BENEDICT DE SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise

Theological-Political Treatise
and the very structure of the whole history ^ fully persuade us that these
books were not written by Moses but by someone else.
(2) This account not only tells how Moses died and was buried, and was
mourned by the Hebrews for thirty days, it should be noted, but also compares
him with all those prophets who lived later, claiming he excelled them all.
‘There has never arisen a prophet in Israel’, it is there stated, ‘like Moses,
whom God knew face to face’. 11 Obviously Moses could not give this testimony
about himself, nor could anyone who came immediately after him. It must
have been someone who lived many generations later, especially as the
historian speaks in the past tense, viz.,‘there has never arisen a prophet’ etc.
And of his place of burial he says,‘no one knows it to this day’. 12
(3) It is worth noting also that certain places are not called by the names which
they had in Moses’ lifetime but those by which they were known long afterwards.
For example,‘Abraham pursued’ (the enemy) ‘as far as Dan’ (see Genesis 14.14);
Dan was not thus called until long after the death of Joshua (see Judges 18.29).
(4) The story is sometimes carried down until well after the end of Moses’ life.
Exodus 16.34, for instance, states that the sons of Israel ate manna for forty years,
until they came to the border of the land of Canaan, i.e. down to the time speci¢ed
122 in the book of Joshua 5.12.Inthe book of Genesis 36.31, it is said,‘These are the
kings who reigned in Edom, before a king ruled over the sons of Israel’. Here, evidently,
the chronicler is enumerating the kings of Idumaea before David conquered
them 13 and appointed governors in Idumaea itself (see 2 Samuel 8.14).
[5] From all this it is plainer than the noonday sun that the Pentateuch
was not written by Moses but by someone else who lived many generations
after Moses. But now we should perhaps consider the books cited in the
Pentateuch which Moses himself did write. From these themselves, it is
evident that they were something di¡erent from the Pentateuch.
For it emerges, ¢rst, from Exodus 17.14 that Moses, by the command of
God, wrote an account of the war against Amalek. Alhough it is not clear
from that chapter in which book it occurs, at Numbers 21.12 we ¢nd
mentioned the ‘The Book of the Wars of God’and it is doubtless there that
the war against Amalek is narrated, along with an account of all the places
where the Israelites encamped on their journey which the author of the
Pentateuch, at Numbers 33.2, testi¢es were also described by Moses.
Moreover, Exodus 24.4 and 7 gives evidence of another book, called
‘The Book of the Covenant’ 14 which Moses read out to the Israelites when
11 Deuteronomy 34.10.
12 Deuteronomy 34.6.
13 Spinoza’s footnote: see Annotation 10.
14 Spinoza’s footnote: sepher in Hebrew quite often means ‘letter’or ‘writing’.
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