Who is baruch

However, human beings do not generally live under the guidance of reason. The state or sovereign, therefore, is required in order to insure—not by reason, but by the threat of force—that individuals are protected from the unrestrained pursuit of self-interest on the part of other individuals.

He also defends, at least as a political ideal, the tolerant, secular, and democratic polity. A person guided by fear and hope, the main emotions in a life devoted to the pursuit of temporal advantages, turns, in the face of the vagaries of fortune, to behaviors calculated to secure the goods he desires. Thus, we pray, worship, make votive offerings, sacrifice and engage in all the various rituals of popular religion.

But the emotions are as fleeting as the objects that occasion them, and thus the superstitions grounded in those emotions subject to fluctuations. Ambitious and self-serving clergy do their best to stabilize this situation and give some permanence to those beliefs and behaviors.

Only then will we be able to delimit exactly what we need to do to show proper respect for God and obtain blessedness. This will reduce the sway that religious authorities have over our emotional, intellectual and physical lives, and reinstate a proper and healthy relationship between the state and religion. A close analysis of the Bible is particularly important for any argument that the freedom of philosophizing—essentially, freedom of thought and speech—is not prejudicial to piety.

Thus, philosophy and religion, reason and faith, inhabit two distinct and exclusive spheres, and neither should tread in the domain of the other. The freedom to philosophize and speculate can therefore be granted without any harm to true religion.

In fact, such freedom is essential to public peace and piety, since most civil disturbances arise from sectarian disputes. From a proper and informed reading of Scripture, a number of things become clear. First, the prophets were not men of exceptional intellectual talents—they were not, that is, naturally gifted philosophers—but simply very pious, even morally superior individuals endowed with vivid imaginations. This is what allowed them to apprehend that which lies beyond the boundary of the intellect.

Moreover, the content of a prophecy varied according to the physical temperament, imaginative powers, and particular opinions or prejudices of the prophet.

The prophets are not necessarily to be trusted when it comes to matters of the intellect, on questions of philosophy, history or science; and their pronouncements set no parameters on what should or should not be believed about the natural world on the basis of our rational faculties.

The ancient Hebrews, in fact, did not surpass other nations in their wisdom or in their proximity to God. They were neither intellectually nor morally superior to other peoples. God or Nature gave them a set of laws through a wise lawgiver, Moses , which they obeyed, and made their surrounding enemies weaker than them. Their election was thus a temporal and conditional one, and their kingdom is now long gone. True piety and blessedness are universal in their scope and accessible to anyone, regardless of their confessional creed.

The law of God commands only the knowledge and love of God and the actions required for attaining that condition. Such love must arise not from fear of possible penalties or hope for any rewards, but solely from the goodness of its object. The divine law does not demand any particular rites or ceremonies such as sacrifices or dietary restrictions or festival observances. The six hundred and thirteen precepts of the Torah have nothing to do with blessedness or virtue.

They were directed only at the Hebrews so that they might govern themselves in an autonomous state. The ceremonial laws helped preserve their kingdom and insure its prosperity, but were valid only as long as that political entity lasted. They are not binding on all Jews under all circumstances. They were, in fact, instituted by Moses for a purely practical reason: so that people might do their duty and not go their own way.

This is true not just of the rites and practices of Judaism, but of the outer ceremonies of all religions. None of these activities have anything to do with true happiness or piety. A similar practical function is served by stories of miracles.

Scripture speaks in a language suited to affect the imagination of ordinary people and compel their obedience. Rather than appealing to the natural and real causes of all events, its authors sometimes narrate things in a way calculated to move people—particularly uneducated people—to devotion.

Every event, no matter how extraordinary, has a natural cause and explanation. At the same time, he thereby reduces the fundamental doctrine of piety to a simple and universal formula, naturalistic in itself, involving love and knowledge.

This process of naturalization achieves its stunning climax when Spinoza turns to consider the authorship and interpretation of the Bible itself. Others before Spinoza had suggested that Moses was not the author of the entire Pentateuch for example, Abraham ibn Ezra in the twelfth century and, in the seventeenth century, the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes. But no one had taken that claim to the extreme limit that Spinoza did, arguing for it with such boldness and at such length.

Nor had anyone before Spinoza been willing to draw from it the conclusions about the status, meaning and interpretation of Scripture that Spinoza drew.

Spinoza denied that Moses wrote all, or even most of the Torah. Moses did, to be sure, compose some books of history and of law; and remnants of those long lost books can be found in the Pentateuch.

But the Torah as we have it, as well as as other books of the Hebrew Bible such as Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings were written neither by the individuals whose names they bear nor by any person appearing in them. Spinoza believes that these were, in fact, all composed by a single historian living many generations after the events narrated, and that this was most likely Ezra the Scribe.

