¹ Fitzmyer, Joseph A. S.J., The Interpretation of Scripture: In Defense of the Historical‐Critical Method (New York: Paulist Press, 2008), pp. 69 and 67Google Scholar.

² Ratzinger, Joseph Cardinal, The Nature and Mission of Theology: Approaches to Understanding Its Role in the Light of Present Controversy (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2004), p. 65Google Scholar.

³ Idem, ‘Schriftauslegung im Widerstreit: Zur Frage nach Grundlagen und Weg der Exegese heute’, in idem, ed., Schriftauslegung im Widerstreit (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1989), pp. 15‐44.

⁴ Goshen‐Gottstein, M.H., ‘The Textual Criticism of the Old Testament: Rise, Decline, Rebirth’, Journal of Biblical Literature 102 (1983), p. 376CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For how Spinoza's method influenced future biblical critical hermeneutics, see Morrow, Jeffrey L., Three Skeptics and the Bible: La Peyrère, Hobbes, Spinoza and the Reception of Modern Biblical Criticism (Eugene: Pickwick, 2016), ch. 4Google Scholar.

⁵ For more thorough treatments of situating Spinoza in this broader history of the development of the historical critical method, see Morrow, Three Skeptics and the Bible, ch. 4; Hahn, Scott W. and Wiker, Benjamin, Politicizing the Bible: The Roots of Historical Criticism and the Secularization of Scripture 1300‐1700 (New York: Herder & Herder, 2013), pp. 339‐93Google Scholar; Barthélemy, Dominique, Studies in the Text of the Old Testament: An Introduction to the Hebrew Old Testament Text Project (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2012), pp. 2‐81Google Scholar; and Gibert, Pierre, L'invention critique de la Bible: XV^e‐XVIII^e siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 2010), pp. 148‐75Google Scholar.

⁶ Unless otherwise noted, all English translations are my own. All citations of Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico‐politicus will be taken from Spinoza, Œuvres III: Tractatus Theologico‐Politicus/Traité théologico‐politique, 2^nd ed., ed. Moreau, Pierre‐François, text established by Akkerman, Fokke, trans. and notes by Lagrée, Jacqueline and Moreau, Pierre‐François (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2012)Google Scholar. Citations will be to the page number and line of the Latin text.

⁷ Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico‐politicus, p. 60.18‐19.

⁸ Gillespie, Michael Allen, The Theological Origins of Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), pp. 129‐30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹ On Koerbagh's punishment, see van Bunge, Wiep, introduction to Wielema, Michiel, ed., Adriaan Koerbagh: A Light Shining in Dark Places: To Illuminate the Main Questions of Theology and Religion (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 33‐34Google Scholar; and Israel, Jonathan I., Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650‐1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 195CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ For St. Thomas Aquinas, in contrast to many modern biblical critics, the sensus literalis is a theological reading that pays careful attention to what is signified by the very scriptural words themselves. See ibid., Summa theologiae, I, q. 1, a. 10; idem, Quaestiones disputatae de potentia, 4, 1; idem, In psalmos Davidis expositio, prooemium; Boyle, John F., ‘Authorial Intention and the Divisio textus’, in Dauphinais, Michael and Levering, Matthew, eds., Reading John with St. Thomas Aquinas: Theological Exegesis and Speculative Theology (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005), pp. 3‐8Google Scholar; and Torrell, Jean‐Pierre O.P., Initiation à saint Thomas d'Aquin: Sa personne et son oeuvre, 2^nd ed. (Fribourg: Editions Universitaires Fribourg, 2002), pp. 41‐45 and 84‐85Google Scholar.

¹¹ See Morrow, Three Skeptics and the Bible, ch. 5; Feil, Ernst, Religio (4 vols; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986, 1997, 2001, and 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pickstock, Catherine, After Writing: On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), pp. 135‐40Google Scholar; and Asad, Talal, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), pp. 203‐208CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹² Pickstock, , After Writing, p. 94Google Scholar. The Lewis reference is to Lewis, C.S., The Screwtape Letters (New York: HarperCollins, 1942), p. 31Google Scholar.

¹³ Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico‐politicus, pp. 278.32‐33, 280.1‐6, and 30‐31. Spinoza employs a number of similar sola Scriptura (Scripture alone) phrases in this passage: ‘from Scripture itself’ (ex ipsa Scriptura) [p. 280.9]; ‘from the same Scripture only’ (ab ipsa Scriptura sola) [p. 280.25]; ‘only from Scripture itself’ (ex sola ipsa Scriptura) [p. 280.30‐31]; and ‘from Scripture alone’ (ex sola Scriptura) [p. 282.9].

¹⁴ Ibid., p. 280.1‐2 and 4‐6.

¹⁵ Ibid., p. 282.23‐25.

