BORN in Holland on November 24, 1632, Baruch or Benedict Spinoza had an unhappy childhood. Since his parents, even after Christian baptism, remained faithful Jews, Spinoza’s family was humiliated being called “marranos” (literally, dirty pigs). Earlier, the Spinoza clan got expelled from Portugal and Spain, again for being Jewish.
Settling in the more tolerant Dutch capital of Amsterdam did not give them peace of mind. The Jews in the Netherlands excommunicated Baruch Spinoza for questioning the Moses’ authorship of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament). For Spinoza argued, how could Moses be the writer of the Pentateuch when the closing chapter in the Book of Joshua states that Moses died before he could enter the Promised Land.
Bitter against Christians who expelled his family from Portugal and Spain, equally bitter with his fellow Jews who excommunicated him from their synagogues, Spinoza lived a hermit’s life, supporting himself by grinding optical lenses. He renounced faith in a personal God. Instead he professed belief in an impersonal God identified with Nature, the visible expression of the one and true reality.
Even if universities invited him to teach, he turned them down. In the silence of his humble shop, he delved into deep philosophical themes, presenting his thoughts very systematically by way of geometry. Thus, he wrote his famous Ethics (Demonstrated following a Geometrical Order).
In 1670, he daringly published a “scandalous work” -- Theological-Philosophical Treatise -- which his enemies considered to have been “forged in Hell by the devil himself.”
In 1677, tuberculosis sadly claimed his life. Following his line of thinking, his body as well as his soul returned to (his) God: the Original Nature or Substance -- the Source of all that is.