Religious transcendence has provided one sense of authenticity for the arts. People maintain that great works are informed by a religious dimension, are ultimately “touched by the fire and ice of God.” In an older conception, people expected the authority of the Book, the Bible, to be matched by the finest literary expression in the King James version, providing language with its best use. Consonantly, in the Qur'ān, speech and communication invoke a connection with truth in the analysis of its language. Only the unique literary quality of the holy book fully matched expression, subject-matter, and truth and so could claim authenticity as the holy word. Others wanted art to parallel religious practice. In the Florentine renaissance, paintings emphasized a subjective immediate experience of God and faith as a felt emotion when such immediacy also became important to ordinary experience. The descriptive narrative interest and spontaneity of works had to fit the emotional and intellectual needs of spectators, drawing them to participate rather than commanding their awe.

The reference to religion occurs in Athens as it does in religions founded in Jerusalem. Greek drama has one source in religious festivals, which give performances their purpose. This role may have become muted by the time of Aristotle's Poetics: – although the gods placed people in circumstances that led to tragedy, Aristotle was more concerned with the structure of tragic drama – nonetheless the Poetics did not entirely remove religious reference from the arts, and it still addresses questions, of the origin of the value of arts, to which religion provides one answer.