BENEDICT DE SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise

Theological-Political Treatise
They are set out in an unsystematic manner with no regard to chronological
succession, and the same story is duplicated in several versions.
Chapter 21, for example, explains the reason for the arrest of Jeremiah,
namely, that he predicted the destruction of the city to [King] Zedekiah
whilst the latter was consulting him. This narrative is then interrupted
and chapter 22 moves on to the story of his denunciation of Jehoiachin
143 (who reigned before Zedekiah), and his predicting his captivity. Chapter
25 then describes what had been revealed to the prophet earlier, in the
fourth year of Jehoiakim’s reign. The text then gives the prophecies from
the ¢rst year of this king’s reign, and proceeds in the same manner,
accumulating prophecies with no regard to temporal order, until ¢nally
in chapter 38 he returns to the story which began to be narrated in
chapter 21 (as if these 15 chapters were in parenthesis). For the connecting
particle with which chapter 38 begins refers back to verses 8, 9,
and 10 of chapter 21. Then, the text recounts Jeremiah’s ¢nal arrest differently,
providing a very di¡erent reason for his prolonged detention in
the court of the guard than was given in chapter 37. Hence, it is clearly
evident that these things have all been gathered from di¡erent chroniclers
and cannot be accounted for in any other way.
The remaining prophecies in the closing chapters, where Jeremiah is
speaking in the ¢rst person, appear to have been copied from the book
Baruch wrote at Jeremiah’s dictation. For that volume (as is clear from
36.2) contained only what was revealed to Jeremiah from the time of
Josiah to the fourth year of Jehoiakim, which is where our book begins.
Everything from chapter 45,verse2 to chapter 51,verse59 likewise seems
to have been copied from the same volume.
[6] The opening verses of the Book of Ezekiel plainly indicate that this
too is but a fragment. The conjunction with which the book begins
obviously refers to other things already said, connecting them with what
is to come. Not just the conjunction, moreover, but the whole structure
of the work presuppose other writings. For the thirtieth year with which
the book begins indicates that the prophet is continuing rather than
beginning his narrative. The writer also remarks in parenthesis in verse
3,‘there had often been a word of God to Ezekiel the priest, the son of
Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans’ etc., as if he were saying that the
words of Ezekiel which he had recorded down to this point referred to
other things which had been revealed to him before this thirtieth year.
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