The Hebrew Republic in Dutch Political Thought, C. 1650–1675

chapter 10 The Hebrew Republic in Dutch Political Thought, c. 1650–1675

René Koekkoek*

The notion of Neerlands Israel (“Dutch Israel”), the view that the Dutch people were chosen by God, analogous to the biblical story of the Israelites as the people chosen to be in covenant with God, was widespread in seventeenth- century Dutch public discourse.1 A “Hebraic tint lay over Dutch society in these days,” as the nineteenth-century literary critic and historian Conrad Busken Huet put it.2 Simon Schama has contended that the Hebraic self-image of the Dutch was “much more successfully a unifying bond than a divisive dogma.” In a same vein Willem Frijhoff has also emphasised the unifying character of the analogy: “Among the religious models of unity, the notion of new Israel or ‘Dutch Israel,’ was particularly important.”3 Schama’s and Frijhoff’s evalua- tions of the inclusiveness of the model of the biblical Israelites, however, are only valid to a limited extent. The issue of how to read the Old Testament po- litically was highly contested between different sides of the ideological spec- trum in the Dutch Republic in the third quarter of the seventeenth century.

* I would like to thank Scott Mandelbrote, Joris van Eijnatten, and Frank Daudeij for their help- ful comments on earlier versions of this chapter. 1 It is also sometimes referred to as ‘second’ or ‘new’ Israel. The idea of Holland as a new Israel surfaced for the first time in pamphlets and songs of the Geuzen (‘Beggars’), the rebelling Dutch (lower) nobles, who fought the Spanish troops and played a decisive part in the Dutch Revolt against Spain. See E.T. Kuiper, ed., Het Geuzenliedboek (Zutphen, 1924); R. Bisschop, Sions vorst en volk. Het tweede-Israelidee als theocratisch concept in de Gereformeerde kerk van de Republiek tussen ca. 1650 en ca. 1750 (Veenendaal, 1993); G. Groenhuis, De predikanten. De sociale positie van de gereformeerde predikanten in de Republiek der Verenigde Nederlanden voor ± 1700 (Groningen, 1977), 77–102; Idem, “Calvinism and the National Consciousness: The Dutch Republic as the New Israel,” Britain and The Netherlands 7 (1981): 118–33; S. Schama, Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (New York, 1987), 51–125; H. Smitskamp, Calvinistisch nationaal besef in Nederland vóór het midden der 17e eeuw (The Hague, 1947). 2 C. Busken Huet, Het land van Rembrandt. Studiën over de Noordnederlandsche beschaving in de zeventiende eeuw, 2 vols. (Haarlem, 1882–1884), 2: 406. 3 Schama, Embarrassment of Riches, 97; W. Frijhoff, “Religious Toleration in the United Prov- inces: From ‘Case’ to ‘Model,’” in Calvinism and Religious Toleration in the Dutch Golden Age, ed. H. van Nierop and R. Po-Chia Hsia (Cambridge, 2002), 27–52: 50.

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The arguments, examples, imagery, lessons, and political models that orthodox Calvinist ministers such as Abraham van de Velde, Hermannus Witsius, and Jodocus van Lodenstein culled from the Old Testament were often diametri- cally opposed to the interpretations of radical writers like Adriaen Koerbagh, Baruch Spinoza, and Lambertus van Velthuysen. At stake in these debates were the lessons the Bible might provide with regard to questions about the most desirable relationship between Church and State, the scope of toleration, and more generally the political organization of the commonwealth. They moreover concerned the nature of history (providential or secular), the concept of divine election, and ultimately the status of the Bible itself.4 This chapter argues that against the background of these debates about the example provided by the ancient Hebrew Republic within the context of the Hebraic self-perception of the Dutch grounded in the analogy with this ancient commonwealth, a refreshing light can be shed on Spinoza’s extensive discussion of the Hebrew Republic in his Theological-Political Treatise of 1670. Spinoza’s discussion of the Hebrew Republic is notoriously difficult to under- stand, even though a number of thoughtful essays have drawn attention, from a variety of angles, to some key issues and historical, political and intellectual contexts. Michael Rosenthal has rightly insisted that Spinoza did not reject, as some have argued, the example of the ancient Hebrew Republic altogether and that we need to turn to the specific political context of the period and seventeenth-century political thought to grasp what Spinoza was up to.5 Lea Campos Boralevi, in an article in which she presents “the Jewish Commonwealth” as one of the “classical foundational myths of European republicanism,” has moreover reconstructed a rich Dutch tradition of political Hebraeism, which tapped into a broader early modern European interest in ancient Israel’s political institutions. The key text within this tradition is De republica Hebraeorum (1617) of Petrus Cunaeus, the chair of politics at Leiden University from 1614 to 1638. A close friend of Hugo Grotius, Cuneaus offered this republic—“the holi- est ever to have existed in the world, and the richest in examples for us to emu- late”—for consideration to the States of Holland.6 Although Campos Boralevi holds that Spinoza’s treatise can be seen as both the “conclusion” and the “over- turning” of this tradition, her remarks are only an epilogue to an otherwise

4 Cf. M. Bodian, “The Biblical ‘Jewish Republic’ and Dutch ‘New Israel’ in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Thought,” Hebraic Political Studies 1 (2006): 186–202; D. Novak, “Spinoza and the Doc- trine of the Election of Israel,” Studia Spinozana 13 (2003): 81–99. 5 Rosenthal, however, does not draw on Dutch primary sources. M. Rosenthal, “Why Spinoza Chose the Hebrews: The Exemplary Function of Prophecy in the Theological-Political Trea- tise,” History of Political Thought 18 (1997): 207–241, 231–240. 6 Petrus Cuneaus, The Hebrew Republic, ed. A. Eyffiner, trans. P. Wyetzner (New York, 2006), 3.