HOBBES, THOMAS (1588–1679) features in intellectual histories as a philosopher and a political theorist and his Leviathan as one of the most important political treatises ever written in English. During the last decades of the twentieth century, though, Hobbes came to be regarded as a writer significantly relevant to the history of religious ideas and his Leviathan as an early example of a vogue of rational criticism of the Bible that was to become current in the nineteenth century.

Life

Hobbes was born in Malmesbury, England, on April 5, 1588. He recalls in his verse autobiography that his mother brought forth "twins at once, both me and fear" for she had given birth when the Spanish Armada was approaching the English coast. Hobbes entered Magdalen Hall, Oxford University, in 1603, and immediately after he earned his degree he was offered employment by William Cavendish as tutor of his son. Hobbes...