Return Keyword Applied On Object Returns Reference Or Value?

I am confused about what the return keyword is actually returning when returning an object, a primitive, or a function. My confusion is compounded by the fact that I'm not sure if a function is an object or not. According to the book JavaScript Programmer Reference it is: "All functions in JavaScript are first class objects , meaning they can be passed around like any other object reference. In fact, regardless of how they are created, functions are instances of a global object named (aptly) Function."

However, someone else states that a function is not an object. An object is a set of primitives and references. A function is executable code. Functions become objects through the use of the new operator. Yet, in the book I mentioned, it says you don't need the new keyword to execute the function as an object, as it already inherits from the object Function when the function keyword is used:

function functionName([argname1 [, ...[, argnameN]]])
{
statements;
}

So there's one source of contradiction. Now the bigger issue is what is going on when the return keyword is used. Notice the Validation() function returns an object as its last expression. This technique is common, where you return an object which contains functions in form of object notation. I believe this is done so that we create a closure so that when the intepreter exits the Validation() method, since we created a closure by returning an object, which contains the inner functions addRule and getRule, the local variables of Validation() are not destroyed, given that we can reference them through the two inner functions that make use of the local variables of the outer function. So when we use the return keyword on an object literal, and then exit the function, when we call one of the inner functions as we do later:

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