"You see, my friend, how holy these books are to me, and how much I (according to Voltaire’s ridicule) am a Jew, when | read them: for should we not be Greeks and Romans, when we read [the works of] Greeks and Romans? Every book must be read in its own spirit, and so too the book of books, the Bible; and since this one contains, from the beginning to the end, the revealed spirit of God... we cannot do anything more perverse than to read God’s texts with the spirit of Satan, that is, to embellish the oldest wisdom by invoking the most recent stupidities, [or to explain) heavenly simplicity by means of today’s roguish witticisms."
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Academics from GermanyLiterary criticsPoets from GermanyTheologians from GermanyPhilosophers from Germany
Original Language: English
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quoted from Suzanne L. Marchand - German Orientalism in the Age of Empire_ Religion, Race, and Scholarship-Cambridge University Press (2009)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Johann_Gottfried_Herder
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Johann Gottfried Herder
1744 – 1803
deutscher Schriftsteller, Philosoph und Theologe
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