Hobbes' master

Contemporary and, in part, rival to René Descartes was Thomas Hobbes.

As Hahn and Wiker would have him, Hobbes was a Galilean atomist. Hence why he - with the Jesuits - opposed the Infinitesimal; although this mathematical mistake didn't enter the critique. As for Hobbes' contribution to Biblical scholarship, our authors take it down, noting that - on the Torah - he wasn't saying much more than what Ibn Ezra said.

Hobbes' main project was to provide the Biblical backing for Machiavelli's project, of subordinating Christianity to the state. In some cases, Hobbes was observant: when Jesus prays "Thy Kingdom come" he is, indeed, speaking of God's kingdom here on Earth. Also I agree we do need to reconcile "no man can have two masters" - God and Money, here - with the story of Caesar's coin, exactly money. Hobbes simply identifies God's kingdom with the Soveraign (sic).

Hobbes does nothing more or less than rediscover Marwânid caliphism. Right down to the king's right to define a Scriptural canon.

Now, as far as "no man can have two masters": in Gospel context Jesus was assuming that, as a general aphorism common to the Hellenistic and Aramaic Near East; and citing that. I do not consider a quoted metaphor, taken to the extreme, as binding doctrine. To the extent Mammon might symbolise Caesar, it is interesting that Hobbes sides with Mammon.

Also one might moot Simcha Jacobovici's notion that Jesus shifted his political aims en route from Galilee to Jerusalem, claiming political messiahship formerly and then the Priesthood at the end. Here is the parable between the man he cured of blindness: that the cure was partial at first, then complete.

I do not, therefore, consider Jesus a monothelete, any more than I consider Hobbes a mathematician.