How were these texts written down, collected, and passed on?

Memorized by thousands from the first day and written down as it came; compiled by Abu Bakr, standardized by Uthman within twenty years, and carried since by an unbroken chain of memorizers.

As ordinary books: written by named authors, published, criticized, and kept alive by readers and universities. Lucretius' poem nearly vanished and survived through medieval copies rediscovered in 1417; no council canonized any of these works, and none is beyond challenge.

By ordinary publication, not canonization: Victorian periodicals such as The Nineteenth Century carried the original debates, Huxley gathered his own pieces into the Collected Essays (1893–94), and the rest passed on through reprints and university reading lists. Nothing was preserved by any authority — only by readers who kept finding the arguments worth answering.

Jesus himself wrote nothing; his words were carried orally, then written: Paul's letters first (c. 50–60 CE), the Gospels between roughly 65 and 100 CE. The books circulated separately, were copied by hand across the Roman world, and were gradually recognized as one canon — the Easter letter of Athanasius (367 CE) gives the first exact list of the 27 New Testament books.

The biblical books were composed and edited over roughly a thousand years, and the canon was effectively settled by the early centuries CE. The oral teachings were written down in the Mishnah (c. 200 CE) and the two Talmuds (c. 400–500 CE); the Masoretes then fixed the Bible's letters, vowels, and notes (c. 700–1000 CE) in codices such as Aleppo and Leningrad.

Orally, for centuries: monks memorized the discourses in communal recitation, organized them at councils after the Buddha's death, and the Pali Canon was first written down in Sri Lanka around the 1st century BCE. Mahayana sutras appeared later and were translated into Chinese and Tibetan.

Orally, for many centuries: brahmin families memorized the Vedas with elaborate cross-checking recitation techniques that preserved even the pitch accents, and writing came remarkably late. The epics and Puranas, by contrast, grew and changed across centuries of retelling before reaching their received forms.

The Gurus composed their hymns in the Gurmukhi script and preserved them in writing from the start. Guru Arjan compiled the authorized volume (the Adi Granth) in 1604 at Amritsar, and Guru Gobind Singh completed the final recension — adding his father's hymns — before declaring the book Guru in 1708.

As ordinary published books and public legal documents: printed, debated, amended, and taught in faculties of law and politics. Nothing was memorized or canonized; everything remains open to citation and challenge.

Drafted openly by named authors and committees, published in journals and books, signed publicly, and revised in later editions. Nothing was dictated, hidden, or passed on orally — the publication record is complete.

As ordinary published books and public legal documents — printed, translated, debated, and kept in print by publishers and universities. No priesthood guards them; their transmission is the open book market itself.

By ordinary publication: books, pamphlets, essays, and declarations, printed, translated, and now taught in universities. Nothing was canonized by any authority, and the list remains open.

As ordinary lectures, essays, and pamphlets of the 18th–20th centuries, spread by print, schools, and universities — no canonization, no guarded transmission. Anderson argued that print itself, reaching strangers in one language, is what first made nations imaginable.