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Horst Steinke
210
prophecy», since they not only differed among themselves, but
also were inevitably subject to «the prejudices of their particular
age»; ultimately, one should «avoid confusing the minds of the
prophets and [intra-biblical] historians with the mind of the Holy
Spirit and with factual truth (
mente Spiritus Sancti, et rei veritate
)»
467
.
Secondly, the «meaning of some passage» is liable to have been
deliberately tampered with by the [Jewish] «learned», developing
his case, rhetorically, by initially allowing merely the possibility
that «it may occasionally have been in someone’s interest to alter
the meaning of some passage», then claiming definitely that «we
can readily conceive that the learned may have altered or cor-
rupted the meaning of some passage», and finally alleging that
«there may frequently have been an intention to corrupt the
meaning of a writer by altering what he wrote or by giving it a
wrong interpretation»
468
. In the space of a few sentences, one is
swept along – that is, if one does not stop and challenge or at
least qualify the initial supposition – as a hypothetical case of low
likelihood escalates into a situation of high frequency; given such
frequency, doubts or suspicions
469
are apt to arise about the in-
tegrity of any and all passages. Spinoza concludes this section by
affirming that it followed «the principle that knowledge of Scrip-
ture must be sought only from Scripture»
470
, which in his herme-
neutical framework, unlike the contemporaneous Protestant slo-
gan of
sola Scriptura
, was meant to ensure that the significance of
Scripture was confined to an inferior epistemic level, adding, for
emphasis, that his «method […] is the only true method (
nostra
methodus
[…]
unica et vera sit
)», apart from which no understanding
of Scripture is attainable. In summary, in Spinoza’s framework,
not only is the «meaning» of Scripture a function of merely the
second kind of knowledge, and thus categorically incapable of
containing intuitive knowledge of the essence of God-Nature, its
causes, modes, and properties, but the enterprise itself of discov-
ering such «meaning» is presented, for all intents and purposes,
as nigh impossible to succeed.