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early and mid 19th century
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I think you meant 20th Century.
Thanks, I fixed that.
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However, there is a name that resembles Luthor and is very famous. That is Luther, Martin Luther, founder of Protestantism. Is it even possible that Siegel and Shuster might have been obliquely referring to Martin Luther when they named Lex Luthor? I think it is
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So do you think there was no religious content or do you think there was a statement of Martin Luther as a villain? Because I'd call that religious content (albeit disguised).
While I'm not saying it's not based on Martin Luther, I'd find it odd unless you can give me similar religious basis for other villains' names, since Luthor was not originally Superman's arch-foe
Well, I think that if Siegel and Shuster only referred to religion when they gave an important villain a name that might refer to Martin Luther, then that doesn't mark them as religious in my book. If anything, it suggests to me that they did not much like religion.
I had no idea that Lex Luthor didn't get his first name until 1960, or that Superman's arch-enemy was first named the Ultra-Humanite. But that just underscores what I already thought about Siegel and Shuster - they were not religious kids, but rather starry-eyed sci-fi geeks, who loved fantastic new inventions. But they also loved classic stories about super-strong heroes, and I have indeed read an interview with Jerry Siegel where he said that he wanted to create a hero who was like Hercules or Samson(!), only still more fantastic. So Jerry Siegel certainly knew something about the heroes of the Old Testament! I find it quite probable that he and Joe Shuster may have disliked Martin Luther because they regarded him as anti-Semitic as well backward and conservative. But Siegel and Shuster were no theologians, and they were not into religion. If they named Luthor after Luther, which is something I can't prove, of course, then they probably did so because they disliked Martin Luther in a general way, not because they had any interest in systematically attacking religion.
And that still means that Superman was originally a non-religious creation, or at the very, very least, that he was not created as a Christian character.
Ann