¹⁶ Ibid., p. 282.25‐27. Here I am borrowing from the English translation in de Spinoza, Benedict, Theological‐Political Treatise (trans. Silverthorne, Michael and Israel, Jonathan; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 100Google Scholar, which I have greatly modified based on the Latin text.

¹⁷ Ibid., p. 282.33‐35.

¹⁸ Ibid., pp. 282.35 and 284.1‐2.

¹⁹ Ibid., p. 286.20‐21.

²⁰ Ibid., p. 286.21‐24.

²¹ Ibid., p. 286.24‐29.

²² Ibid., p. 286.29‐30.

²³ Martens, Peter W., Origen and Scripture: The Contours of the Exegetical Life (Oxford: Oxford University, 2012), especially pp. 63‐67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁴ Even in the area of textual criticism, we find medieval Coptic scribes, and others, engaging in very sophisticated comparison of textual variants. See, e.g., Vollandt, Ronny, ‘Some Historiographical Remarks on Medieval and Early‐Modern Scholarship of Biblical Versions in Arabic: A Status Quo’, Intellectual History of the Islamicate World 1 (2013), pp. 26‐27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁵ Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico‐politicus, p. 296.33‐34.

²⁶ Dungan, David Laird, A History of the Synoptic Problem: The Canon, the Text, the Composition, and the Interpretation of the Gospels (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), p. 172Google Scholar.

²⁷ E.g., Nelson, Eric, The Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Political Thought (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gillespie, , Theological OriginsGoogle Scholar; and Taylor, Charles, A Secular Age (Cambridge: Harvard University, 2007)Google Scholar.

²⁸ See Jones, Andrew W., ‘A Most Christian Kingdom: Saint Louis IX, Pope Clement IV, and the Construction of France in the Thirteenth Century’, (Ph.D. diss., Saint Louis University, 2012)Google Scholar.

²⁹ Djedi, Youcef, ‘Spinoza et l'islam: un état des lieux’, Philosophiques 37 (2010), pp. 275‐98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fraenkel, Carlos, ‘Could Spinoza Have Presented the Ethics as the True Content of the Bible’, Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy 4 (2008), pp. 1‐50Google Scholar; and Arnaldez, Roger, ‘Spinoza et la pensée arabe’, Revue de Synthèse 99 (1978), pp. 151‐74Google Scholar.

³⁰ Fraenkel, Carlos, ‘Reconsidering the Case of Elijah Delmedigo's Averroism and its Impact on Spinoza’, in Akasoy, Anna and Guiglioni, Guido, eds., Renaissance Averroism and its Aftermath: Arabic Philosophy in Early Modern Europe (Dordrecht: Springer, 2012), pp. 213‐36Google Scholar; and idem, ‘Spinoza on Philosophy and Religion: The Averroistic Sources’, in Fraenkel, Carlos, Perinetti, Dario and Smith, Justin, eds., The Rationalists: Between Tradition and Innovation (Dordrecht: Springer, 2010), pp. 58‐81Google Scholar.

³¹ See the comments in, e.g., Burrell, David B. C.S.C., ‘Thomas Aquinas and Islam’, Modern Theology 20 (2004), pp. 71‐89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³² See, e.g., comments in Hahn and Wiker, Politicizing the Bible, pp. 360‐62; and Fraenkel, ‘Could Spinoza’, p. 43.

³³ Lazarus‐Yafeh, Hava, Intertwined Worlds: Medieval Islam and Bible Criticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 45 and 74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Freedman, R. David, ‘The Father of Modern Biblical Scholarship’, Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society 19 (1989), pp. 31‐38Google Scholar.

³⁴ Gillespie, Theological Origins of Modernity, p. 299 n. 3.

³⁵ Hammill, Graham, The Mosaic Constitution: Political Theology and Imagination from Machiavelli to Milton (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), p. 22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁶ See Gilson, Étienne, Index scolastico‐cartésien (New York: Burt Franklin, 1912)Google Scholar; and Feudenthal, J., ‘Spinoza und die Scholastik’, in Philosophische Aufsätze. Eduard Zeller zu seinem fünfzigjährigen Doctor‐Jubiläum gewidmet (Leipzig: Fues's Verlag, 1887), pp. 84‐138Google Scholar.

³⁷ On Bacon's influence on Spinoza, see Charry, Juan Francisco Manrique, ‘La herencia de Bacon en la doctrina spinocista del lenguaje’, Universitas Philosophica 54 (2010), pp. 121‐30Google Scholar; Preus, J. Samuel, Spinoza and the Irrelevance of Biblical Authority (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 38, 159, 161‐68, 181, and 195CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Zac, Sylvain, Spinoza et l'interprétation de l’Écriture (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1965), pp. 29‐32Google Scholar.

³⁸ Dungan, History of the Synoptic Problem, p. 149.

