Leviathan: Chapter 33 Summary & Analysis

Books of Holy Scripture include those that contain “Rules of Christian life,” and since these rules are also laws, it is necessary to determine which laws must be followed in a common-wealth. Scripture does not determine which laws a Christian ruler must follow, but scripture does indicate those laws that should not be followed. God is the “Soveraign [Sovereign] of all Soveraigns” and therefore should be obeyed; however, a subject must also know when and what God commanded, which cannot be known without “supernaturall revelation.” Thus, Hobbes acknowledges only the Old Testament as Holy Scripture, as it has been acknowledged as such by the Church of England.   

The original writers of many books of Holy Scripture are not sufficiently known. The Pentateuch (the first five books of the bible) were supposedly written by Moses, but Hobbes disagrees. In chapter six of Deuteronomy, it is noted “that no man knoweth of [Moses’s] sepulcher to this day,” which indicates the day in which the words were written were not Moses’s. Thus, Moses was not alive at the time and could not be the author of the words.   

The Book of Joshua, too, was written after Joshua’s time. The Book of Joshua speaks of the 12 stones Joshua set in Jordan and says, “They are there unto this day,” which suggests considerable time has passed between Joshua’s placing of the stones and the writing of the Book of Joshua. Similarly, the Book of Judges and the Book of Ruth were written after their time, as were the Books of Samuel, which claim Samuel made an edict to Israel “to this day.” These words again imply that the words were written long after Samuel’s time.  

Those who wrote the New Testament lived in the age of Christ, and each of them knew Christ and served as his disciple, except for St. Paul and St. Luke. The Books of the New Testament, however, were acknowledged by the Church long after the time of the Apostles. The Old Testament, on the other hand, comes from no later than the time of Esdras, who retrieved lost scripture under God’s direction. When the New Testament was collected and approved by the Church, there could not have been any real way of definitively knowing who each book was written by.

Even though the books of Holy Scripture were written by different people at different times, they are still thought to be imbued with the “same Spirit” and work to the same end: to set forth the laws of God. The question of where Holy Scripture gets its authority is much disputed by different branches of Christianity, but since scripture does not differ all that much from the Laws of Nature, it is considered the law of God and carries his authority.