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244 Talking Back Yes, yes, the social psychology, the power issues and dynamics—how could these matters not be considered as part of the probing of “scriptures”? These are matters having to do not with the one-time explosive moment in which the originary impulse behind the invention of scriptures is revealed. No, what has been addressed in the foregoing essays are some of the ongoing historical and new and widely varied social-psychological needs and power dynamics and issues that focus on peoples’ situations. The pointed question is this—do we need scriptures? If so, why? What offices or functions do we make them provide for us? Is it the need for center-ing? Is it the creation and maintenance of a discursive cultural field within which one come to know where one is, who one is?1 No exhaustive evidence was provided here, nor was such intended. But the probing here seems to suggest that given a chance human beings tend to create scriptures—as center forces, as canons, as cultural fields. Even before those complex moments and situations in history in which the writing and the textual were invented, there is evidence that human beings invented and had experiences with some things that worked for them in ways that approximate texts as scriptures. We must continue to probe whether this is the case or what it might mean—for human shaping and striving, survival and thriving—if this were the case. —ed. Notes 1. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1977); Wesley A. Kort, “Take, Read”: Scripture, Textuality, and Cultural Practice (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996). ...

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