 By the time Feuerbach published his most famous book, The Essence of Christianity (1841), in which he sought to develop “a philosophy of positive religion or revelation” (WC 3), he had begun to move away from his earlier idealistic pantheism. That he nevertheless sought in this book to criticize both Hegelian speculative theology and the positive philosophy from “the same standpoint” taken by Spinoza in his Theologico-Political Treatise (VWR 16/9; cf. WC 10–11) has often been overlooked. At one point in the Treatise Spinoza observes that the biblical authors 