'ATOMI DELLE SCRITTURE': IL RUOLO DELL'INTEPRETAZIONE BIBLICA NEL LEVIATHAN DI THOMAS HOBBES

In Leviathan Hobbes confronts with the Bible devoting no less than half part of his work to religious and theological matter. In the parts three and four of Leviathan we can find eighteen voluminous chapters devoted to the discussion of various elements of the Christian faith such as prophecy, revelation, miracles and salvation. In doing so Hobbes deals with a lot of passages from the Old and New Testament. In my thesis I consider the reasons, the method, and the role of Hobbes’s account on the Bible to show how the biblical interpretation and the political theory of Hobbes are strictly related. In the first part, I consider how the historical and intellectual reasons that lead Hobbes into a so closer study of the Bible are innumerable and varied. I considered how the dilemma of choosing between papal and clerical abuse to the monopoly over right interpretation, and between protestant Sola Scripura arising from the individual right to read the bible for oneself, appears a theoretical problem in Leviathan. Hobbes faces this problem confronts with the Bible to show how the Scripture affirms that the Sovereign should control both civil and ecclesiastical power and how one unified and scientific method of reading the Bible could potentially eliminate all religious conflict. In this way Hobbes can reply, as much as political libido dominandi of catholic Church to the religious enthusiasm of puritans. In the second part of the thesis I considered how, in his account of the Bible Hobbes adopts an hermeneutic principles that provide for the use of mere natural reason and strictly excluded Enthusiasm or supernatural inspiration. In the chapter XXXIII of Leviathan Hobbes explains that men should expect an agreement between the truth of reason and God’s word and so Christians should not renounce to their senses or experiences nor does their natural reason because they are useful to understand better the word of God. Hobbes cannot deny that, in Scripture, there be many things above reason, but he parenterally affirms that there is nothing contrary to it. Hobbes develops in his biblical exegesis a strong critic against scholasticism. Hobbes’s rejection to schoolman is based in fact on his conclusion that their way of philosophizing has contributed to the abuse of the scripture by constructing an abstract and confusing language which is contrary to natural reason and adepts can manipulate the citizens. In the third part I considered how this is true especially for his account on the Hebrew Bible, the first five book of the Bible, known also as Torah, or “the law”. While tracing back the history of Jews, in his discussion on the Prophetic kingdom of God, Hobbes ascertains that civil and ecclesiastical powers have always been an exclusive privilege exercised by a one and single person, holder of the supreme authority to interpret the law and the word of God. According to Hobbes is the Mosaic covenant, described in the book of exodus, is the historical example of unified authority: political and religious. As Moses controlled both the civil and the ecclesiastical power so the sovereign is allowed to establish regulations for the conduct of civil life, and he has the power to judge the word of God and impose obligation in God’s name, since is God that gives the authority to interpret divine commands to the people invested with sovereignty. In this sense the political exegesis of the Hebrew Bible is something crucial in Hobbes’s argumentations.