BENEDICT DE SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise

Theological-Political Treatise
he married at that time; the eldest of them grew up and took Tamar to
wife; when he died, the second brother married her; he too died; and
long after these events, Judah himself unwittingly had intercourse with
his own daughter-in-law, Tamar, who bore him twin sons, one of whom
became a parent ^ and all within the aforesaid period of twenty-two
years! Since all these things cannot be ascribed to the period to which
Genesis refers, it must necessarily be related to another time which came
just before this in another book. It follows that Ezra simply transcribed
this story too and inserted it among the others, without examining it.
[4] But we must also concede that not only this chapter but the whole
131 history of Joseph and Jacob has been taken and transcribed from di¡erent
histories, so obviously riddled is it with inconsistencies. Genesis 47
narrates that when Jacob was ¢rst introduced to Pharaoh by Joseph, he
was 130 years old. If we subtract the twenty-two years he spent in
mourning because Joseph was away and, in addition, the seventeen years
which was the age of Joseph when he was sold, and ¢nally the seven years
which he served for the sake of Rachel, it will be found that he had
reached the advanced age of eighty-four when he married Leah. On the
other hand Dinah was scarcely seven years old 6 when she was raped by
Shechem,andSimeon andLeviwere scarcelytwelve and eleven respectively
when they sacked his whole city and put all its citizens to the sword. 7
[5] I need not go through every example in the Pentateuch.We have only
to notice that everything in these ¢ve books, commandments and histories
alike, is narrated in a confused manner, without order and without respect
for chronology, and that stories are repeated, sometimes in di¡erent versions.We
will then easily see that they were all collected and stored away, so
that they would be available to be examined at a later date and reduced to
order.
[6] But it is not only the material in the Five Books; the histories in the
other seven books, which go down as far as the destruction of the city, 8
were collected in the same manner.Who does not see that at Judges 2.6 a
new historian begins (the one who had also written the deeds of Joshua),
6 Spinoza’s footnote: see Annotation 14.
8 Destruction of Jerusalem in 587 bc.
7 Genesis 34.
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