Other traditions authorized their respective bodies of scripture early, e.g., the Sikhs, Muslims, and Manichaeans. Inspiration is an adjunct of the idea of the divine authority of scripture. The role of scripture in the life of the community involves its public recitation or reading at worship, its veneration as a cult object, and its citation in public prayer and in prescribing appropriate rituals. In the private devotional life of the faithful, scripture is the focus of meditation. The use of scripture to function as a charm to ward off evil or to induce healing is also common.
Scripture is also the inspiration for cultural expression in art, music, and literature.
The traditional Christian view of the Bible is that it was written under the guidance of God and that it therefore conveys truth, either literally or figuratively. The interpretation of the Bible is one of the traditional points of difference between Protestants, who believe that the Scriptures speak for themselves, and Roman Catholics, who hold that the church has ultimate authority in the interpretation of the Scriptures. John Wyclif was one of the first to project the publication and distribution of the Bible in the vernacular among the English people, and two translations go by his name. In the 15th cent. The next name in the history of the English Bible is that of William Tyndale , whose translation was not from the Latin Vulgate, like Wyclif's, but from the Hebrew and Greek.