In this Chapter, I explore the
possibility that Spinoza deduced at least some of his propositions in his
writings from orthodox Jewish premises. Here, in this Chapter, I would like to
narrow my focus to just a section in Spinoza’s TTP in order to examine how my
interpretation would work in practice when applied to his texts. I would like
to put forward the suggestion that there may be textual evidence to support my
view that perhaps his apparently radical rebellious views on scripture may in
fact be based on orthodox Jewish religious views. In particular, I shall
examine the way in which Spinoza writes about the Torah, with a focus on his
apparent use of the word images in chapter 12 of his
Tractatus-Theologico-Politicus (TTP)[i] that
appears in the Latin text and some translations. (I shall refer to the
Pentateuch as the Torah rather than the Old Testament since this is what
Spinoza would have known it as. His apparent use of the term Old Testament may
have been due to a restriction of widely understood terms available in Latin, a
language used by Christian scholars.) I question why he may have chosen to
apply the word image to the Torah and what implications he may have wanted one
to infer from this. Given the highly orthodox Jewish view about art that graven
images should never be used for religious worship[ii],
was Spinoza arguing, implicitly or otherwise, against the Torah being
inadvertently worshipped in a somewhat idolatrous way when it is perceived as
being in an image-like category?
This chapter of Spinoza’s TTP has
been directly discussed in recent Spinozian scholarship by, for example, Susan
James[iii],
who discusses Spinoza’s arguments about the Torah in chapter 12 of Spinoza’s
TTP. In her ground-breaking book, she cites Exodus 32 claiming it is
“idolatrous” when “they divert the devotion that should be reserved for God to
some undeserving object” and “The Second Commandment, it is claimed, clearly
rules out the use of images in worship and ritual"[iv].
She discusses this in the context of the Dutch Reformed Church, Protestantism
and Calvinism, without the mention of the meaning this has for Judaism.
Moreover, Susan James also thinks Spinoza “hints that these flaws constitute a
form of idolatry and amount to worshipping the Bible rather than God” but sees
this as a Calvinist style argument rather than a Jewish one[v],
although she does later acknowledge the obvious influence of Judaism on
Spinoza, when Spinoza explicitly cites Rabbi Ibn Ezra as key to his
controversial views[vi].
The passage in Susan James’s book[vii] I
would like to highlight is about the uses and misuses of the Torah because it
is an important and interesting point of Spinoza’s that she picks up on. She argues that “Spinoza suggests that we
should think of the Bible as a material object. In general, objects are not
sacred or profane in themselves, but gain these qualities through the way they
are used”[viii].
She supports this with the section in Spinoza’s TTP which discusses the misuses
of the Torah when it is “neglected”[ix].
Although the sacredness of objects is a complex issue, I think it has deep
metaphysical, religious and social implications which could benefit from
further philosophical research, especially the metaphysical aspect of qualities
of religious material objects. However, in this Chapter, I would like to
further this point she raises by looking at an additional passage which also
includes the phrase paper and ink to develop Spinoza’s point about worship and
superstition in relation to the Torah in light of Judaism. Spinoza comments
that “objectors are too anxious to be pious, and that they are in danger of
turning religion into superstition, and worshipping paper and ink in place of
God’s Word”[x].
I’d like to go deeper into the
Jewish perspective on the Torah and images, to draw out an additional layer of
significance of what Spinoza may be arguing in chapter 12 of his TTP[xi].
The only focus of worship,
according to Jewish orthodoxy, is God who is the one and only God to be
worshipped and that no graven images should be made of God, heavenly beings,
humans or animals that could lead to idolatrous worship of them[xii].
This view comes from a combination of quotes about aesthetics and worship in
the Ten Commandments and Deuteronomy IV 17-8[xiii].
Roth maintains that the graven images references in the Ten Commandments and
Deuteronomy are best interpreted in light of “the following verse: ‘Thou shalt
not bow down to them and shalt not serve them’ ― that is, that no image must be
made for the purpose of worship, either as representing or as substituting the
Divinity”[xiv].
My question is: Was Spinoza highlighting that a possible categorical conflation
could be made with the Torah? In other words, I suspect Spinoza may have
deductively reasoned something along the lines of the following implicit
argument and embodied it by using the word images. The Torah is scripture not
art, so by definition it is not an aesthetic image of any kind. However, if one
bows down to it worshipfully and perceives it to be an iconic image that
represents God and God’s word then one unwittingly imposes the properties of an
image onto the Torah. In this way, the Torah erroneously acquires the
properties of an image in that it is now seen, in a way, as a visual
representation of God, or at least, God’s word. Hence, the combination of the
Torah being perceived as having image-like properties, being somewhat
worshipped and being an object in the world that was created by humans through
the use of “paper and ink”[xv]
places the Torah in a category it doesn’t belong in and consequently adversely
affects our definition of what the Torah is and how one should engage with it.
