Judaism

JUDAISM. - Religion and institutions of the people of Israel, which took definitive form from the time of the Babylonian exile (6th century B.C.), when Israel found itself reduced to the tribe of Judah alone (v.).

Before the exile the Hebrew religion had as its supreme "mediator" (Gal. 3:20) Moses (v.), whose Law (v.) contains the norms of the religious and social life of the people, founded on the doctrinal cornerstones of monotheism and Retribution. The principal representatives and interpreters of this religion were the Patriarchs (v.) and the Prophets (v.), while the leaders of the people and the ministers of worship (priests and Levites) had the task of safeguarding its tradition.

Judaism is composed of beliefs and practices, derived from the Bible and from tradition, which constitute the common heritage of the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes and also of the popular circles.

The written sources for the knowledge of Judaism are, besides the Bible: 1) the works of Philo; 2) the works of Flavius Josephus; 3) various rabbinic writings: a) the legal books of the 2nd and 3rd centuries (Meghilath Ta'anith, Miñah, Tšesphtā) and the commentaries on the last 4 books of Moses, of a predominantly legal character (Mekhilthā, Siphrah, Siphrē, to which may be added the Sedher (Glāh, a kind of chronicle); b) the Targum (v.); c) the Talmud (v.); d) the Midhrāf (v.). The apocrypha of the Old Testament are also of some use for knowing the ideological environment in which Judaism came to be formed.

I. RELIGION

The Hebrew people is an essentially religious people. God is for it Father and King, but He is also the Holy One, whose holiness the people is bound to reproduce. Relations with God are carried on through worship (a means of paying homage to the transcendent God) and through the observance of rules, which tend to consecrate man to God. Religion is fundamentally national.

1. God

The existence of God is a fact and does not need to be demonstrated: God can be known only through revelation; He is the one God, and outside of Him there are no other gods.

Despite numerous anthropomorphisms, there is a tendency (and increasingly so from the 3rd century B.C. onward) to emphasize God's transcendence. The tetragrammaton name of God, Jahveh, the proper, personal name of God, is replaced by Adhānaj ("Lord"), and, in the Targum, God is even indicated by Mēmrā ("Word"). This is probably due, among other things, to the fear of idolatrous profanations. God's transcendence is above all stressed in the apocryphal writings, while the rabbis are more reserved; indeed it seems they considered it extremely dangerous for a man who was not "wise and intelligent" to delve into such study. A most important attribute of God is His "holiness": for Isaiah God is "the Holy One of Israel"; the prayers qaddī and qādhūrah celebrate God's holiness. From the 2nd century onward the invocation "the Holy One, blessed be He" is very frequent among the rabbis. God is the source of all holiness, understanding by this epithet absolute purity and infinite power, and this holiness, existing in the absolute state in God, is communicated, relatively, to men through the covenant (bērīth), imposing on them determined obligations, so that they may render themselves worthy of God, the greater party to it. God's power is an integral part of His "holiness": God performs prodigies in order to be sanctified among the peoples; therefore the demonstrations of impotence and the defeats of the holy people are profanations of the "name of God." God's power comes to coincide with our concept of Providence: God constantly watches over His people. As for whether or not God acts in man's soul, the Palestinian doctors limit themselves to believing that God assists man in the path he himself has chosen; while many apocrypha affirm that God gives man a pure heart. Opinions on predestination differ: the Pharisees, according to Flavius Josephus, manage to reconcile fate and human freedom, while the Essenes place no limits on destiny, and the Sadducees deny belief in it.

God, however, is present everywhere, and Gamaliel affirms that God revealed Himself in a bush to demonstrate that "there is no place empty of the tehhīnah" (a term derived from a verb meaning "to dwell," it indicates the presence of God, felt as "glory" and as assistance).

Miracles are universally recognized; nevertheless there is a tendency to consider ordinary providential activity more important than them, and it is affirmed that prodigies cannot prevail against rabbinic decisions that are binding.

Between God's justice and mercy, there is a tendency to let the second prevail over the first; and the problem of God's justice, in the light of the prosperity of the wicked and the unhappiness of the righteous, seems to have been resolved by R. 'Aqibā' (d. 135): the prosperity of the wicked is the reward they receive, before being cast into the fire of gehenna, for those merits that they too possess; the sufferings of the righteous serve to purify them of their failings, so that they may, completely pure, enjoy the happiness of the other life.

