I have a different point of view on the topic of Moses authoring the Pentateuch. Even today the authorship of the Pentateuch is controversial among Christians and atheists. Spinoza could have run into the Papacy as the absolute authority on scripture. I have no problem like that. Today the problem is the popular wise guy atheism of the broadcast media if any.
16th and 17th century Holland was a challenging time for religion. The reformation and Catholic traditions met uneasily. Protestant sects had theological differences too. Spinoza was really out on a limb in being a self-standing, free-thinking theologian.
Spinoza was cast out of his Jewish synagogue. People have written that his theological ideas run toward pan-theism, yet he appears to have been Christian too if one can rely on his letters. In either case each way of thinking would be inconsistent with membership in a synagogue I suppose, unless they all become reformed Christians.
I will provide a quote from wikipedia- “I do not think it necessary for salvation to know Christ according to the flesh : but with regard to the Eternal Son of God, that is the Eternal Wisdom of God, which has manifested itself in all things and especially in the human mind, and above all in Christ Jesus, the case is far otherwise. For without this no one can come to a state of blessedness, inasmuch as it alone teaches, what is true or false, good or evil. And, inasmuch as this wisdom was made especially manifest through Jesus Christ, as I have said, his disciples preached it, in so far as it was revealed to them through him, and thus showed that they could rejoice in that spirit of Christ more than the rest of mankind. The doctrines added by certain churches, such as that God took upon himself human nature, I have expressly said that I do not understand; in fact, to speak the truth, they seem to me no less absurd than would a statement, that a circle had taken upon itself the nature of a square. This I think will be sufficient explanation of my opinions concerning the three points mentioned. Whether it will be satisfactory to Christians you will know better than I.
- Letter 21 (73) to Henry Oldenburg, November (1675)”
Let me explain about Moses. I believe he invented the aleph beth as a linguistic syncretism made possible by an Egyptian hieroglyphic literate Prince escaping to Israel with his Hebrew Semitic people. Moses received the stories of Israeli history from the captives in Cairo as well as from other sources. He was a consolidator and led his people to the promised land. Moses foretold that one day a Jewish leader would devote himself to writing down everything Moses did and said. I believe it probable that fellow was King David.
King David devoted himself to the word of God provided in various documents as a legacy from Moses centuries before. David's son Solomon commissioned that they be formally consolidated and assembled as the Pentateuch. Some scholars believe that a J writer was the first to work on the project, and there were others that followed. The topic has quite a lot to it and few knew about that until the 20th century. After that it became more common knowledge for theologians.
Spinoza ran into the problem of secular establishments that would repress knowledge. Unions do that too in areas besides scholarship. Corporatists and communes also perp repression when they regard people as products for marketing or alternatively nails that should not stick up and require hammering down. They repress this or that individual inconvenient for their public social narrative. Kierkegaard's method of Socratic irony questioned social zeitgeist and social organization. Skeptics are not the only philosophers to discover faulty thought. Socrates worked on that in his dialogues too of course.
I am sure Thomas Hobbes was a well-intentioned scholar. For me though his Leviathan is far too much. He could have equally been describing the Devil's absolute power in hell. Saddam Hussein was the perfect Hobbsean absolute ruler. Perhaps the west should feel some recalcitrance about ending Hobbes' Leviathan fulfillment figure. For myself I think it's the aftermath that was tragic rather than the demise of Saddam Hussein.
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