ritual, the theology itself is a simpler monotheism than Christianity. Some
claimed that Judaism was the universal religion arrived at by reason.
Amsterdam Jewish circles divided among secularizing religion, synthesis
with Christianity, and defense of Jewish orthodoxy.^8 In 1643 a Portuguese
refugee, Isaac La Peyrère (la Peireira), launched a sensational thesis: the Mes-
sianic age was soon to begin, since it was heralded by the conversion of the
Jews. La Peyrère was an experienced side-switcher, a convert to Calvinism,
living at the time in Paris under Condé’s patronage and in contact with
the Libertins Érudits; when he traveled to Amsterdam, the safest haven in
which to publish his works, they were picked up by the Jews. In 1650 Rabbi
Menasseh ben Israel, an Amsterdam printer from a Portuguese refugee family,
predicted the imminent coming of the Messiah when the Jews were spread over
the world. This must have seemed borne out by contemporary events, in this
time of forced conversions and a new diaspora; it blended, too, with scientific
speculation over new geographical discoveries, including the idea that the tribes
found in the Americas were the lost tribes of Israel. The fervor of contemporary
religious politics in the Protestant camp contributed to the atmosphere in which
Jewish millennialism appeared. In 1655 Cromwell, who believed that the
Commonwealth was re-creating ancient Jewish theocracy, invited Menasseh to
England.
Meanwhile La Peyrère announced a more scandalous thesis: in 1655 he
proposed that non-biblical peoples had existed before Adam, and the Bible is
the historical record of only one of the world’s people, the Jews. This pre-
Adamite thesis was published in Amsterdam, where it was debated in an
interdenominational circle around Menasseh. Boreil, in touch with Cromwell
and with the Invisible College of scientists forming in England, hosted the
group and followed the millennial line that the conversion of the Jews was
penultimate to the coming of the Messiah. The young Spinoza attended the
Menasseh circle and was expelled from the Amsterdam synagogue at the height
of these controversies in 1656 along with Ribera, who expounded the pre-
Adamite thesis of La Peyrère.
Spinoza took a third line between Jewish orthodoxy and millennial hopes,
the stance of toleration and transcending partisan furor. Spinoza’s distinctive
brand of cosmopolitanism came from his additional network connection, the
Cartesian scientists. He expounded Descartes’s physics in geometric argument
in his first publication (1663), hoping to arrive at a self-evident demonstration
of rational philosophy as a basis for a universally acceptable theology. But
Descartes had brought no universal agreement, and Spinoza found the flaw in
the inconsistency of having two substances.^9 One attraction of monism is that
proof of a single substance simultaneously unifies theology with mathematical
science. This is a bolder path than Descartes followed; he was willing to leave
590 • (^) Intellectual Communities: Western Paths