2. Angelology

Angels (v.) appear often in the Bible, but angelology develops above all among the rabbis and in apocryphal literature. Angels partake of God's attributes and above all of holiness. Their mission is to surround God in heaven and in His theophanies on earth. Little by little the concept of the guardian angel develops. The angelic categories develop, and Metatron assumes very great importance, who sometimes seems to be the personification of God Himself; toward the end of the 3rd century he appears as an assistant of Jahveh, sharing His throne; he, in the capacity of celestial scribe, keeps note of the merits of Israel.

The opposite pole to the good angels are the destroying angels, evil and impure spirits. The two books of Enoch (v.), the Jubilees (v.), the Testaments (v.) of the patriarchs, the Apoc. of Baruch (v.) speak abundantly of them. The chief of the demons is, according to various traditions: Satan, Belial, Sammael, Mastema, Azazel, Beelzebub.

3. The chosen people

The concept of the chosen people is one of the most important pivots of Judaism. The election occurred, one reads repeatedly in the Bible, as a choice of God and of God alone, and it finds its first realization in the history of the patriarchs; nevertheless, in the covenant struck between God and the people, with Moses as mediator, He subjected to Israel's free will whether or not to accept His choice.

The later elaboration of this doctrine tends to diminish the promises made to Abraham while exalting national particularism, and at the same time tends to attribute the choice of God to the merits of the people of Israel itself, so that the biblical notion and that of Jewish theology regarding the covenant present significant divergences, and one comes to say that a single Israelite is worth before God all the peoples of the earth (Siphrē on Deut. 14:2) and that Israel is the only people of God (Mē-khilthā on Ex. 15:13-16).

The greatest gift that God has made to the chosen people is the Tōrāh (the Law), and God gave it to Israel because He foresaw that only Israel would be able to receive it. In the Tōrāh, the Hebrew people finds the basis of its religion, because in it its fundamental beliefs are revealed and the rules of its entire life are promulgated. The principal object of the Sinaitic Revelation are the "ten words" (v. DECALOGUE) engraved on the Tablets, and received by Moses. The Law is divided into written and oral. The first is that which is read in the "Book" (the Scriptures were divided first into Law and Prophets, a division already found in the 2nd century B.C.; then, perhaps from the 1st century B.C., into Law, Prophets and Hagiographa); it is the word of God and as such is sacred; the various authors, inspired by God, faithfully reproduce thoughts and words not their own.

The oral law had the task of adapting the Law to particular cases, and, in theory, of making the Law easier to apply. In reality it was very different; it suffices to think that the rabbis came to enumerate 613 commandments, 248, the number of bones in the human body, positive, and 365, the number of days in the solar year, negative. To give greater authority to this law, an attempt was made to trace it back to Moses himself, who on Sinai would have received from God the revelation also of all the rabbinic decisions; Moses would have transmitted it to Joshua, Joshua to the prophets, and so on (Ābhāth, I, 1-12).

The Law must be observed, because every Israelite has the duty to promote the Kingdom of God and to "sanctify the Name"; the idea of sanction has, moreover, great importance. The fundamental principle is: every action is followed by a reward or a punishment. At the end of the year the merits and demerits of each man are calculated, and, according to the prevalence of the one or the other, the man is classified among the righteous or the wicked; but the sentence will be applied only on the day of atonement, and until then it is possible to change it with good conduct. The principle followed is a mathematical principle; nevertheless the measure of rewards is more generous than that of punishments (Siphrāh on Lev. 5:18). Rewards are generally applied already in this world and are above all of a temporal and material order.

4. Sin

Originally it was any violation of the Law, even an involuntary one. Little by little, however, a sharp casuistry developed, which analyzes the human act in depth and admits that even purely interior acts are sins: that is, sins of the gaze, of desire, etc. (Niddāh, 13 b; Zābhīm, II, 2). Sin is considered as impurity, profanation and misrecognition of the divine holiness. It entered the world with Adam's rebellion.

According to the Mosaic Law, sin is expiated by sacrifice; Leviticus mentions first of all the sacrifice for sin; but the great expiation takes place on the day of kippār or "expiation" (v.). Before Jesus Christ, the value of expiation through suffering, death and above all martyrdom seems moreover to have been universally recognized (II Mach. 7, 37; Siphrē on Num. 25, 13, etc.). Penance requires as a preliminary act the confession and reparation of the wrongs inflicted; it is open to all, and obtains complete forgiveness.

