Biblical Literature, The modern period

Following a line marked out earlier by the Spanish philosopher and poet Moses ibn Ezra (1060–1139), Benedict de Spinoza (1632–77) put forward a thoroughgoing reappraisal of the traditional account of the origin of the Pentateuch in his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1679). In the following century the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskala) brought a fresh appreciation of the Bible as literature.