, composed 5 centuries earlier and standing within the same historical era of Middle Ages, operates through the same structural process. It did not emerge independently. The Qur’an repeatedly situates itself within pre-existing Abrahamic tradition:

• it invokes biblical stories and figures,
• presents itself as confirmation (and correction) of earlier revelation,
• and claims continuity with the same divine source associated with Jewish and Christian scripture.

In other words, its authority is partially constructed through already established religious legitimacy.

This observation alone does not disprove revelation. But it demonstrates something important: religious texts operate within recognisable historical mechanisms of textual authority and legitimisation.

The Central Question

However, this raises a deeper philosophical issue.

If an all-capable God truly intended to guide humanity universally, why rely upon such an unreliable system of transmission in the first place?

Why use historically fragile manuscript culture, oral transmission, regional dissemination, interpretive disagreement, translation, copying, and human intermediaries? Not to mention the time it takes for the information to reach the wider global population in the pre-industrial era.

The problem can be seen clearer through a simple analogy.

The Company Manual Analogy

Imagine a global company with employees spread across the world.

The company headquarters decides to introduce a new universal code of conduct which all employees are expected to follow. The headquarters has the technological ability to instantly send the information directly to every employee simultaneously.

Instead, however, the company chooses a radically inefficient method. Only a few printed copies of the manual are distributed locally within the headquarters office. The information is then expected to spread gradually through:

• copied documents,
• interpretation,
• and word of mouth.

As time passes:

• some employees receive incomplete versions,
• others receive distorted versions,
• some never encounter the manual at all,
• and disagreements emerge over what the original rules actually meant.

Yet despite this, the company still holds all employees accountable for violating the rules, including those who never received the manual in the first place. However, the company makes a not that those who never received the manual will get a different treatment in case of violating the rules.*

No modern person would describe such communication system as rational, efficient, or just.

In fact, most would consider it profoundly irresponsible and unprofessional.

And yet this is the transmission model proposed by scriptural religions.

A supposedly universal revelation:

• emerges within a specific geography,
• in a specific language,
• through specific individuals,
• spreads unevenly through history,
• undergoes interpretation and fragmentation,
• and nevertheless becomes the basis upon which all humanity is judged.

This is no longer a historical problem, but a conceptual one.

Why Not Direct Guidance?

Assuming that God possesses unlimited communicative capacity (as scriptural religions suggest), such indirect transmission through fragile historical processes appears unnecessary.

An omnipotent being would not face the communicative limitations of medieval manuscript culture.

A deity capable of creating consciousness itself could presumably:

• embed moral knowledge directly within human awareness/consciousness,
• or provide guidance equally and simultaneously to all people.

Instead, revelation appears distributed according to the same historical limitations that govern ordinary human communication.

This creates a serious philosophical tension. The transmission model resembles human historical processes far more than it resembles universal divine communication.

Personal Spirituality vs Universal Authority

None of this necessarily disproves personal spiritual experience.

A person may genuinely believe they encountered the divine, received inspiration, or experienced profound existential revelation. But even if such experiences are real on an individual level, it does not logically follow that they should become universal systems governing all human life.

There is a major difference between personal spiritual experience, and absolute normative authority imposed upon humanity.

The former may be meaningful.The latter requires a level of evidential and communicative reliability that historical revelation of the religious scriptures simply does not appear to have.

Conclusion

The issue, therefore, is not whether human beings can experience spirituality. It is whether a presumably all-capable God that intends to give a universal guidance would realistically rely upon:

• geographically restricted revelation,
• historically fragile transmission,
• interpretive disagreement,
• and unequal access to information across cultures and time.

The more one examines the structure of scriptural transmission historically, the less it resembles universal divine communication and the more it resembles ordinary human processes of textual authority and legitimisation.

And once that question is asked seriously, many assumptions underlying scriptural religions begin to require re-examination.

*Within the framework of Islamic scholarship it is generally implied that people who never had access to the Quran will have a different treatment on the Judgement Day

References:

J. Crick, 1992, Geoffrey of Monmouth, prophecy and history, Journal of Medieval History

M. Faletra, 2020, Colonial Preoccupations in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s De gestis Britonum, A Companion to Geoffrey of Monmouth