BENEDICT DE SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise

Remaining Old Testament books
books ^ Daniel, Ezra, Esther and Nehemiah ^ we assert were written by
one and the same author, though I cannot even guess who he was.
Whoever he was, we can discover how he obtained his knowledge of
these histories and the source from which he probably transcribed the
greater part of them. For we know that the governors or rulers of the
Jews in the Second Temple period, had, like the kings of the First Temple
period, scribes or chroniclers who wrote down their annals or histories
in chronological order. The Chronicles or Annals of the Kings are
cited frequently in the text of 1 and 2 Kings. The Annals and Chronicles
of the rulers and priests of the Second Temple are cited ¢rst at Nehemiah
12.23 and later at 1 Maccabees 16.24. This, surely, is the book (see
146
Esther 9.31) we referred to just now where Esther’s edict and those of
Mordecai were set out and which, we agreed with Ibn Ezra, had perished.
Thus, from these Annals or Chronicles the whole content of these books
appears to have been extracted or copied; for their author cites no other
source and we know of no other recognized authority.
[11] It is certain, however, that these books were not written either by
Ezra or Nehemiah since Nehemiah 12.10^11 gives a genealogy of the
High Priests from Jeshua to Jaddua, the sixth high priest, who met
Alexander the Great at the time the Persian empire was on the point of
being conquered (see Josephus Antiquities 11.8), or, as Philo Judaeus calls
him in his Book of Times, 9 the sixth and last Priest under the Persians.
Indeed, the fact is plainly indicated again in this same chapter of Nehemiah,
verse 22: ‘the Levites’, says the chronicler,‘in the time of Eliashab,
Joiada, Johanan and Jaddua, were recorded’ (i.e., in the ‘Chronicles’)
above 10 the reign of Darius the Persian’. No one supposes, I imagine, that
Ezra 11 or Nehemiah were so long-lived as to outlive the fourteen kings of
Persia. For it was the ¢rst Persian king, Cyrus, 12 who gave the Jews permission
to rebuild the Temple, and it was more than 230 years from his
time to that of King Darius, 13 fourteenth and last king of the Persians.
I have no doubt, therefore, that these books were composed long after
Judas Maccabeus restored worship in theTemple, and the reason why they
9 Breviarium de temporibus:seen.2.
10 Spinoza’s footnote: nb Unless ‘supra’ means ‘beyond’, this is an error of the copyist, who wrote
‘above’ instead of ‘until’.
11 Spinoza’s footnote: see Annotation 24.
12 Cyrus, reigned 559^529 bc.
13 DariusIII,reignedc. 380^330 bc.
149