ating, a rumor gained currency that I had in the press a book
concerning God, wherein I endeavored to show there is no
God” (Letter 68, September 1675). He therefore decided to
put off the publication.
Spinoza’s last major work, the Tractatus Politicus, writ-
ten in 1676–1677, abandoned the theological idiom em-
ployed in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus and offered in-
stead a straightforward analysis of aristocracy, monarchy, and
democracy in an attempt to demonstrate how a stable gov-
ernment could be ensured. This work was unfortunately in-
terrupted by Spinoza’s death on February 21, 1677. Another
late work that remained incomplete was his Latin Compendi-
um of Hebrew Grammar, which he “undertook at the request
of certain of his friends who were diligently studying the Sa-
cred Tongue” (Bloom, 1962, p. 11). Spinoza was buried in
the New Church on the Spuy, and his Opera posthuma, ed-
ited by Jelles, Meyer, and Georg Hermann Schuller, ap-
peared in November 1677 with only the initials B. D. S.
BIBLICAL CRITIQUE. Spinoza’s excommunication left a psy-
chological scar that explains, partly at least, much of his sub-
sequent bitterness toward his own people and their tradi-
tions. Although his pioneering biblical critique is frequently
illuminating (for example, his view that Moses did not write
the Pentateuch was already openly expressed by Isaac La
Peyrère, whose work Prae-Adamitae Spinoza possessed),
much of his writing in the Tractatus is marred by a onesided-
ness that distorts his judgment. Although it is undoubtedly
true that Spinoza’s intended audience was a Christian one,
and that this dictated his partiality toward the figure of
Christ and the Apostles, the unnecessary slurs against the
Pharisees and the Rabbis and the unmistakable hostility that
sometimes surfaces in a number of his formulations point to
the psychological effects, conscious or unconscious, of his ex-
pulsion from the Jewish community. Spinoza characterizes
his new method of investigating scripture as an empirical ap-
proach that accepts the biblical text as a natural datum. Since
prophecy claims to surpass human understanding, Spinoza
must somehow take it at its word. For the sake of the masses,
who cannot be reached by reason alone, Spinoza is willing
to grant that prophecy is possible. There may be, he says,
laws of imagination that are unknown to humans, and the
prophets, who received their revelations from God by means
of the imagination, could thus perceive much that is beyond
the boundary of the intellect. Although Moses is the chief
of the prophets, his eminence consisted only in his receiving
his prophecies through a real voice rather than an imaginary
one. In other respects, however, Moses’ imagination was not
especially distinguished, for he was not sufficiently aware of
God’s omniscience, and he perceived the Decalogue not as
a record of eternal truths but as the ordinances of a legislator.
Spinoza set up the figure of Christ in contrast to Moses. If
Moses spoke with God face-to-face, Christ communed with
him mind-to-mind (a probable allusion to the Johanine con-
ception of Christ as the Logos, as noted by Leavitt in Chris-
tian Philosophy of Spinoza [1991]). No one except Christ re-
ceived the revelations of God without the aid of the
imagination, meaning Christ possessed a mind far superior
to those of his fellow men. Moreover, because Christ was
sent to teach not only the Jews but the whole human race,
it was not enough that his mind be attuned only to the Jews;
it was attuned to ideas universal and true. If he ever pro-
claimed any revelations as laws, he did so because of the igno-
rance of the people. To those who were allowed to under-
stand the mysteries of heaven, he taught his doctrines as
eternal truths. To Spinoza, the biblical doctrine of the
chosenness of the Hebrews implies on their part a childish
or malicious joy in their exclusive possession of the revelation
of the Bible. The doctrine is to be explained by the fact that
Moses was constrained to appeal to the childish understand-
ing of the people. In truth, he claims, the Hebrew nation was
not chosen by God for its wisdom—it was not distinguished
by intellect or virtue—but for its social organization. Spinoza
explains the extraordinary fact of Jewish survival by the uni-
versal hatred that Jews drew upon themselves. From Jeremiah
9:23, Spinoza deduces that the Jews were no longer bound
to practice their ceremonial law after the destruction of their
state. The Pharisees continued these practices more to op-
pose the Christians than to please God. (Spinoza’s view of
the Pharisees is consistently derogatory. He attributes to
them economic motives in their quarrel with the Sadducees
and goes so far as to say that Pontius Pilate had made conces-
sion to the passion of the Pharisees in consenting to the cru-
cifixion of Christ, whom he knew to be innocent. Maimoni-
des is pejoratively termed a Pharisee, and Spinoza dismissed
his interpretation of scripture as harmful, useless, and ab-
surd.) Moreover, on the basis of Ezekiel 20:25, Spinoza finds
the explanation of the frequent falling away of the Hebrews
from the Law, which finally led to the destruction of their
state, in the fact that God was so angry with them that he
gave them laws whose object was not their safety but his ven-
geance. To motivate the common individual to practice jus-
tice and charity, certain doctrines concerning God and hu-
mans, says Spinoza, are indispensable. These, too, are a
product of the prophetic imagination, but they will necessar-
ily be understood philosophically by those who can do so.
This universal scriptural religion is distinguished both from
philosophical religion, which is a product of reason and is
independent of any historical narrative, and from the vulgar
religion of the masses, which is a product of the superstitious
imagination and is practiced through fear alone; it consists
of seven dogmas. The first four concern God and his attri-
butes of existence, unity, omnipresence, and power and will.
The other three deal with people’s religious acts, and seem
to derive from a Christian context: human beings’ worship
of God, their salvation, and their repentance. Each of the
seven dogmas can be understood either imaginatively, in
which case they would all be false, though useful, or philo-
sophically, in which case they would all be true. Presumably,
the average individual’s score would be a mixed one.
THOUGHT. Spinoza begins and ends with God. He is con-
vinced that upon reflective analysis individuals become im-
mediately aware that they have an idea of substance, or thatSPINOZA, BARUCH 8683