I'DOCRASE, See IDOL (Gr. eidigon, an image), IDOLATRY (worship latreia] of images). By the name idol is meant an image intended to represent a divinity, and to be adored as such. The act of worshiping such an object as a divinity is called idolatry. Although the first principles of reason suggest to man's mind the idea of one supreme being, the source of all existing things, and the origin of all good (see Goy), yet the very earliest historical records, sacred and profane. teem with evidences of the errors into which men quickly fell through ignorance and passion, changing "the glory of the uncor ruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things " (Rom. i. 23). To these images, as well as to the images of inanimate objects, or of the ideal powers or forces supposed to he embodied in snob objects;—as the sun, the moon, the stars, air, water, fire, and other natural elements— divine honors were paid by most of the ancient nations; to which honors the name of idolatry has been given. Hence, as each of these corrupt worships had its own peculiar symbols, the idolatry of the ancient gentile religions may be reduced to four classes: 1. The idolatry of nature-worship, which was of two kinds—the first of inorganic nature, which consisted chiefly in litholatry, or the worship of stones or pillars, men tioned in Leviticus, xxvi., and in Numbers xxxiii. 52; the second of organic nature, or of the powers of nature, as dendrolatry, or the worship of trees—under form were symbolized tbe productive or generative powers of nature, and to which the most modern investigators of Phenician antiquities trace the origin, as well of the grossly immoral worship of the Aslitaroth of the Phenicians, as of the phallic worship, which found its way. under various forms, through all the kindred races, both in the west and in the east. 2. The idolatry of animal worship, which we find as well in the (perhaps originally symbolical) worship of the sacred oxen, the crocodiles, and serpents among the Egyptians, as in that of the still more degrading forms of animal life which consti tuted the object of adoration with other nations. 3. A higher form of idolatry, which prevailed among the races of Chaldean origin, was astrolatry, or star-worship, which is often designated by the name of sabaism. • There was one form of sahmism which can not strictly be called idolatry, as it did not involve the use of idols, but addressed itself directly either to the heavenly bodies themselves, or to the element of fire, with which they were associated. But the same object of religious worship, coupled with the use
of idolatrous representations, is found in the worship of Baal, of Moloch, and of Tam muz, the Phenician Adonis (Ezekiel, viii. 14). 4. The last form of idolatry, and that which prevailed in the later period of the ancient gentile religions, was anthropolatry, or the worship of representations of the human form. It is chiefly familiar to us through the mythology of Greece and Rome, but it also found a place in most of the other religious systems, in some of which the representations of the human form were variously modified, so as to symbolize those special attributes which form the peculiar objects of the worshipers' adoration. Of this there are many examples in the mytho logical representations of the Egyptians and of the Indians. In the Egyptian religion, indeed, and in the later Grecian, many of the idols were representations of pure abstractions, as of certain faculties or affections of the mind, of virtuous desires, or of evil passions. Nor can it be doubted, that Among the more cultivated classes, there were individuals by whom these abstractions were fully understood, and by whom the crude idolatry of the multitude was regarded solely as a device adapted to their more gross and material conceptions.
The Jews, notwithstanding the many safeguards by which the belief of the one i supreme being was protected n their religious system, were frequently seduced into the idolatrous worship of the gentile nations among which they were thrown. It is one of the most remarkable among the anomalies of the history of this singular people. that the great and radical purification of their faith in the unity of God dates from their protracted Babylonian captivity, from which time it was maintained, notwithstanding the effort of Antiochus Epiphanes to introduce the Greek idolatry (1 11.lacch. i.) down to the coming of our Lord. The idolatry into which the Jews fell at different periods was chiefly of the first and the third forms described above.
The idolatry of the savage tribes of the African and Oceanican races is for the most part of the class described under the head FETICHISM.