Abstract
Spinoza is usually considered one of the creators of modern biblical scholarship and biblical criticism because of the views about the Bible that he expressed in the Tractatus Theologico-politicus (hereafter abbreviated TIP) and in some of his letters. In this paper I shall briefly indicate a way in which Spinoza’s views might have developed, then present what his views were and compare and contrast them with those of some of his contemporaries. Finally I will try to evaluate the extent of his originality.
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Notes
See Richard H. Popkin, “Notes from the Underground”, New Republic, May 21, 1990, pp. 35–41, and S. Biderman and A. Kasher, Why was Spinoza Excommunicated?“, in D.S. Katz and J. Israel (eds) Sceptics. Millenarians and Jews (Leiden, 1990) pp. 98–141.
The best picture of the community and the background of its members appears in Yosef Kaplan, From Christianity to Judaism. The Life of Isaac Orohio de Castro (Oxford. 1989).
Uriel da Costa wrote a response in Portuguese in 1623 stating his views. It was believed all copies of this work has been destroyed by the Synagogue at the time of his excommunication. However, Prof H.P. Salomon has just discovered one, and is preparing an edition of it. This will make it possible to have a much better idea of what his views were.
Little is known of Menasseh’s training. He was born in La Rochelle. France, raised in Lisbon, and turned up in Amsterdam as a teenager, and was teaching in the Synagogue school when he was 18. He, and rabbi Aboab apparently learned much privately from the Cabbalist, Abraham Cohen Herrera, who lived in Amsterdam, but played no role in the community. Menasseh published only one work in Hebrew, and there is some question as to whether it was translated for him. Mortera was born and raised in the Jewish community in Venice. He left at age 13, and went to Paris as secretary to Queen Marie de Medici’s doctor, Elijah de Montalto. he was at the Louvre until 1617, when he went to Amsterdam to bury Dr. Montalto, and stayed there.
Spinoza, TTP, chap. IX. p. 179. All quotations are taken from the translation of S. Shirley (Leiden: Brill 1989).
See I.S. Révah. Spinoza et le Dr. Juan de Prude (The Hague: Mouton, 1959). “Aux origines de la rupture Spinozienne: nouveaux documents sur l’incroyance dans la communauté Judéo-Portugaise à Amsterdam à l’époque de l’excommunication de Spinoza”, Revue des Etudes Juives, Vol. 123 (1964), pp. 359–431. and “Aux origines de la rupture spinozienne: nouvel examen des origines du déroulement et des consequences de l’affaire Spinoza-Prado-Ribera”. Annuaire du Collège de France. Vol. 70 (1970). pp. 562–568. Vol. 71 (1971), pp. 574–87. and Vol. 72 (1972). pp. 641–653.
There has been a recent discovery of the writings of Van der Enden. The texts will be published by Prof. Wim Klever of Erasmus University. Rotterdam. he has told me that the texts will show the source of Spinoza’s views. The texts postdate Spinoza’s excommunication, and Klever tells me. do not deal with Judaism.
TTP. chap. VIII. p. 161.
TIP, chap. VIII, pp. 161–62.
See Moshe Goshen-Gottstein. “Bible et judaisme.” in J. -R. Armogathe (ed.). Le Grand Siècle et lu Bible (Paris: Beauchesne, 1989). p. 34.
Sylvan Zac. in Spino:a et l’ interpretation de l’ Ecrinu - e (Paris), pp. 37–39, shows that there is no reason to suspect any heterodoxy in Aben Ezra’s views.
Some of the answers to Christianity written in Amsterdam specifically direct their attack against claims made by Pablo de Santa Maria.
S.L. Greenslade (ed.). Cambridge Hhrtoru of the Bible (Cambridge. 1963), pp. 7 and 87.
Ibid., p. 92. A work by Christopher Cartwright. Electa Thargumico-Rahhinica: sire Annotationes in Genesim (London. 1648). makes great uses of Aben Ezra’s commentaries, and Pablo de Santa Maria’s employment of them.
John Lightfoot. The Harmony of the Four Evangelists. Among themselves. and with the Old Testament (London, 1647), p. 79.
John Richardson. Choice Observations and Explanations upon the Old Testament (London, 1655). The work says it was perused and attested by the Bishop of Armagh, who was Archibishop Ussher.
Amos Funkenstein has pointed out to me that even as far back as the Babylonian Talmud. Baba Bahia. mention is made that Moses could not have written about his own death.
Simon Patrick. A Commentary upon the Fifth Book of Moses. culled Deuteronom (London, 1700), pp. 678–79.
