A reader did not need to work through volumes of astronomical interpretation to encounter the argument against revealed religion. Constantin-François Volney (1757–1820) gave it a dramatic setting in The Ruins (1791). Representatives of the world’s faiths appeared before an imagined assembly, each confident that his own account deserved acceptance. Their competing claims allowed the reader to experience religious disagreement as a conversation rather than a succession of specialist treatises.
Behind the scene lay a question about the fall of empires and the authority of their institutions. Religious teachings had histories, and those histories were bound to human power, custom, and error. Volney proposed a common beginning in the worship of nature, with the sun, stars, and seasons gradually acquiring divine identities. Priestly interpretation elaborated the differences that believers later treated as sacred and permanent.
The assembly made this explanation appear to emerge from the encounter among the religions themselves. Its arrangement nevertheless belonged to Volney. He selected the speakers, decided which objections they faced, and supplied the account that purported to explain them all. The participants could expose one another’s difficulties while the author’s history of their origins remained in charge of the proceedings.
Published before the biblical astronomy of William Drummond (c. 1770–1828), The Ruins helped make comparable arguments familiar beyond learned circles. Its literary form gave a reader reasons to continue even when the historical details were unfamiliar. The claim that religions shared an origin could now arrive as an invitation to question their authority. Readers who put aside the debate still had its imagined assembly to remember, with each believer appealing to an authority that his neighbours refused to recognize.