Two models for the secularization of Jewish history: The libertine paradigm of Theophrastus redivivus and the Spinozist paradigm

Abstract

It was mainly with Flavius ​​Josephus’s work ContraApionem that Moses’s image as a political and religious leader, namely as aperfect 'legislator' of his people, was fully affirmed. Flavius ​​Josephuspraised the Mosaic law, considering it is valid at all times and not only inthe particular circumstances in which it was proclaimed. In the seventeenth andeighteenth centuries, there are abundant clandestine philosophical manuscriptsthat present themselves as the authentic heirs of such classical-hellenisticinterpretations of the religion in general and of the Mosaic law in particular,considered as a "political art". The clandestine manuscriptTheophrastus redivivus is one such exemplary testimony. On the other hand,there was a completely alternative interpretation, whose clandestine authorshad at their disposal since the publication of Spinoza’s work Tractatustheologico-politicus (1670) and especially since the French translation of1678. This interpretation responded remarkably to the secularization of theJewish history, without maintaining more or less explicitly anti-Semiticassessments that, by contrast, we can find in some clandestine manuscripts.