ABSTRACT
The author of the Book of Wisdom points out that the Hellenistic philosophers applied the concept of a god to basic kinds of matter like fire and air. The heavenly bodies are superior because they are eternal, or at least show no signs of coming into being and ceasing to be. Kings are not pure or simple, and are born and die; but they are superior because they embody or express society. If gods are things in the world superior to human beings, Jews and Christians are the atheists their contemporaries took them to be. In modern times missionaries and anthropologists have credited primitive people with amazing deities. Missionaries to the Marquesans reported that they had innumerable gods, 'one for every island, one for every fisher-man', and not only that but for every disease and every remedy, a goddess of syphilis, a god for recovery from syphilis and so forth.
