BENEDICT DE SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise

On miracles
But this is not the sole reason why it is necessary to know their
beliefs.We must also know them so that we will not confuse what really
happened with imaginary things and prophetic visions. For many things
are reported in Scripture as real, and were actually believed to be real, 93
though they were nothing but apparitions and imaginary things, for
instance that God (the supreme being) came down from heaven (see
Exodus 19.18 and Deuteronomy 5.19), and that Mount Sinai was smoking
because God had descended upon it surrounded by ¢re, and that
Elijah went up to heaven in a ¢ery chariot with ¢ery horses. All these were
undoubtedly only visions, adapted to the beliefs of those who passed
them on to us as they appeared to them, namely as actual events. For
anyone whose knowledge rises even slightly above the common level
knows that God does not have a right hand or a left hand, and does not
move or stay still, and is not in space but is absolutely in¢nite, and all
perfections are contained in him.These things, I say, are known to those
who judge things from what is gathered by pure intellect, and not as the
imagination is a¡ected by the external senses, as the common people do,
who therefore imagine God as corporeal and as holding royal power and
seated on a throne which they suppose is in the dome of the sky above the
stars, whose distance from the earth they do not think to be very great.
Many events in the Bible have been adapted to these and similar beliefs
(as we have said), and accordingly they must not be accepted as real by
philosophers.
[20] Finally for understanding miracles as they really happened one
must know the phrases and ¢gures of speech of the Hebrews. Anyone who
does not pay su⁄cient attention to this will ¢nd numerous miracles in the
Bible which its authors never intended to be understood as such, and
therefore will be completely ignorant not only of the events and the miracles
as they really occurred but also of the mentality of the authors of the
sacred books. For example, Zechariah 14.7, speaking of some future war,
says: ‘And there shall be one day, known only to God’, (for it will) ‘not’ (be)
‘day or night, but in the evening time there shall be light’. By these words
he seems to predict a great miracle, andyet he means to convey merely that
the war will be doubtful throughout the whole day, its outcome known only
to God, but that in the evening they will obtain the victory. For it was with
such language that the prophets were accustomed to foretell and describe
the victories and disasters of nations.
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