Spinoza, Benedictus de | Richard H. Popkin (essay date 1996)
Richard H. Popkin (essay date 1996)
SOURCE: “Spinoza and Bible Scholarship,” in The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 383-407.
[In the essay that follows, Popkin studies the Biblical scholarship of the Theological-Political Treatise, evaluating the ways in which Spinoza's religious views reflected his overriding rational secularism.]
Spinoza is usually considered one of the creators of modern Biblical scholarship and Biblical criticism because of the views about the Bible that he expressed in the Theological-Political Treatise and in some of his letters. In this chapter I shall briefly indicate a way in which Spinoza's views might have developed, then present what his views are, and compare and contrast them with those of some of his contemporaries. Finally I will try to evaluate the extent of his originality.
The usual picture of Spinoza's development is taken from what...
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