Literary scholar Manabu Murakami, in his article on the work for the "Nihon Koten Bungaku Daijiten", dates it to "perhaps the end of the Muromachi period". The work is clearly based on the "Kitano Tenjin Engi", in particular those texts in the "Anrakuji-bon" manuscript line, and transforms the religious text describing the origin of the god Tenjin into a narrative tale. Compared to the "Engi", "Tenjin no Honji" includes a lot more "waka" (poetry in classical Japanese) and fewer "kanshi" (poetry in classical Chinese). The Kitano Tenjin Shrine was an important focus for the religious practices of the people of Kyoto in the middle ages (the twelfth to sixteenth centuries), and Murakami notes that this work seems to reflect that popular religious sentiment. He notes that it may also have been created on commission from a temple. "Tenjin no Honji" is in two scrolls, although it survives in numerous copies of different formats. A two-scroll copy traditionally attributed to Ichijō Kanefuyu is in the holdings of the Tenri Central Library, which also possesses a one-scroll "emaki" edition, a damaged one-scroll miniature "emaki" edition, and a two-volume "Nara-ehon" edition. A one-scroll "emaki" edition is in the possession of Toyoko Takasu (鷹巣豊子). The Kyoto University School of Letters holds a one-volume "Nara-ehon" edition, whose ending is missing, and there is a two-volume printed edition dating to Keian 1 (1648). The work was printed in volume one of the "Muromachi-jidai Monogatari Taisei" (室町時代物語大成) based on the "emaki" formally in the holdings of the , the "Nara-ehon" formerly in the holdings of and the Keian edition. It also appeared in volume one of the "Shintō Monogatari Shū" (神道物語集), part of the "Denshō Bungaku Shiryō-shū" (伝承文学資料集), based on the two-scroll Tenri University text, the 1961 "Shintō Monogatari Shū" (神道物語集) edited by , based on the one-scroll text in the holdings of the Akagi Archives (赤木文庫 "Akagi-bunko"), and volume ten of the "Muromachi-jidai Monogatari Taisei" based on the one-scroll Tenri University text, the "emaki" in the holdings of Ōsaka Tenmangū, and Keian edition.