It was the post-exilic leader who took the many writings that had come down to him and began weaving them into a single but not seamless narrative. Canonization into Scripture occurred only in the second century BCE, when the Pharisees selected a number of texts from a multitude of others.

He was dismayed by the way in which Scripture itself was worshipped, by the reverence accorded to the words on the page rather than to the message they conveyed.

If the Bible is an historical i. Just as the knowledge of nature must be sought from nature alone, so must the knowledge of Scripture—an apprehension of its intended meaning—be sought from Scripture alone and through the appropriate exercise of rational and textual inquiry. This is the real word of God and the foundation of true piety, and it lies uncorrupted in a faulty, tampered and corrupt text.

The lesson involves no metaphysical doctrines about God or nature, and requires no sophisticated training in philosophy. Spinoza claims, in fact, that a familiarity with Scripture is not even necessary for piety and blessedness, since its message can be known by our rational faculties alone, although with great difficulty for most people. By reducing the central message of Scripture—and the essential content of piety—to a simple moral maxim, one that is free of any superfluous speculative doctrines or ceremonial practices; and by freeing Scripture of the burden of having to communicate specific philosophical truths or of prescribing or proscribing a multitude of required behaviors, he has demonstrated both that philosophy is independent from religion and that the liberty of each individual to interpret religion as he wishes can be upheld without any detriment to piety.

There had always been a quasi-political agenda behind his decision to write the TTP, since his attack was directed at political meddling by religious authorities. But he also took the opportunity to give a more detailed and thorough presentation of a general theory of the state that is only sketchily present in the Ethics. Such an examination of the true nature of political society is particularly important to his argument for intellectual and religious freedom, since he must show that such freedom is not only compatible with political well-being, but essential to it.

Naturally, this is a rather insecure and dangerous condition under which to live. As rational creatures, we soon realize that we would be better off, still from a thoroughly egoistic perspective, coming to an agreement among ourselves to restrain our opposing desires and the unbounded pursuit of self-interest—in sum, that it would be in our greater self-interest to live under the law of reason rather than the law of nature. We thus agree to hand over to a sovereign our natural right and power to do whatever we can to satisfy our interests.

That sovereign—whether it be an individual in which case the resulting state is a monarchy , a small group of individuals an oligarchy or the body-politic as a whole a democracy —will be absolute and unrestrained in the scope of its powers. Obedience to the sovereign does not infringe upon our autonomy, since in following the commands of the sovereign we are following an authority whom we have freely authorized and whose commands have no other object than our own rational self- interest.

The type of government most likely to respect and preserve that autonomy, issue laws based on sound reason and to serve the ends for which government is instituted is democracy. Monarchy, on the other hand, is the least stable form of government and the one most likely to degenerate into tyranny.

The sovereign should have complete dominion in all public matters secular and spiritual. There should be no church separate from the religion instituted and regulated by the state.

This will prevent sectarianism and the multiplication of religious disputes. All questions concerning external religious rites and ceremonies are in the hands of the sovereign. Justice and charity thereby acquire the force of civil law, backed by the power of the sovereign.

For this reason, it is misleading to proclaim Spinoza as a proponent of the separation of church and state. This is a matter of inalienable, private right, and it cannot be legislated, not even by the sovereign.

Nor can speech ever truly and effectively be controlled, since people will always say want they want, at least in private. There must, Spinoza grants, be some limits to speech and teaching. Seditious discourse that encourages individuals to nullify the social contract should not be tolerated. But the best government will err on the side of leniency and allow the freedom of philosophical speculation and the freedom of religious belief.

It is hard to imagine a more passionate and reasoned defense of freedom and toleration than that offered by Spinoza. Note: There is an enormous body of literature on Spinoza in many languages, especially French, Italian, Dutch and German. There is also the irregularly published series Studia Spinozana , each volume of which contains essays by scholars devoted to a particular theme. Biography 2. Ethics 2. Theological-Political Treatise 3. Ethics The Ethics is an ambitious and multifaceted work.

Proposition 1 : A substance is prior in nature to its affections. Proposition 6 : One substance cannot be produced by another substance. Proposition 7 : It pertains to the nature of a substance to exist. Proposition 8 : Every substance is necessarily infinite. Proposition 14 : Except God, no substance can be or be conceived. Ip29 : In nature there is nothing contingent, but all things have been determined from the necessity of the divine nature to exist and produce an effect in a certain way.

All the prejudices I here undertake to expose depend on this one: that men commonly suppose that all natural things act, as men do, on account of an end; indeed, they maintain as certain that God himself directs all things to some certain end, for they say that God has made all things for man, and man that he might worship God. I, Appendix God is not some goal-oriented planner who then judges things by how well they conform to his purposes. I, Appendix A judging God who has plans and acts purposively is a God to be obeyed and placated.

