229 / 298
Vico’s Ring
229
become available in time from Rome (see
Biblia Sacra Polyglotta
, ed. by B. Wal-
ton, London, Thomas Roycroft, 1657, 6 vols.; reprinted by Akademische
Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, Graz, 1963-1965). The interest in, and pursuit of,
“Oriental studies” is detailed in P. N. Miller,
The “Antiquarianization” of Biblical
Scholarship and the London Polyglot Bible (1653-57),
in «Journal of the History of
Ideas», 62, 2001, 3, pp. 463-482.
428
In the body of the work, Proposition XLI is expressed appositely:
«Knowledge of the first kind is the only source of falsity, knowledge of the
second and third kinds is necessarily true».
429
It might be objected that Spinoza wrote
TTP
before completing
Ethics
,
as he found it necessary to interrupt the writing of
Ethics
; in that case, Spinoza
incorporated this assertion on the basis of his earlier reflection in
TTP
, but in
either case, both places represent his philosophy. On the circumstances of the
interruption, see H. Graf Reventlow,
History of Biblical Interpretation, Vol. 4
, cit.,
p. 82. A. Tosel observed: «Le
T.T.P.
a été publié en 1670. Son élaboration a
duré de longues années, parallèlement à celle de l’
Ethique
, ainsi que l’atteste la
correspondence (
TTP
was published in 1670. It developed over many years,
parallel to the writing of
Ethics
, as is attested by the correspondence)» (Id.,
Spinoza ou le crépuscule de la servitude
, cit., p. 15).
430
Preus stated: «[…] by echoing the language of Francis Bacon, he [Spi-
noza] implies that the empirical and inductive Bacon rather than Descartes
provides the appropriate starting point for a method of interpreting texts his-
torically» (Id.,
Spinoza and the Irrelevance of Biblical Authority
, cit., p. 159).
431
Not to put too fine a point on it, the problematic posed by Spinoza’s
hermeneutics also concerns his most basic entity, the «pronouncements (
sen-
tentia
)». The issue is how to determine in each case what to accept as a pro-
nouncement, as their scope must be allowed to range, even at a surface level,
from a single word to multi-sentence textual units.
432
Contra
Preus: «Spinoza’s inductive method thus amounts to more than
mere data-gathering, for he knows that data are meaningful – are in fact data –
only in the framework of some hypothesis or theory» (Id.,
Spinoza and the Irrel-
evance of Biblical Authority
, cit., p. 166). Preus does not, however, make refer-
ence to, or elucidate how this view is to be integrated into, Spinoza’s hierar-
chically structured epistemology.
433
This crucial point is developed in R. Miner,
Truth in the Making: Creative
knowledge in theology and philosophy,
New York-London, Routledge, 2004, pp. 45-
50, on which our comments are based. The references are to
Novum Organon
,
cit., Book I, Aphorism 102, and Book II, Aphorism 10.
434
Ibid.
, p. 47.