ABSTRACT
Morteira wrote Arguments contemporaneous to the time Leviathan was being composed by the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (b. 1588–d. 1679), and these works are contrasted in Chapter 6. The central focus is the figure of God’s viceroy, which is discussed by Morteira and Hobbes for different reasons. Hobbes represents God’s viceroy as an agent for a coercive form of governance, while Morteira enlists the same figure as a symbol of democratic governance by free choice. Morteira is the first thinker to cast each Jew in the role of God’s viceroy by free individual choice, and by extension as an individual with the obligation to forsake converso spirituality and practice rabbinic Judaism in order to participate in the creation of a Jewish polity. Morteira’s democratization of God’s viceroy is understood to have impacted the writings of Spinoza and Barrios, Morteira’s two most renowned ‘disciples.’ Ideas expressed by Spinoza and Barrios demonstrate that they knew Morteira’s writings well, and each individual continues to promote the notion of a democratically revived Hebrew Republic, although in each case with a different measure of appreciation for governance grounded in the Mosaic Law.
