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3 - Scripture Atomized

Sovereignty, Secularization, and the Metaphysics of the Bible in Hobbes’s Leviathan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 March 2021

Travis DeCook
Affiliation:
Carleton University, Ottawa
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Summary

This chapter argues that Thomas Hobbes’s imagining of the original events of biblical authorship and transmission in Leviathan play a pivotal role in his radical arguments about sovereignty and its relationship to religion. It contends that Hobbes’s emphasis on the Bible as the product of multiple layers of history is not in itself secularizing. Instead, this chapter focuses on the materialist metaphysical foundations of Hobbes’s account of the Bible’s production, transmission, and reception. The radical ways Hobbes represents the Bible’s origins and the events of its textual history buttress his argument for the sovereign’s total authority over all religious matters pertaining to the public. This is because they have the effect of eradicating any means, other than the sovereign’s wholly secular decision, by which a communal biblical meaning and authority might be actualized, including any means by which “the Bible” can be collectively recognized as such. Hobbes’s subjection of Scripture to the sovereign is thus predicated on metaphysical assumptions inimical to human participation in revelation, assumptions undergirding the untraditional scenes of biblical origin he imagines.

Type
Chapter
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The Origins of the Bible and Early Modern Political Thought
Revelation and the Boundaries of Scripture
, pp. 89 - 115
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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  • Scripture Atomized
  • Travis DeCook, Carleton University, Ottawa
  • Book: The Origins of the Bible and Early Modern Political Thought
  • Online publication: 02 March 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108913980.004
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  • Scripture Atomized
  • Travis DeCook, Carleton University, Ottawa
  • Book: The Origins of the Bible and Early Modern Political Thought
  • Online publication: 02 March 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108913980.004
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Scripture Atomized
  • Travis DeCook, Carleton University, Ottawa
  • Book: The Origins of the Bible and Early Modern Political Thought
  • Online publication: 02 March 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108913980.004
Available formats
×