This handbook provides a comprehensive introduction into the interrelated circumstances in history and in the history of literature and religion which led to the canonization of eminent literary and religious texts in Antiquity. At the same time, it discusses the key factors and reasons for these canonization processes and the resulting historical consequences. Due to the selection of different collections of texts from Greek, Latin, Jewish and Early Christian text culture, the book offers a comparative and multi-perspective insight into the construction, authorization and interpretation of texts and authors that became part of the canonized corpus of texts. Important hermeneutic questions about the history of the reception and interpretation of these collections of texts are discussed on the basis of modern text research and research on culture, literature and the media– up to the current discourse on canon hermeneutics.