By miscategorising the Torah one can inadvertently end up superstitiously
worshipping the Torah as an image in a pseudo-idolatrous way[xvi].
Therefore, I wish to argue that perhaps this orthodox Jewish notion of images
sheds light on the following passage in Spinoza’s TTP. I shall examine various
versions of this passage since each of them gives a different perspective on
what Spinoza wanted to argue in this passage. The translation that points the
most strongly in support of my argument is Willis’ translation of Spinoza’s
TTP, chapter 12:
“Now for my part, I rather fear
that they who speak in this way incline to set themselves up for saints, and to
turn religion into superstition, nay, that they come at length to fall down and
worship an idol composed of ink and paper for the true word of God. Of this I
feel assured, that I have said nothing unbecoming of the sacred Scriptures, in
so far as they are the word of God; that I have advanced no proposition which I have not been
prepared to support by the most cogent reasons; and I can therefore positively
affirm that I have uttered no word that is irreverent, or even has a smack of
impiety.”[xvii]
Here one sees the explicit notion
of bowing down and worshipping “an idol composed of ink and paper for the true
word of God”, or in other words, turning the Torah into an idol of sorts in
order to worship it[xviii].
One reason I would argue that this interpretation is worthy of closer research
is that it seems to me to be the closest and most literal translation of
Spinoza’s words in Latin:
“At dicent, quamvis lex divina
cordibus inscripta sit, Scripturam nihilominus Dei esse verbum, adeoque non
magis de Scriptura, quam de Dei verbo dicere licet, eandem truncatam, et
depravatam esse. Verum ego contra
vereor, ne nimis studeant esse sancti, et religionem in superstitionem convertant,
imo ne simulacra et imagines, hoc est chartam et atramentum, pro Dei verbo
adorare incipiant.” [xix]
As far as I am aware, despite the
fact that not all translations of Spinoza’s TTP contain the word images, the
original Latin text of the TTP that Spinoza wrote himself and that was
published in 1670[xx],
does contain the word “imagines” as seen above, which in this context, means
images.
Furthermore, in this section of
the TTP in Latin one sees the words “simulacra” as well as “imagines” in the
same sentence one after the other[xxi].
The word simulacra is derived from the word simulacrum meaning image and
imagines is the plural of imago meaning image or likeness. It would not make
sense, philosophically, to write image twice one after the other so he must
have been using the word “imagines” to mean likeness[xxii],
so, it is very plausible that Spinoza is discussing images and likenesses in
this sentence. The combination of both images and likenesses together with the
notion of how and what one should worship (adorare meaning to adore religiously
or worship) shows that Spinoza is stating a view that is very close to or
perhaps the same as the traditional, orthodox stance on idolatrous worship of
images. Furthermore, Spinoza uses the word “pro”[xxiii]
meaning before, or instead of, which, I suggest, gives the sense that Spinoza
is criticising worshipping images and likenesses instead of God and or God’s
word. Hence, in my view, it could be plausibly argued that the reason why
Spinoza used the word images in the surprising context of the Torah was
because, in his TTP[xxiv], he
was drawing on Orthodox Jewish views about images, idolatry and worship, as can
be illustrated by this above passage. The exact interpretation of what
constitutes a graven image has been debated for centuries but the overarching
interpretation seems to be that one should not create things that could be
worshipped either instead of or alongside the one God[xxv].
This, in part, was deemed a necessary aspect of Judaism in order to avoid
instances of idolatry such as the worshipping of Ba’al, a human created animal
statue that was worshipped instead of God[xxvi].
Hence, although the graven image notion has been relaxed periodically
throughout Jewish history, the notion still remains relevant and debated within
Judaism, especially during times when the Jewish faith seems under threat from
anti-Judaism or anti-Semitism[xxvii].
I would also like to suggest the
possibility that Spinoza[xxviii]
may additionally be reasoning that it is also important how one perceives the
Torah. This is because misperceiving the Torah can risk misplacing the Torah
into a category it doesn’t belong in. I would like to suggest that in this
passage in chapter 12 of the TTP, Spinoza was arguing that the Torah should not
be worshipped in the strong sense of the word since it is, fundamentally, a
document created by humans, a three dimensional image-type of religious object
made from “paper and ink”[xxix].