Westminster Confession (London. 1658), chap. I. p. 6. “The Old Testament in Hebrew (which was the Native Languge of the People of GOD of old) and New Testament in Greek (which at the time of the writing of it was generally known to the Nations) being immediately inspired by God, and by his singular care and Providence kept pure in all Ages, are therefore Authentical”.
Richard Bemestein, in New York Times. Oct. 24. 1990, sec. C. p. 11. Modem commentaries just take it for granted that Joshua or somebody else wrote the lines about Moses’s death and what happened thereafter. See Joseph Reider, Deuteronomy with Commentary (Philadelphia. 1937), p. 342: S.C. Driver. ‘A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Deuteronomy’. in the International Critical Comnientar.v, 3rd, ed. (Edinburgh. 1973). p. 417: and The Interpreter’s Bible (New York and Nashville. 1953). p. 535. The latter gives a full “higher critical” gloss. Deutoronomy 34: 1–12 is a final appendix to the book in narrative form. “Scholars have long agreed that it was taken from a priestly editor’s edition of the old historical sources. 1E. which perhaps had been expanded by a Deuteronomic writer, presumably the historian responsible for the books of Joshua and I1 Kings.”
See Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down (New York: Penguin: 1980).
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Oakeshott edition (Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 1947), pp. 247–48.
Ibid., p. 248.
Ibid. loc. cit.
On La Peyrère. see Richard H. Popkin, Isaac La Peyrère (1596–1676). His Life. Work und Influence (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1987).
Isaac La Peyrère. Men before Adam (London. 1656). pp. 204–205.
For instance there is a text by George Hughes, a minister at Plymouth, An Analytical Exposition of the Whole First Book of Moses called Genesis (1672). where the answer to the question who was Cain’s wife is: “It must surely be one of Adam’s daughters: many vain conceits there are that she was a twin born with him, that her name was Schare, other Calmana: but the scripture is silent of these, therefore no faith can be on them.”
Copies of this, entitled Michel de Marolles, Le Livre de Genese, are in the British Library and the Bibliothèque Nationale.
A quite incomplete list of borrowings appears in Leo Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion.
See R.H. Popkin, “Menasseh ben Israel and La Peyrère”, Studio Rosenthaliana, XVIII (1984), pp. 12–20.
See Popkin La Peyrère passim.
Samuel Fisher. The Rustick Alarm to the Rabbies (London: Robert Wilson. 1660).
Hill op. cit.. chap. 11, “Samuel Fisher and the Bible”, pp. 259–268.
On Fisher. see R.H. Popkin, “Spinoza and Samuel Fisher”, Philnsophia, XV (1985), pp. 219–36.
See R.H. Popkin, “Spinoza’s Relations with the Quakers”, Quaker History, LXXIII, (1984), pp. 14–28, and Spinoza’s Earliest Publication? The Hebrew Translation of Margaret Fell’s Loving Salutation (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1987).
Louis Meyer, Philosophia S. Scripturae lnterpre.s. A French translation of this work, with an important introduction has recently appeared. Louis Meyer, La Philosophie interprète de l’Ecriture Sainte, with introduction and notes by Jacqueline Lagrée and Pierre-Francois Moreau (Paris: Intertextes Editeur, 1988).
See George H. Williams, The Polish Brethern, Harvard Theological Studies XXX, 1980, Document XXXIV, Andrew Wiszowaty, Jr., “Rational Religion, or a Tract Concerning the Judgment of Reason to be used even in Theological and Religious Controversies”, (1976–78: published originally in 1685).
The Socinian, Christopher Sand, gave him a copy of his work.
TTP, p. 162.
TTP, p. 166.
TTP, p. 167.
See. for instance, the discussion in Sylvain Zac, Spinoza et l’interprétation de l’Ecriture. pp. 37–39.
Hobbes. Leviathan, pp. 254–55.
Isaac La Peyrère. Apologie de la Peyrère (Paris. 1663). See Popkin, La Peyrère. pp. 15–16.
TTP. chap. VII. p. 141
On this, and the view of the Cambridge Platonists about Spinoza, see Sarah Hutton, “Reason and Revelation in the Cambridge Platonists and their Reception of Spinoza”, in K. Gründer and W. Schmidt-Biggeman (eds). Wolfenhütteler Studien zur Aufklarung, Band 12, Spinoza in den Frühzeit seiner religiose’) Wirkung (Heidelberg. 1984). pp. 181–200.
See Sarah Hutton, article in Wolfenbuttel Spinoza volume.
TTP. chap. VII, p. 154.
TTP, chap. VII, p. 142.
TTP, chap. VIII, p. 155
TTP, loc. cit.
TTP. loc. cit.
