The centrality of a Book in a religion seems to be a powerful factor both in the distribution of the religion and also in its survival through the ages. After all, Judaism, the mother of all religions of Book, is among the oldest religions still active today and a quite vigorous and influential faith system.
Book is a powerful thing. There is an old Aramaic saying "sifra saif" - the book is a sword.
Probably there are many scientific studies about the psychological and sociological power of the book. But even without such research we know from our own experience how near the book brings the contents to a person who knows to read the writing and understands the language.
For example, today we can watch a movie that is based on a book. The relationship between Lord of the Rings or Harry Pottery books and movies is complicated and the effect different. Perhaps we can see that the book is somehow more powerful despite of all the special effects as it lets the mind to build those effects for the reader. Anyway, the experiences are different and both the book and the movie are often of interest to the audience. The experiences are not mutually exclusive but seeing the movie twice is not the same as reading the book twice!
In comparison to other faith systems religions of the Book have a strongly unifying factor, the Book, that crosses the borders of time, geography, nationality and culture and adapts to new environments and languages with translations and teaching.
This, of course, depends also on the character of the religion - Judaism is very inclusive religion and defines Jewish person, nation and culture, now also a modern country, "Jewish state".
Christianity and Islam are universal reaching for all people upon the Earth to spread the message found in the holy Book.
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