In relatively recent years the impact of biblical interpretation on early modern philosophical, political and scientific thought has been re-evaluated in a large range of studies, which mainly concentrate on reconstructing an individual author's consideration and use of Scripture in their works or on examining a particular thematic framework or cultural heritage. These studies, focusing on such influential thinkers as Hobbes, Spinoza or Locke and on the role of biblical hermeneutics in post-Reformation and Enlightenment culture, have the merit to have clarified how early modern philosophers’ and exegetes’ reconsideration of the biblical text enabled the development and spread of a novel notion of the Bible as a historical and cultural product. Now, this collection of essays, which emerges from a conference held in Rome and Viterbo in May 2019, provides fresh food for thought on the ongoing historiographical debate.
As the editors explain in their introduction, the conference and this volume were informed by ‘the awareness that the text of both the Old and the New Testament has constituted the constant reference point for philosophical analysis from the early Middle Ages until at least the modern age’ (p. 1). Thus, this volume, while acknowledging the significance of progress in biblical exegesis and its effects on interactions between religion, science and politics, aims to analyse, in particular, the different uses that philosophers made of the Bible in the period from the Renaissance to the early Enlightenment. In that crucial period of European history many philosophers ‘were sincere believers and sometimes programmatically structured their activity as a contribution ad maiorem gloriam Dei’ (p. 6). As a result, a large number of early modern philosophers with different religious (or irreligious) convictions and objectives ‘made a constant effort to explore, deconstruct, and reconfigure the most diverse ontological, epistemological, logical, and theological-political issues through a close comparison and a careful reading of the biblical text’ (p. 7). When examining this process of rethinking the Scriptures, several recurrent themes stand out, such as the role of Moses as a lawgiver, the possibility of the communication of the divine word by means of prophecy, the possibility and significance of natural religion, the moral message delivered by the Bible and the specificity of the language, style and meaning of the biblical texts in relation to their contexts, audiences and aims. Given these different but interconnected themes, this volume is divided into five sections devoted to as many aspects of early modern philosophers’ reconsideration of Scripture.
The first part of the book, ‘Enquiring on Moses’, consists of a chapter by Simonetta Bassi on images of Moses in the Renaissance and a chapter by Pina Totaro on Henry More's discussion of Spinoza's work. These essays reexamine several theoretical questions, such as the multiple uses of the figure of Moses, variously interpreted as a legislator or an impostor, and the seventeenth-century debate on the authorship of the Pentateuch. The next section presents three chapters by Guido Giglioni, Anna Lisa Schino and Diego Donna dealing, respectively, with Campanella's, Hobbes's and Spinoza's views on biblical prophecy, its status and its theological-political implications. Part iii addresses the early modern debate on the possibility of a universal, rational, natural religion, particularly in Cambridge Platonists such as Anne Conway and Henry More, whose works are the subject of Sarah Hutton's chapter, in the writings of John Biddle and later English Unitarians examined in Luisa Simonutti's chapter, and in Pierre Bayle's writings on toleration, on which Stefano Brogi's chapter focuses. In the fourth part, Simone D'Agostino, Francesco Toto and Giovanni Licata devote their chapters, respectively, to Pascal's, Hobbes's and Spinoza's views on the moral message of the Bible as its sole area of competence. Finally, the fifth part of the volume highlights the role of the accommodation doctrine in breaking with tradition in several regards: it contains five case studies provided by Kepler, Mersenne, Descartes with his Dutch followers, Wolff and Newton in as many chapters authored by Edouard Mehl, Claudio Buccolini, Antonella Del Prete, Matteo Favaretti Camposampiero and Franco Giudice.
While most chapters in this volume cover well-known intellectual currents and philosophers from the early modern period, all the essays present original theses and novel approaches to the topics they examine, in that their authors reassess the impact of those early modern thinkers’ use of the biblical text on their philosophical, political, scientific or theological ideas and on the wider intellectual context of the day. Furthermore, while far from claiming comprehensiveness, this volume has the merit of providing a sound structure for developing a systematic analysis of the subject. The areas of inquiry that inform its five sections are indeed well thought out and accurately reflect the main concerns, interests and motivations of early modern philosophers who referred to the Scriptures extensively in their works. Last but not least, fourteen out of the sixteen chapters that comprise this book are by Italian authors, including internationally renowned experts as well as emerging scholars. The editors’ decision to publish these studies in English is commendable, in that this volume is thus likely to contribute significantly to the international dissemination of Italian scholarship on early modern philosophy and intellectual history. Considering the excellent quality of the essays contained in this volume, this would certainly be an important achievement.