Oldenburg wrote, that according to this horrendous view set forth “that the whole story of the Creation seems to have been composed in order to introduce the Sabbath, and that from motives of merely political prudence. For to what purpose… is the fatiguing labor of so many days assigned to Almighty God, when all things submit to his bidding in a single instant? It seems that that very prudent legislator and ruler, Moses. concocted the whole story on purpose, so that (when he had gained acceptance of it in the minds of his people) one certain day should be set aside on which they should solemnly and publicly worship that invisible Deity: and so that whatever Moses himself should say proceeded from that same Deity they would observe with great humility and reverence. The other problems is that Moses certainly encouraged and excited his people to obey him and to be brave in war by hopes and promises of acquiring rich booty. and ample possessions. and that the man Christ. being more prudent than Moses, enticed his people by the hope of eternal life and happiness though aware that the soul seriously contemplating eternity would scarcely savor what is vile and low. But, Mohammed. cunning in all things. enlisted all men with the good things of this world as well as of the next, and so became their master, and extended the limits of his empire much more widely than did any legislator before or after him. You see what licence this critic adopts out of love of reasoning.” The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg. ed. and trans. A. Rupert Hall and Marie Boas Hall (Madison and Milwaukee: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1965), pp. 89–92
The manuscript, in confused order, is in the Boyle Papers in the Royal Society of England, Vols 12, 13, and 15. Henry More knew of the text, from a copy that belong to Francis Van Helmont.
See Popkin, “Spinoza and The Three Impostors”, in E. Curley and P.-F. Moreau (eds), Spinoza Issues and Directions (Leiden: (eds) E.1. Brill. 1991), pp. 347–58.
TTP, chap. IV, pp. 108–9.
TTP, chap V. p. 119. Spinoza’s view is like that of some of the Judaizing Socinians. who denied that any religious laws had been changed by Jesus’s appearance in the first century. Some of these Judaizers, unlike Spinoza. then kept all the Mosiac laws while being “Christians” of sorts.
TTP, chap. XIV, p. 225.
Such as Alexandre Matheron, Le Christ et le Saha des I,gnorants che: Spino:a (Paris: Aubier, 1971).
See Popkin, “Rabbi Nathan Shapira’s Visit to Amsterdam”, in Michman (ed.) Dutch Jewish History, (Jerusalem. 1984), pp. 185–205.
Oldenburg letter to Spinoza, 11 Feb. 1676. No LXXIX.
The early Quakers saw themselves as the Second Coming. the second expression of the Spirit of God on earth. See, for instance. William Penn’s Visitation to the Jews.
TTP. chap. XII, p. 210.
For instance. Edward Stillingfleet. Bishop of Worcester. after reading Spinoza’s TTP and Richard Simon’s Critical History of the Old Testament, said: “The Question is not, whether the Books of Moses were written by himself, or by others according to his Appointments or Direction. It is not. whether the Writings of Moses were preserved free for all literal mistakes, or varieties of Readings in matters of no great consequence…But it is a Question of great weight & moment, & whereon very much depends, whether the Books of Moses contain the genuine Writings or onely some Abstracts & Abridgements of them…For then the Certainty of our Faith does not depend on the Authority of Moses or the Prophets, but on the Credibility of those Persons, who have taken upon them to give out these Abridgements in stead of their Original Writings.” From Stillingfleet’s notes for a Sermon. 1682/3. published in Gerard Reedy (ed.). The Bible and Reason. Anglicans and Scripture in Late Seventeenth-Centnrr England. (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press. 1985), p. 147.
TTP. loc. cit.
TTP. loc. cit.
Spinoza cited none of the standard commentaries by Christian scholars that were read by almost everyone in the Republic of Letters. In his library he had grammars and dictionaries by the Christian Hebraists. but not their expositions or explanations of Scripture. The first to write and answer to the TTP, Regneri à Mansvelt. Adrersus Anonrmunr Theolo, ico-Politico (Amsterdam, 1674: written by 1672). lists lots of experts who worked diligently and carefully on the problems of the Hebrew text. who are not mentioned by Spinoza—Drusius. Buxtorf, Fagius, Bochart, Coccocieus, Capell, Selden. Munster, Hottinger and Scaliger.
Consider Bultmann for example. about what is left of the message when all of the aspects of the text have been de-mythologized.
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Popkin, R.H. (1994). Spinoza and Bible Scholarship. In: Force, J.E., Popkin, R.H. (eds) The Books of Nature and Scripture: Recent Essays on Natural Philosophy, Theology and Biblical Criticism in the Netherlands of Spinoza’s Time and the British Isles of Newton’s Time. International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives Internationales D’Histoire des Idées, vol 139. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3249-9_1
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