5. The Temple

It is the house of God, a most pure and most holy place; in it the sacrifices are offered. Nevertheless the liturgy, with the passing of time, gives ever greater importance to prayer. Thus the synagogues arose, very numerous already at the time of Jesus, places of prayer and of study of the Law. When the Temple was destroyed in 70 A.D., the priesthood and the sacrificial worship disappeared, and all religious practice was limited to the biblical reading and the prayers of the synagogue (v.).

6. The feasts

The principal feasts were and are: the feast of Tabernacles (v.), originally an agricultural feast, which recalled the period spent in the desert; Passover (v.), in memory of the liberation from Egypt; Pentecost (v.), an agricultural feast which later became the commemoration of the gift of the Law on Sinai. An eminently national character belonged to: the feast of Dedication, which recalled the victory of Judas Maccabeus (v.); the feast of Pārīm (v.), which celebrated Esther's triumph over Haman. Other feasts then have as their purpose to rekindle the spirit of piety and penance, and among these: the beginning of the year, rō's haš-šānāh, kippār. Every day is consecrated to God through the various prayers, at the moment of waking and of sleeping, of putting on and taking off one's clothes, of eating, etc. (v. BENEDIZIONI).

7. Morality

It is an integral part of religion, because it is God himself who dictates its rules. It is distinguished by a delicate humanity, whereby children, women, the poor and in general those who are weak and in need are made the object of care and protection: the dignity of woman must be respected; slaves, who were part of the family, must be treated well; very numerous and delicate prescriptions protect the poor; almsgiving obtains every temporal good and is called "the salt of wealth" (Kē-thubhāth, 66 b), its value lies in the charity that inspires it (Sukkāh, 49 b). Superior to almsgiving are the works of charity, which engage the whole person. Such rules, however, bind the Israelite in regard to another Israelite; in regard to the gentiles the line of conduct to be followed is different, just as God's love toward the Israelites and the other peoples is different.

8. Eschatology

On this point ideas are diverse and rather vague; Sacred Scripture itself does not offer certain data. Some, at the time of Jesus, still believe in šē'ōl (v.), the common dwelling of the dead; others, however, begin to consider it a place of punishment of the wicked (Ps. Sal. 14, 6; 16, 2; 17) and place the good in Abraham's bosom (IV Mach. 12, 17; 18, 23) or in the garden of Eden. Few admit that the good will go to the "holiest place of heaven" and will then be clothed with pure bodies (Fl. Josephus, Bell. Ind., III, 8, 5).

9. Messianism

Jewish messianism has its center of interest in the national restoration. From certain passages of the Gospel, from the histories of Fl. Josephus, and from the few rabbinic sentences of the time of Jesus, it is established that in that period the expectation of the Messiah — particularly among the people — was still alive. The national restoration was conceived as being realized in this world, or in a new land wonderfully fertile; others held that it would come about together with the resurrection of the dead.

In the Apocalypse of Ezra belief is held in the advent of a messianic era, followed, at the consummation of the ages, by the resurrection and the judgment; messianism and eschatology are in fact very often confused. Some sought to know the date of the Messiah's advent through calculations or foreseen signs, while the more profound spirits preached that the event would be determined only by the spirit of penance (Sanhedhrin, 97 b, 98 a). The concept of the Messiah as a being belonging to the sphere of divinity — a concept quite clear in the Old Testament — is found only among the apocrypha, while the rabbis strive to deprive the Messiah of every divine halo (Sanhedhrin, 38 b).

The Hebrew Bible moreover represented the Messiah as one who was to endure great sufferings. Judaism at first accepted this representation of the Messiah, then rejected it, in reaction to nascent Christianity, and so the passages that speak of the Messiah's sorrows are either interpreted differently, or are applied to another Messiah, called the Messiah of Ephraim or of Joseph, who is not a son of David, and whose figure arises toward the end of the 2nd century. This Messiah will conquer Rome and all the enemy nations; in order to obtain the victory he accepts death, a death which, however, has no expiatory value.