This is because, I suggest, Spinoza may agree with Orthodox Judaism that only
God should be worshipped in this manner. I think this may help to explain why
Spinoza seems not to have seen anything
irreligious or dismissive of Judaism or scripture in his TTP[xxx],
but rather may have felt that such statements were a strengthening of respect
for God and that this passage, along with his other propositions, culminate in his
argument for true religion. So, perhaps what Spinoza is trying to say, is that
one shouldn’t be too reverential of the Torah in a worshipful way because this
may confuse it with God Himself, in virtue of it being God’s word. Instead, it
is more advisable to approach the Torah empirically, especially since it is has
been written down by human beings “each as his period and disposition dictated”[xxxi].
[ii] Cecil Roth, Jewish Art: An Illustrated
History, ed. Bezalel Narkiss, New and enlarged revised edition (Jerusalem,
Israel, printed in Israel by Peli Printing Works Ltd, Givatayim: Massada Press
Ltd, 1971), 11.
[iii] James, Spinoza on Philosophy,
Religion, and Politics, The Theologico-Political Treatise.
[iv] James, 112.
[v] James, 129.
[vi] James, 164–65.
[vii] James, Spinoza on Philosophy,
Religion, and Politics, The Theologico-Political Treatise.
[viii]
James, 128.
[ix] Spinoza, TTP Trans. Elwes, XII,
168.;
James, Spinoza on Philosophy,
Religion, and Politics, The Theologico-Political Treatise, 128.
[x] Spinoza, TTP Trans. Elwes, XII,
166.
[xi] Spinoza, XII.
[xii] Roth, Jewish Art: An Illustrated
History, 11.
[xiii]
Roth, 11.
[xiv] Roth, 11.
[xv] Spinoza, TTP Trans. Elwes, XII,
166.
[xvi] Spinoza, XII, 166.
[xvii]
Benedict de Spinoza, Theologico-Political
Treatise, trans. Robert Willis, 1862,
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Theologico-Political_Treatise_1862/Chapter_12.
[xviii]
Spinoza, chap. XII.
[xix] Benedict de Spinoza, OPERA: TRACTATUS
THEOLOGICO - POLITICUS. COMPENDIUM GRAMMATICES LINGUAE HEBRAEAE., EDITI
ONIBUS PRINCIPIBUS DENUO EDIDIT, EDITIO STEREOTYPA, (google e-book), vol. III
(Leipzig, Germany: TYPIS ET SUMTIBUS BERNH. TAUCHNITZ JUN., 1846), 176, verse
5, https://books.googleusercontent.com/books/content?req=AKW5QacE8SDsXSxDv_mlktJb68z9c6Kfxnn11M9rjyKJagSi-1h3konJKQNSvm_0MIhRTdihCHrOk849LY5fQU-P-M4UDeaUiCrLFz_NUTHk5MbSk-yI839tTy2_4bCeWVrmWCGj3RvJn4Ma9vyhhail9I4XPYFuBVkvDbRassb1ugmECEDF-1qr2mH1JRdIQj4KKzQmUjQnfdEVWI7o2dHXv7IQnI6N93NGrh36IYZDwjtfamtm5MJ5Uc0oPC5oBnD8VxUYaUi88X3iwbO9Jp7XAiStdVfwBg.; see also the 1670 edition
(Same Latin wording, different capitalisation): Benedict de Spinoza, Theologico-Political
Treatise, 1670 edition (Hamburg i.e. Amstelaedami: Apud Henricum Künraht
[i.e. Jan Rieuwertsz, 1670), XII,
http://spinozaetnous.org/wiki/Tractatus_theologico-politicus/Caput_XII.
[xx] Spinoza, TTP 1670 edition, XII.
[xxi] Spinoza, Opera: TTP, III:176,
verse 5; Spinoza, TTP 1670 edition. chap. XII.
[xxii]
Spinoza, Opera: TTP, III:176,
verse 5; Spinoza, TTP 1670 edition. chap. XII.
[xxiii]
Spinoza, Opera: TTP, III:176,
verse 5; Spinoza, TTP 1670 edition, chap. XII.
[xxiv]
Spinoza, Opera: TTP.
[xxv] Roth, Jewish Art: An Illustrated
History.
[xxvi]
Roth.
[xxvii]
Roth.
[xxviii]
Spinoza, Opera: TTP.
[xxix]
Spinoza, TTP Trans. Elwes, 166.
[xxx] Spinoza, TTP 1670 edition.
[xxxi]
Spinoza, TTP Trans. Elwes, 170.
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