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 Contra Apionem that Moses’s image as a political and religious leader, namely as a perfect 'legislator' of his people, was fully affirmed. Flavius ​​Josephus praised the Mosaic law, considering it is valid at all times and not only in the particular circumstances in which it was proclaimed. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there are abundant clandestine philosophical manuscripts that present themselves as the authentic heirs of such classical-hellenistic interpretations of the religion in general and of the Mosaic law in particular, considered as a "political art". The clandestine manuscript Theophrastus redivivus is one such exemplary testimony. On the other hand, there was a completely alternative interpretation, whose clandestine authors had at their disposal since the publication of Spinoza’s work Tractatus theologico-politicus (1670) and especially since the French translation of1678. This interpretation responded remarkably to the secularization of the Jewish history, without maintaining more or less explicitly anti-Semitic assessments that, by contrast, we can find in some clandestine manuscripts.