The central point of the messianic restoration is the return from exile; such an event will be accompanied by prodigies and miracles (Mēhhlthā' on Ex. 14, 24), and by some it is attributed to God himself rather than to the Messiah. God has a most important part in the establishment of the messianic kingdom. He directs everything, making use of personages who are merely his instruments.

II. PHILOSOPHY DURING THE MIDDLE AGES

The book of Jeremiah and certain psalms allude to the problem of theodicy, Ecclesiastes contains philosophical considerations, the deuterocanonical wisdom books show here and there the influence of Greek philosophy, in the Talmud one encounters only vague allusions to Greek philosophical thought, and it never deals with philosophy properly so called. Judeo-Hellenistic philosophical thought, represented principally by Philo (v.) of Alexandria, did not exercise great influence in the Jewish milieu. A philosophical movement is found within Judaism only during the Middle Ages. At that time philosophy came to be considered the highest form of religious knowledge; an attempt was made to understand the Bible philosophically as well; philosophical thought made itself felt in liturgical creations and in preaching.

In its origins Jewish religious philosophy follows Islamic kalām and subsequently Neoplatonism and Arab Aristotelianism. In the late Middle Ages Jewish philosophy also spread among the Jewish groups in the Christian part of Spain and of Provence and in Italy, undergoing, alongside the Islamic influence, also, albeit later, that of Scholasticism. In Judaism the prevailing interest in Arab philosophy remains, also owing to the fact that under the influence of islām and in correspondence with islām there arose various sects, the most important being that of the Karaites (v.), which demanded a work of defense, which, while concerning the biblical-exegetical and juridical-religious domain, had to resort to philosophical arguments. It was necessary, moreover, to carry out a work of apologetic defense in the face of islām, which urged a conversion of the Jews to the word of Muhammad. The polemic led into philosophy. If Muhammad's revelation, it was said, were true after other divine revelations likewise recognized as true, how would the metaphysical problem of the constancy of God's will be explained?

Sa'adhjāh Gā'ōn (882-942 A.D.) is the exponent of this point of view in the Jewish field. He polemicizes against the Jewish heretic Hīwī of Balb (in present-day Afganistān), who in his destructive critique of the Bible denies divine omniscience and justice, and places Parsi dualism above biblical monotheism. The Karaite Binjāmīn of Nihāwand (ca. mid-9th century) maintains that God created an angel, who then became creator of the world and author of prophetic inspiration. These are, it seems, influences of Philo's thought. Man was created not in the likeness of God, but of the supreme angel. As a result of these currents both Islamic and Jewish kalām had to engage in a struggle against Parsi dualism. The authoritative criterion in discussions about the truth of individual religions was replaced by that of ratio as a basis common to all. The doctrine according to which nature itself gives man faith in God goes back to the stoa. As a result of these circumstances the theology of the Mu'tazilites (v. ISLĀM), which originally contented itself with rationalizing religious ideas by adapting them to the needs of theoretical and moral reason, went on to demonstrate the existence of God, to prove through logic the necessity of revelation and the authenticity of the Islamic revelation, thus creating a rationalism adhering to faith in revelation.

Unlike the Islamic Neoplatonists and Aristotelians, who treat philosophy as a whole, Jewish thinkers limit themselves to treating subjects of a philosophical-religious character. There are, however, exceptions, and thus, among the Jewish Neoplatonists, Jāhāq Jisrā'ōlī (ca. 850-930 A.D.) and Šēlōmōh b. Gēbhīrōl (b. 1020, d. 1070?) deal with philosophy of nature and metaphysics in full independence from religious philosophy; among the Aristotelians of the late Middle Ages Lāwī ben Gērāōn (v. GERSONIDE, 1288-44) and Mōšeh of Narbonne (d. 1362) comment on Ibn Rušd's writings concerning logic and the natural sciences, but the majority of Jewish thinkers deal with philosophical-religious problems, and have the Bible as the center of gravity of their work. In this field Dāwīdh b. Marwān al-Muqammis and, after him, Sa'adhjāh follow the kalām. Sa'adhjāh must be considered the founder of medieval Jewish religious philosophy; in his philosophical activity he follows the rationalistic-Mu'tazilite direction, close to Judaism in that it develops the concepts of God's existence and unity and of free will. At the basis of his philosophy stands the doctrine of the relationship between reason and Revelation, the latter conceived as a mark of truth. It is not a question, either in Sa'adhjāh or in his followers, of the relationship between reason and religion, the latter conceived as a general function of human consciousness, but between reason and a given religion, without however denying that reason is the basis of various religions. The metaphysical truths and moral postulates of a religion are independent of human reason. Revelation offers the ultimate truths even to one who does not know how to reach them with his own reason, without however dispensing the individual from reaching the truth by means of reason. This way of thinking is found also in Maimonides (v., 1135-1204) and in Christian Scholasticism. By means of reason one must demonstrate whatever is true in Revelation, which is all truth. Interpretation tends to harmonize the sacred text with reason. The world (and here Sa'adhjāh follows Aristotle) is a limited entity, bodies are composite, therefore the world is not eternal, and whatever is composite requires the existence of a Creator, of a single Creator (against dualism). The fundamental predicates of God the creator are: life, power and wisdom. The fundamental attributes of God are: uniqueness and incomparability. God's attributes are one with God (and here the influence of Greek and Mu'tazilite philosophy is noticeable), a concept which preludes the negation of the attributes.

