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 appears in “the oldest biography,” attributed to one Jean-Maximillien Lucas; in the Life of Spinoza...