A minority religion can make itself legible in a dominant culture by mapping its central concepts onto the host's own: its faith becomes a 'Way,' its prophet a 'Sage,' its scripture a 'Classic.' The translation doesn't hide the faith. It claims the faith is a counterpart of the established tradition, standing beside it rather than outside it.
An educational network can convert a religious identity into a socially valid category by organising it as a 'school' of learning, the kind of unit the wider society already respects. Through such schools, members of a minority came to see themselves as scholars belonging to the elite who were fully local as well as fully believers.
A minority tradition gains standing by building its institutions on the template of the majority's own schools of scholarship. Moving its knowledge from teaching by mouth to written texts was part of this, because written books were how the host culture recognised serious learning.