BENEDICT DE SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise

Introduction
But while Spinoza’s technique in the Theological-Political Treatise is
predominantly hermeneutical, philological and historical, at certain
points, notably in chapter 6 ‘On Miracles’, he adopts a very di¡erent and
more explicitly philosophical procedure. Mostly, when discussing biblical
phraseology and expressions, Spinoza claims purposely to have ‘asserted
nothing concerning prophecy which I could not infer from principles
revealed in Scripture’ itself. 2 For especially when dealing with issues like
prophecy which ‘is beyond human understanding and is a purely
theological issue’, no one can specify what it actually is, in itself, other than
‘on the basis of revealed principles’. Hence, comprehending such a
phenomenon must involve constructing ‘a history of prophecy’ from the
text of Scripture itself as well as the derivation of ‘certain dogmas from it
which would show me its nature and characteristics, so far as that can be
done’. 3 When discussing miracles, on the other hand, the position was
entirely di¡erent.There, he had no alternative, he claims, but to elucidate
this question only from principles known by the natural light of reason, for
with ‘miracles’, the question we are investigating (namely, whether we may
concede that something happens in nature which contradicts its laws or
which does not conform to them) is wholly philosophical. 4
TheTheological-Political Treatise has been called, with some justi¢cation,
‘the most important seventeenth-century work to advance the study of the
Bible and religion generally’, being the book which ‘disarmed the religious
interpreters who would enforce conformity’. 5 The novelty of Spinoza’s
approach does not lie in his a⁄rming that Moses was not the author of the
Pentateuch, as Hobbes and La Peyrère (and others) had said before, nor in
pointing out that its texts must have been composed and redacted long
after the events they describe, nor in emphasizing the special
characteristics, peculiarities and limitations of the Hebrew language.
Rather, Spinoza revolutionized Bible criticism by insisting on the need to
approach the subject free of all prejudgments about its meaning and
signi¢cance, eyeing every chain of tradition and authority whether Jewish,
Catholic, Protestant or Muslim with equal suspicion and, above all, by
stressing the importance of the distinction ^ never previously
systematized in the history of criticism ^ between the intended or ‘true’
meaning of a passage of text and ‘truth of fact’.
2 Ibid., ch. 6,para.21.
3 Ibid.
4 See below.
5 J. Samuel Preus, Spinoza and the Irrelevance of Biblical Authority (Cambridge, 2001), p. x.
xi