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Horst Steinke
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marily alluded to philosophical truth rather than ordinary
factuality.
While Spinoza’s distinction between «meaning» and «truth»
was not necessarily non-ideological
446
, it renders a noteworthy
epistemological service of a general nature: it makes transparent
what could, intentionally or unintentionally, be neglected in any
interpretative undertaking, when it is ostensibly concerned only
with the «meaning» of subject material. Spinoza was prepared to
be open about his own philosophical predilections, and, in fact,
candidly, to bear witness to his choice, as a general principle, of
his own philosophical system over Scripture as a whole. In that
sense, he called attention to the need to give consideration, first
and foremost, to such underlying philosophical determinations,
and only secondarily, to the actual hermeneutical task performed.
As he later stated in Chapter 7, in the final analysis, (his) philos-
ophy made the study of Scripture superfluous
447
. Spinoza’s dic-
tum can thus shed light on hermeneutics in general, and, in a
way, turn hermeneutics on its head, by re-directing criticism
from the biblical text or material to be studied to the body of
theoretical/philosophical notions through the lens of which the
material is approached.
Interpretation
, then, does not purport to
say something about the text, but the ways, if they exist, in which
they give substance to, or
model
, the theoretical propositions. It is
Spinoza’s great merit, and to his credit, as well as to his intellec-
tual honesty, to his systematicity, to explicitly acknowledge that
Scripture does not conform in fundamental ways to his own
philosophy.
This brings us to his third main area of biblical studies
448
,
which actually consists of two categorically distinct domains of
inquiry. The first concerns the historical background of the au-
thors and their times, now commonly termed
Sitz im Leben
(real-
life setting) in biblical studies
449
; the second involves the textual
integrity of the works as they came down to us through time. In
each case, Spinoza first presents a short catalog of relevant