³⁹ Levering, Matthew, Participatory Biblical Exegesis: A Theology of Biblical Interpretation (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008), p. 115CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁰ On Descartes's influence on Spinoza see, e.g., James, Susan, Spinoza on Philosophy, Religion, and Politics: The Theologico‐Political Treatise (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 9‐11 and 144‐47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and van Bunge, Wiep, From Stevin to Spinoza: An Essay on Philosophy in the Seventeenth‐Century Dutch Republic (Leiden: Brill, 2001), pp. 34‐121CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴¹ See Morrow, Three Skeptics and the Bible, ch. 2; Pietsch, Andreas Nikolaus, Isaac La Peyrère: Bibelkritik, Philosemitismus und Patronage in der Gelehrtenrepublik des 17. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2012), pp. 89‐105CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Popkin, Richard H., Isaac La Peyrère (1596‐1676): His Life, Work and Influence (Leiden: Brill, 1987), pp. 42‐59 and 80‐93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴² Freudenthal, J., ed., Die Lebensgeschichte Spinoza's: In Quellenschriften, Urkunden und nichtamtlichen Nachrichten (Leipzig: Veit, 1899), pp. 160‐64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴³ Nadler, Steven, A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), pp. 30‐31, 34, 92, 94‐96, 119, 188, 190, and 193Google Scholar; Curley, Edwin, ‘“I Durst Not Write So Boldly” or How to Read Hobbes’ Theologico‐Political Treatise’, in Bostrenghi, Daniela, ed., Hobbes e Spinoza: Scienza e politica (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1992), pp. 497‐593Google Scholar; and Sacksteder, William, ‘How Much of Hobbes Might Spinoza Have Read?’ Southwestern Journal of Philosophy 11 (1980), pp. 25‐39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁴ Walther, Manfred, ‘Biblische Hermeneutik und historische Erklärung: Lodewijk Meyer und Benedikt de Spinoza’, Studia Spinozana 11 (1995), pp. 227‐300Google Scholar; Preus, J. Samuel, ‘A Hidden Opponent in Spinoza's Tractatus’, Harvard Theological Review 88 (1995), pp. 361‐38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Lagrée, Jacqueline, ‘Sens et vérité: philosophie et théologie chez L. Meyer et Spinoza’, Studia Spinozana 4 (1988), pp. 75‐92Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ Wielema, Michiel, ‘Adriaan Koerbagh: Biblical Criticism and Enlightenment’, in van Bunge, Wiep, ed., The Early Enlightenment in the Dutch Republic, 1650‐1750: Selected Papers of a Conference held at the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel 22‐23 March 2001 (Leiden: Brill, 2003), pp. 61‐80Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ Popkin, Richard H., ‘Spinoza and Samuel Fisher’, Philosophia 15 (1985), pp. 219‐36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘Spinoza's Relations with the Quakers in Amsterdam’, Quaker History 73 (1984), pp. 14‐28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and idem, ‘Spinoza, the Quakers and the Millenarians, 1656‐1658’, Manuscrito 6 (1982), pp. 113‐33Google Scholar.

⁴⁷ See Yovel, Yirmiyahu, Spinoza and Other Heretics II: The Adventures of Immanence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), pp. 3 and 11Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ Legaspi, Michael C., The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), e.g., p. viiiCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁹ Yovel, Spinoza and Other Heretics II, p. 3.

⁵⁰ MacIntyre, Alasdair, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), p. 6Google Scholar.

⁵¹ Cavanaugh, William T., The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and idem, ‘“A Fire Strong Enough to Consume the House”: The Wars of Religion and the Rise of the State’, Modern Theology 11 (1995), pp. 397‐420CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵² Idem, ‘Fire Strong Enough’, p. 398.

⁵³ Idem, Myth of Religious Violence, pp. 124‐25 and 129.

⁵⁴ MacIntyre, Alasdair, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition: Being Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of Edinburgh in 1988 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), p. 7Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions, p. 16.

⁵⁶ The allusion to ‘nailing jelly to the wall’, is taken from Novick, Peter, That Noble Dream: The ‘Objectivity Question’ and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁷ Collins, John J., The Bible after Babel: Historical Criticism in a Postmodern Age (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), p. 10Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ Levenson, Jon D., The Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and Historical Criticism: Jews and Christians in Biblical Studies (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993), p. 118Google Scholar.

⁵⁹ MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions, p. 171

⁶⁰ See ibid., pp. 23 and 65; and Jonathan Israel, ‘The Early Dutch and German Reaction to the Tractatus Theologico‐Politicus: Foreshadowing the Enlightenment's More General Spinoza Reception?’ in Yitzhak Y. Melamed and Michael A. Rosenthal, eds., Spinoza's Theological‐Political Treatise: A Critical Guide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 72‐73.

⁶¹ Hahn and Wiker, Politicizing the Bible, p. 377.