History Workshop, Work-In-Progress Seminar: Evelyn Rose Maude, "How Spinoza Saved the Word of God"

Abstract: Almost all previous scholarship holds that Spinoza's practice of Biblical criticism contradicts his stated method of Biblical criticism. Against this consensus, I argue that Spinoza's method does not contradict his practice. I defend a novel interpretation of Spinoza's method and of why it does not contradict his practice, which I call the Two Texts Explanation. I argue that Spinoza distinguishes two texts—the Bible and the Word of God—and the apparent contradictions are resolved because the contradictory predicates are ascribed to different texts. I suggest that Spinoza is entitled to this distinction by analogy with the method of textual philology, which relies on a distinction between archetype (here the original text of the Bible) and autograph (here the original message from God).