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Article: Feuerbach and the Interpretation of Religion.
- Article from:
- The Christian Century
- Article date:
- April 9, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 The Christian Century Foundation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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By Van A. Harvey. Cambridge University Press, 319 pp., $59.95.
Man's nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols.
--John Calvin
According to the Hebrew scriptures, humans were made in the image and likeness of God. But the perceived kinship between deity and humanity lends itself only too readily to the possibility of inversion. What if the gods are human creations, fashioned after the image and likeness of humanity?
Around 500 B.C.E., the Greek philosopher Xenophanes noticed that the gods of the Ethiopians were black and had flat noses, whereas the gods of the Thracians were blond and blue-eyed. He suggested that oxen, ...