Divine foreknowledge does not prejudice free will in man, the soul being independent despite divine foreknowledge. Attributes of the soul are: substantiality, incorporeality and unity. At the act of the resurrection of the dead, the soul will be reunited with the body to obtain the reward of eternal life.

The rationalist halāna continues to exercise its influence on the thought of the Rabbanites (that is, of the followers of rabbinic law as opposed to the Karaites), such as Šēmū'ēl ben Hofnī (d. 1013), Nissim ben Ja'āqōbh of Qajrawān, in North Africa, but also on the thought of distinguished Karaites, such as Jōšēph ben 'Abhrāhām (early 11th century) and his disciple Jēhōšūa' of Judah (mid-11th century). In rationalism they far surpass Sa'adhjāh.

Neoplatonism manifests itself in the already mentioned Jishāq Jisrā'ēlī, more physician than philosopher. The essence of philosophy lies in the ideal of the imitatio Dei, in man's drawing near to God within the limits of human possibilities, and this is what religion also postulates. Right knowledge has as its effect right action. To the concept of creation, Isaac associates that of emanation. All creatures came into being from the light of the intellect, the immediate work of God. There arises the triad: intellect, soul, nature. The soul is rational, animal and vegetative, according to a graduated emanation.

Šēlēmōh b. Gēbhīrōl, a pillar of Jewish philosophy in Spain (he is the supposed Muslim or Christian philosopher Avicebrol or Avicebron), follows Neoplatonism in his Fons vitae, not as a general religious conception, but as a metaphysical system. His power as a thinker is demonstrated not so much in his dialectic, which often struggles with concepts without managing to master them, as in the energy with which he draws all the consequences from his basic concepts. At the center of his labor stands the relationship between matter and form conceived as two realities, two powers standing on their own. For Aristotle the two factors signify potentiality and actuality; becoming is thus a passage from the one to the other. He brings together the two correlative concepts: genus and species. By means of the concept of prime matter and form, he arrives at the monistic construction of reality. Prime matter is the genus generalissimum. Gēbhīrōl's psychology, too, stands under the influence of the Aristotelian one. Gēbhīrōl surpasses all the other Jewish Neoplatonists in speculative interest.

Less consistent in Neoplatonism is the moralist Bahjā b. Pāqūdā (d. ca. 1080). Adherent to Neoplatonism is the anonymous author (between the 11th and 12th centuries) of the book On the Essence of the Soul (erroneously attributed to Gēbhīrōl), akin in thought to the mathematician and astronomer 'Abhrāhām ben Hijjā of Barcelona (beginning of the 12th century). Neoplatonism mingled with Aristotelianism and Mu'tazilite doctrines stands at the basis of the thought of Jōšēph b. Ṣaddīq (d. 1149). He is close to Gēbhīrōl in his subject matter: matter and form. Last in the series of Jewish Neoplatonists is 'Abhrāhām ben Mē'īr b. 'Ezrā' (ca. 1092-1167). His philosophical Excursuses in the biblical commentaries do not represent a closed system.

Outside of any philosophical school is the poet and thinker Judah Halevi (ca. 1085 - ca. 1141), averse to the incipient Aristotelianism that insinuates itself into Islamic and Jewish Neoplatonism. Judah Halevi considers Aristotelianism an enemy of revealed religion.

