BENEDICT DE SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise

Theological-Political Treatise
[10] Since our method, based on the principle that knowledge of the
Bible is to be sought from Scripture alone, is the only true method, wherever
it is unable to yield what is needed for a complete knowledge of
Scripture, we must simply give up. I must now therefore point out the
limitations and di⁄culties in this method’s capacity to guide us towards a
full and certain knowledge of the sacred books.
[11] Firstly, a major obstacle in this method is that it requires a perfect
knowledge of the Hebrew language. But where is this to be sought The
ancient scholars of Hebrew have left nothing to posterity about the principles
and structure of the language; at least we have absolutely nothing
from them: no dictionary, no grammar, no book of rhetoric. The Jewish
people have lost all their cultural and artistic accomplishments ^ no
wonder, after su¡ering so many massacres and persecutions ^ and have
held on to nothing but a few fragments of their language and a few books.
Almost all the names of fruits, birds, ¢sh, andvery many other words, have
perished through the ravages of time. Thus the meaning of many nouns
andverbs occurring in the Bible is either completely unknown or disputed.
Not only do we lack all this but, worst of all, we have no phrase-book of the
language; for almost all the idioms and modes of speech peculiar to the
Hebrew people have been erased from man’s memory by all-devouring
time. 4 We cannot therefore always discover, as we should, all the meanings
of each and every phrase which usage of the language might yield, and
there will be many statements expressed in distinctly known words whose
sense will nevertheless still be highly obscure or utterly incomprehensible.
[12] Besides our inability fully to reconstruct the history of Hebrew, the
very nature and structure of the language create so many uncertainties
107 that it is impossible to devise a method 5 whichwill show us how to uncover
the true sense of all the statements of Scripture with assurance. For
besides the usual causes of ambiguity common to all tongues, there are
certain other features of this language that procduce a whole host of
ambiguities. I think it is worth mentioning them here.
Firstly, a frequent source ofvagueness and obscurity of expression in the
Bible arises from the fact that all the letters of each single organ of speech
are used interchangeably. Hebrew divides all the letters of the alphabet into
4 Cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses 15.234 tempus edax rerum.
5 Spinoza’s footnote: see Annotation 7.
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