I think what is meant by scripture in Theravada is an open question. In recent history, Theravada scripture as a practical canon has mostly meant Abhidhamma and a few regularly chanted suttas. I once heard that the only book that Ajahn Mun carried was the Abhidhammattha Sangaha. I read that some early Western travellers to Laos reported seeing temples with only the Abhidhamma present as canonical texts.
If you have seen Burmese representations of paticca samuppada as a wheel (I have only seen a Burmese diaspora one), it’s actually the Atthasalini version, for example. This text is literally projected onto public spaces via Abhidhamma commentary. The commentary is already the start point for understanding. If you look at the Pali examination system of Buddhist countries, the focus is commentarial Pali.
The study of the Abhidhamma has such a prestige and emotion of faith attached to it that in some circles questioning it very directly…is not the “done thing”. The discussion often proceeds via the commentaries and subcommentaries rather than in ways that might rub directly against points which are axiomatic for the tradition.
While there may be no Buddhist Vatican, in Theravada countries, state Buddhism plays a role in presenting “official” Buddhisms & Buddhist institutions in Theravada countries can and do set curricula, insist on orthdoxy & make attempts to weed out heresies via institutional alienation. We saw this recently with SL anicca/an-iccha (but the issues pursued can depend on the mood/politics at the time). This was a big issue in the Sri Lankan Buddhist diaspora. But there have been roughly equivalent issues in Thailand and I’m sure Burma too.
The other circles are the more modern sutta based ones. These also differ in terms of their “practical canon”, as within the sutta based movement, some groups have a more restricted range of “early” texts
that are actively used in teaching. You would have to look at the precise teacher to get a feeling for the vibe. I wonder if you had heard of the commentarial concept of texts which are neyyattha and nitattha (texts where the meaning has to be drawn out and those of fixed meaning). I had read that a text which is neyyattha should be taught as such, and a text which is nitattha should be taught as such. The commentaries themselves give symbolic meaning to some sutta texts.
Scriptural inerrancy in the Christian tradition which I have some exposure to, which is Presbyterianism (i.e. the evangelical-influenced sort) largely arose as a fundamentalist reaction against evolution. The church response to new scientific concepts in the late 19th and early 20th century was to clamp down doctrinally on concepts including creationism.
The Buddhist groups I have participated in have generally been more confident/less anxious about their scripture as many Buddhists came out of the 20th century feeling that science was on their side. Or rather, the idea of evolution was not an existential challenge to Buddhists. But Buddhist institutions themselves can still acquire other points of insistence, if not necessarily around perceived science/religion conflict, around the particular interpretative commitments of that school.
I believe that the Pali Canon is well expounded (svakkhata) in terms of the unambiguous dhamma content, which is “good in the beginning, middle and end”. While this might not be contextually the same thing as being inerrant, if someone wanted to use this term, you could say “doctrinally error free”. I would expect this degree of faith and understanding from people who are teaching the canon at an institutional level.
