Opposition From Abrahamic Religions
Members of Abrahamic religions identify cult images as "idols" and their worship as "idolatry", the worship of hollow forms. The paradox inherent in the worship of cult images was given classic expression in the Book of Isaiah:
Their land also is full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made. —Isaiah 2.8, reflected in Isaiah Isaiah.The avoidance of such a degrading paradox was expressed in the early Christian idea of miraculous icons that were not made by human hands, acheiropoietoi. Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians make an exception for the veneration of image of saints, which is not considered by them to be adoration or latria. The word idol entered Middle English in the 13th century from Old French idole adapted in Ecclesiastical Latin from the Greek eidolon ("appearance" extended in later usage to "mental image, apparition, phantom"). Greek eidos was employed by Plato and the Platonists to signify perfect immutable "forms".
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