Van A. Harvey was George Edwin Burnell Professor of Religious Studies (Emeritus) at Stanford University.

Born in Hankow, China, he served in the U.S. Navy (1943–46), and was awarded a BA in Philosophy from Occidental College (1948, Phi Beta Kappa).

New Testament scholar Gerd Lüdemann states in a citation of this book that "I have long been more indebted to this than is evident from the number of explicit references"[3] The third edition of 1996 contains a new introduction outlining his mature position on these issues.

One commentator has characterized Harvey's career after 1980 as having been transformed from theologian into skeptical student of religion.

[5] This book argues that the neglected later writings of Ludwig Feuerbach dropped much of the Hegelian elements informing his better-known early work and created a more powerful theory for the origins and persistence of religion.