Analysing the BhG with regard to its epic context has been a major concern of this study. I hope to have shown that this perspective adds additional aspects of meaning to a text whose interpretation seems to have incited discussion and debate almost since its composition, since it claims to reveal a religious truth or philosophy whose importance is not confined to a concrete historical or cultural context. Yet these contexts need to be taken into account when considering the date of the BhG's composition, the history of its reception and more generally the interplay between ‘texts’ and ‘contexts’ in regard to the status of texts and the dissemination of ideas, symbols and myths. While a text like the BhG may very well be considered a ‘closed universe’ in terms of narrative structure, ideological design and characters or voices, it is also connected with other media of social communication, such as images, inscriptions and coins, some of which are still extant. Other media include various forms of textual performance and methods of establishing textual authority, which all contributed to its transmission and kept ‘alive’ a text which would have otherwise been forgotten. These contexts are no longer available as ‘empirical data’ – we know of ancient ‘textual recitations’ only because literary texts narrate them – yet they cannot be regarded as ‘fictitious’ only.