For if it did not fall to that end, God willing it, how could so many circumstances have concurred by chance for often many circumstances do concur at once? Perhaps you will answer that it happened because the wind was blowing hard and the man was walking that way. But they will persist: why was the wind blowing hard at that time?

If you answer again that the wind arose then because on the preceding day, while the weather was still calm, the sea began to toss, and that the man had been invited by a friend, they will press on—for there is no end to the questions which can be asked: but why was the sea tossing? And so they will not stop asking for the causes of causes until you take refuge in the will of God, i. I, Appendix This is strong language, and Spinoza is clearly aware of the risks of his position.

As he explains, A circle existing in nature and the idea of the existing circle, which is also in God, are one and the same thing, which is explained through different attributes. Therefore, whether we conceive nature under the attribute of Extension, or under the attribute of Thought, or under any other attribute, we shall find one and the same order, or one and the same connection of causes, i.

Indeed they seem to conceive man in nature as a dominion within a dominion. For they believe that man disturbs, rather than follows, the order of nature, that he has absolute power over his actions, and that he is determined only by himself. III, Preface Descartes, for example, believed that if the freedom of the human being is to be preserved, the soul must be exempt from the kind of deterministic laws that rule over the material universe.

Nature is always the same, and its virtue and power of acting are everywhere one and the same, i. So the way of understanding the nature of anything, of whatever kind, must also be the same, viz. We conceive things as actual in two ways: either insofar as we conceive them to exist in relation to a certain time and place, or insofar as we conceive them to be contained in God and to follow from the necessity of the divine nature.

But the things we conceive in this second way as true, or real, we conceive under a species of eternity, and to that extent they involve the eternal and infinite essence of God. Vp29s But this is just to say that, ultimately, we strive for a knowledge of God. The more this knowledge that things are necessary is concerned with singular things, which we imagine more distinctly and vividly, the greater is this power of the Mind over the affects, as experience itself also testifies.

For we see that Sadness over some good which has perished is lessened as soon as the man who has lost it realizes that this good could not, in any way, have been kept. Similarly, we see that [because we regard infancy as a natural and necessary thing], no one pities infants because of their inability to speak, to walk, or to reason, or because they live so many years, as it were, unconscious of themselves.

Vp6s Our affects or emotions themselves can be understood in this way, which further diminishes their power over us. Nevertheless, we shall bear calmly those things that happen to us contrary to what the principle of our advantage demands, if we are conscious that we have done our duty, that the power we have could not have extended itself to the point where we could have avoided those things, and that we are a part of the whole of nature, whose order we follow.

If we understand this clearly and distinctly, that part of us which is defined by understanding, i. For insofar as we understand, we can want nothing except what is necessary, nor absolutely be satisfied with anything except what is true. I hold that the method of interpreting Scripture is no different from the method of interpreting Nature, and is in fact in complete accord with it.

For the method of interpreting Nature consists essentially in composing a detailed study of Nature from which, as being the source of our assured data, we can deduce the definitions of the things of Nature. Now in exactly the same way the task of Scriptural interpretation requires us to make a straightforward study of Scripture, and from this, as the source of our fixed data and principles, to deduce by logical inference the meaning of the authors of Scripture.

In this way—that is, by allowing no other principles or data for the interpretation of Scripture and study of its contents except those that can be gathered only from Scripture itself and from a historical study of Scripture—steady progress can be made without any danger of error, and one can deal with matters that surpass our understanding with no less confidence than those matters that are known to us by the natural light of reason. TTP, chap. As to the question of what God, the exemplar of true life, really is, whether he is fire, or spirit, or light, or thought, or something else, this is irrelevant to faith.

And so likewise is the question as to why he is the exemplar of true life, whether this is because he has a just and merciful disposition, or because all things exist and act through him and consequently we, too, understand through him, and through him we see what is true, just and good. On these questions it matters not what beliefs a man holds. Nor, again, does it matter for faith whether one believes that God is omnipresent in essence or in potency, whether he directs everything from free will or from the necessity of his nature, whether he lays down laws as a rule or teaches them as being eternal truths, whether man obeys God from free will or from the necessity of the divine decree, whether the rewarding of the good and the punishing of the wicked is natural or supernatural.

The view one takes on these and similar questions has no bearing on faith, provided that such a belief does not lead to the assumption of greater license to sin, or hinders submission to God. Indeed … every person is in duty bound to adapt these religious dogmas to his own understanding and to interpret them for himself in whatever way makes him feel that he can the more readily accept them with full confidence and conviction. Abbreviated in SEP entry as G.