The first Jewish Aristotelian was Abraham ibn Dāwūd (d. ca. 1180). Jewish religious teaching is equivalent to truth, therefore to... Aristotelianism! And precisely to the Aristotelianism of Ibn Sīnā. God is the unmoved mover; cause, not caused, of the existence of every thing. The soul is the entelechy of a natural organic body. Prophetic revelation does not proceed from God, but from the active intellect and is free - and in this lies its merit - of fantastic elements (Maimonides considers prophetic revelation the work of the intellect and the imagination).

The originality of Maimonides (1135-1204) is manifested not in the novelty of his thought, but in the tendency to create a synthesis between the identical elements contained in Greek, Aristotelian philosophy and revealed doctrine, thus linking himself to his predecessors from Sa'adhjāh onward. Religious faith is a form of knowledge graspable by means of philosophical knowledge. Philosophy is the central element of religion. Philosophy leads to God and gives a constant light, unlike the light of metaphysics which gives flashes, sparks, that appear and disappear. It is a matter of momentary intuition, and prophetic intuition represents a form superior to the philosophical one, but philosophy welcomes it and associates it with its own.

God is necessary, he is the unmoved mover; he is the unique source of metaphysical knowledge and of the love of God in man. From this knowledge, through communion with God, the immortality of the soul derives to man. Religion is thus intellectualized. The 13th century becomes the period of insurrection against philosophy and the rationalistic elaboration of religious values within Judaism. People began to notice that the salvation of the soul occupied in the mind of Maimonides, the philosopher par excellence, a place superior to that of messianic redemption.

The philosophers Jōšēph ben Jēhūdhāh b. 'Aqnīn (end of the 12th century), Šēmṭōbh b. Palquera (d. ca. 1290), the Italian Hillēl ben Šēmū'ēl (d. ca. 1291), his contemporary Jishāq al-Balag, Mōsheh of Jēhōšūa' from Narbonne (d. 1362), Lēwī ben Gēršōn (Gersonides, 1288-1344) all move within the sphere of Aristotelian rationalism and Jewish religious thought.

In the first half of the 13th century the Talmudist and biblical exegete Mōšēh ben Naḥmān (Naḥmanides) seeks to soften the struggle against philosophy, but demands a clean detachment from Aristotelianism.

The critic of Christian dogmas Ḥasdhaj Crescas (ca. 1340-1410) opposes Aristotelianism and the intellectualization of religion; he subjects Aristotelian physics and the concept of the unmoved mover to acute criticism. To the multitude of beings of possible existence is opposed the absolute Being of God, and thereby the existence of God is demonstrated. Not thought standing on its own, but goodness is the principal attribute of God.

Šim'ōn ben Šemāh Duran (1361-1444) also admits positive attributes in God that do not affect the uniqueness of God. As concerns the human soul (nēlāmāh): it is not material and draws its origin from God. The influence of the Qabbālāh is by now noticeable.

The Dogmas ('Iqqārīm) of Jōšēph Albo (d. 1444) are based on the thought of Maimonides, of Ḥasdhaj Crescas and of Duran. One notices in them a tendency to eclecticism. The vis philosophica wavers. The cabbalist Šēmṭōbh ben Jōšēph b. Šēmṭōbh (ca. 1440) attacks philosophy and Maimonides to the core, who tends to set limits to the supernatural action of God, to superimpose philosophy on the Tōrāh, the unbelieving philosopher on the believer confessing the Tōrāh. His son, Jōšēph ben Šēmṭōbh, seeks to defend Aristotelianism, insofar as it is not devoid of religious tendencies.

Jishāq Abravanel (1437-1509) also seeks to soften the antireligiosity or areligiosity of philosophy, bringing the latter closer to religion. In place of the vivid, warm and historical intuition of Judah Halevi, he presents a supernaturalism of the scholastic type.

To the humanistic movement are linked the names of Jewish philosophers who were Italian or residing in Italy: Jēhūdhāh Messer Leon, Aleinann Jōhānān of Isaac (ca. 1435-ca. 1504), Elia Del Medigo (ca. 1460-93), Leone Ebreo or Judah of Jishāq Abravanel, Jōšēph Šēlēmōh Del Medigo (1591-1655).

Jewish philosophy exercised a notable influence on the system of Spinoza.

Eugenio Zolli