The Mosaic Constitution: Political Theology and Imagination from Machiavelli to Milton

Abstract

[...]Hammill also claims that the Mosaic moment opens the door to the notion that self-consciously literary texts can also generate myths or fictions that can function as the "supplement" that these political orders need. [...]Hammill writes, "in binding the secular state to interpretations of Hebrew scripture, sixteenth-and seventeenth-century writers also bind a political theology of creation to literary creation and imagination. According to Hammill, this utopian potential is most fully developed by Spinoza, about whose complex religious and political thought Hammill offers an excellent, detailed chapter.