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Hortatory Address to the Greeks
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Chapter 34: Why People Attribute Human Form to God
AND IF ANYONE INVESTIGATES THE SUBJECT OF IMAGES AND INQUIRES ON WHAT BASIS THOSE WHO FIRST FASHIONED YOUR GODS THOUGHT THEY HAD THE FORMS OF MEN: they will find that this also came from divine history. For seeing that Moses's history, speaking as God, says, "Let Us make man in our image and likeness," these people, believing this meant that men were like God in form, began to fashion their gods in this way, thinking they would create a likeness from a likeness. But why, people of Greece, am I now encouraged to recount these things? So that you may know 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, to write anything original, but merely presented through some allegorical device in their own writings what they had learned from Moses and the other prophets.