BENEDICT DE SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise

Theological-Political Treatise
corrupt sections to pervert sound passages. However, I would not wish to
label them blasphemous, since they have no intention to speak evil, and to
err is indeed human.
[14] But I return to my theme. Besides the errors which must be
conceded in both Ezra and Nehemiah in the calculations of the ‘epistle of
the genealogy’, there are several other mistakes which should be noted.
There are errors in the actual names of the families, more in the
genealogies and histories, and, I am afraid, some even in the prophecies
themselves. Assuredly, the prophecy of Jeremiah in chapter 22 about
Jeconiah 14 , and especially the wording of the last verse of that chapter, do
not seem to agree at all with Jeconiah’s history: see the end of the second
Book of Kings, 15 and Jeremiah 16 and 1 Chronicles 3.17^19. I cannot see
149 either how he could say ‘you will die in peace’ etc. about Zedekiah, whose
eyes were torn out as soon as he had seen his sons killed (see Jeremiah
34.5). Were prophecies to be interpreted after the event, their names
would need to be switched, and Jeconiah substituted for Zedekiah and
vice versa. But this is too paradoxical and I prefer to leave the problem as
something insoluble, especially since, if there is error here, it should be
attributed to the editor and not to defects in the original texts.
[15] As for the other de¢ciencies I spoke of, I do not plan to detail them
all here, since I could not do so without making this extremely tedious for
the reader, especially as they have already been pointed out by others. For
Rabbi Shlomo 17 was compelled by the very evident contradictions he
observed in the genealogies I have discussed, to utter these candid words
(in his commentary on 1 Chronicles 8): ‘The fact that Ezra’ (who he thinks
wrote the books of Chronicles) ‘calls the sons of Benjamin by other
names, and gives him a di¡erent genealogy from the one we have in the
book of Genesis, and ¢nally lists most of the Levites’cities di¡erently from
Joshua, derives from the fact that he found his sources disagreeing’.
Slightly further on, he adds: ‘the fact that the genealogy of Gibeon and
others is given twice, but di¡erently each time’, (is) ‘because Ezra found
14 Also [apparently] known as Coniah and Jehoiachin.
15 2 Kings 25.27.
16 Jeremiah 52.31.
17 I.e. Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac of Troyes (1040^1105) usually known by his acronym Rashi; he has
subsequently remained the most widely cited and authoritative rabbinic commentator on virtually
the whole Hebrew Bible, and especially the Pentateuch.
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