The Ethics is in vol. Abbreviated in SEP entry as S. Allison, Henry, Balibar, Etienne, Spinoza and Politics , London: Verso. Bennett, Jonathan, Curley, Edwin, Della Rocca, Michael, Spinoza , London and New York: Routledge. Donagan, Alan, Spinoza , Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Garrett, Don ed. Goff, Philip ed.

Douay-Rheims Bible So Jeremias called Baruch the son of Nerias: and Baruch wrote from the mouth of Jeremias all the words of the Lord, which he spoke to him, upon the roll of a book. And Baruch wrote it all down on a scroll.

World English Bible Then Jeremiah called Baruch the son of Neriah; and Baruch wrote from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of Yahweh, which he had spoken to him, on a scroll of a book. Young's Literal Translation And Jeremiah calleth Baruch son of Neriah, and Baruch writeth from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of Jehovah, that He hath spoken unto him, on a roll of a book.

Additional Translations Jeremiah I will bring upon that land all the words I have pronounced against it, all that is written in this book, which Jeremiah has prophesied against all the nations.

Jeremiah and I gave this deed to Baruch son of Neriah, the son of Mahseiah, in the sight of my cousin Hanamel and the witnesses who were signing the purchase agreement and all the Jews sitting in the courtyard of the guard.

Jeremiah so you are to go to the house of the LORD on a day of fasting, and in the hearing of the people you are to read the words of the LORD from the scroll you have written at my dictation.

Since the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in a sealed clay jar years after the fact, it was sound advice. The point of this instruction was to symbolize that it would be a long time before people would return from exile to buy and sell land in Jerusalem.

It is possible this document was written on either parchment or leather. It is very likely that Baruch drew up this document in accordance with the legal requirements of their day.

Once the document was signed, it was folded and sealed. The seal was most likely a moist dollop of clay that was affixed to the string holding the document. The scribe would then impress his seal into the dollop of clay and that seal would have been a permanent part of the document once it dried. They persist even though the documents had long ago disintegrated. It was found with many other bullae bearing the names of other royal officials in Judah.

It was purchased from a Palestinian antiquities dealer who claims it was found somewhere in Judah — probably discovered illegally. The writing on the bulla is consistent with writings of the seventh or sixth century BCE. This lends more credence to its authenticity. As a scribe, Baruch undoubtedly sealed many documents. Another duty that Baruch performed for Jeremiah is described in Jer.

Jeremiah dictated to him all the words that God had spoken to him over a period of 22 years. God told Jeremiah to write down all the words he had spoken against Judah and all the nations.

Baruch copied down every word that Jeremiah dictated. Because Jeremiah had already been restricted from going near the vicinity of the temple, he instructed Baruch to go there and read the scroll on a national fast day when more people would be in attendance.

It probably took many months to write this scroll. Then they also had to wait for the right time to read it. Baruch read the scroll to all the people from the chamber of Germariah, the son of another scribe, in the upper court at the entry of the New Gate to the temple.

He, of course, did this at great risk to himself. Obviously, this was way above and beyond the call of duty for a scribe. Baruch went willingly, maybe even eagerly, but surely this was even more dangerous than reading it out in the open. Needless to say, the scribes reacted with great fear upon hearing the words of warning addressed against Judah. Baruch confirmed that he had written every word dictated by Jeremiah. The scribes told him to leave the scroll and to find Jeremiah so they could go into hiding.

Either these officials were also sympathetic to Jeremiah, or they felt a kinship with Baruch and protected him. Once they were safely ensconced, the officials took the matter to the king. After all, it was their job to keep the king informed of all important matters, especially any prophetic words relating to the kingdom. The king wanted to hear the words directly, so one of them took it upon himself to read from the scroll.

As he was reading, the king would cut off what had been read and throw the pieces into the fire. The scribes protested, but ultimately, the whole document was burned. This also gives readers a glimpse of palace and prophetic relations. Not all kings responded appropriately to prophetic messages. In this case, the prophetic message involved international politics at a time when Judah was in a very precarious position. The king probably should have taken these words very seriously.

Nonetheless, neither the king nor the officials ever reacted with mourning or gave the words serious thought. It would take another twenty years, but everything prophesied would eventually come to pass. Obviously the king put out an arrest warrant on Baruch and Jeremiah, but neither was to be found. While in hiding, the word of the Lord came again to Jeremiah and he was told to take another scroll and dictate the whole thing over again to Baruch, adding a few choice warnings at the end for Jehoiakim.

Scholars think if this scroll really represented all the words God had spoken to him over a year period, it must have been a hefty document. Nonetheless, Jeremiah did what God told him to do, and Baruch did what Jeremiah told him to do. By putting his life in danger, Baruch demonstrated that he was more than a secretary to Jeremiah; he was also very loyal and obedient. Some have even referred to them as collaborators. In fact, after the exile occurred, many people who had escaped Jerusalem returned to take stock and figure out the next step.