Antiquariat Jürgen Dinter

Spinoza - Meyer, Lodewijk

S. Scripturae interpres … — Eleutheropoli [Amsterdam] 1666

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 S. Scripturae interpres; exercitatio paradoxa, in qua, veram philosophiam infallibilem S. literas interpretandi normam esse, apodictice demonstratur, & discrepantes ab hac sententiae expenduntur, ac refelluntur. – Eleutheropoli [Amsterdam, Rieuwertsz], 1666.

First edition

4to (200 x 151 mm). (6) leaves, 105 pp., (5) leaves (Epilogus). Marginal tear in M1 and small paper loss in the lower margin of O1-3. Leaves *1, *2, B1, E5 and E6 with lower deckle edges. Early French mottled calf, spine gilt, morocco label. Rubbed along edges, joints starting, corners bumped. – Van der Linde 56; Wolfenbüttel, Spinoza-Ausstellung Nr. 57 (1673 edition). On the first fly-leaf the work is attributed to Spinoza and later corrected into Meyer. The last fly-leaf has a little note: Vendu 15.# chez Mr. Turgot en 1744, and a bibliographical reference: Voyer Cailleau [Dictionnaire bibliographique …] 3eme vol. page 393. 

¶ „The first of the great public intellectual controversies generated by the rise of radical thought erupted in 1666 with the appearance of a short anonymous book entitled Philosophia S. Scripturae Interpres. The author of this sensational and inflammatory work … was a prominent member of the philosophical coterie gathered around Spinoza and Van den Enden – the Amsterdam physician, Latinist, lexicographer, and man of theatre, Lodewijk Meyer (1629-81) … Unsurprisingly, given the book’s sensational content, there was an immediate outcry throughout the United Provinces, precipitating a major commotion of great importance in Dutch culture, which reverberated also in Germany, The Baltic, and to a lesser extent, Italy and England… [the] basic thesis is, that Scripture is frequently ,obscure and doubtful’ in meaning and that there is no way to interpret it correctly except by means of ,philosophy’…“ (Israel, Radical Enlightenment, 197-217).