Chapter XXXIV.—Whence men attributed...

Chapter XXXIV.—Whence men attributed to God human form.

And if any person investigates the subject of images, and inquires on what ground those who first fashioned your gods conceived that they had the forms of men, he will find that this also was derived from the divine history. For seeing that Moses history, speaking in the person of God, says, “Let Us make man in our image and likeness,” these persons, under the impression that this meant that men were like God in form, began thus to fashion their gods, supposing they would make a likeness from a likeness. But why, ye men of Greece, am I now induced to recount these things? That ye may know that it is not possible to learn the true religion from those who were unable, even on those subjects by which they won the admiration of the heathen, ²⁵⁸⁴ to write anything original, but merely propounded by some allegorical device in their own writings what they had learned from Moses and the other prophets.

Footnotes

287:2584

Literally, “those without.”