Theology, Ethnography, and the Historicization of Idolatry

Abstract

Early Christian writers defined idolatry around the monotheistic distinction between proper worship of the creator and vain worship of the creature, which they had inherited from Hellenistic Judaism. Despite the remarkable consensus about the validity of this theological analysis, the medieval synthesis was under severe strain throughout the early modern period, mainly because of the concept's extended range of application in the new contexts of religious controversy. In all these cases, deciding what practices constituted idolatry was open to debate. By the eighteenth century, libertine writers could retain the concept of superstition at the expense of that of idolatry, which Voltaire (himself an anti-Christian deist) denounced as meaningless.

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