How Leviathan drew on Deuteronomy

A documented line of influence: Thomas Hobbes demonstrably engaged Moses’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.

Moses · c. 621 BCE

Thomas Hobbes · 1651

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On Leviathan’s page

Leviathan's Part 3 turns on Deuteronomy — Hobbes quotes its own words ("no man knoweth of his sepulchre to this day") to argue the Pentateuch was finished long after Moses
He builds his sovereign on "Moses' seat" and the Mosaic covenant, and reads the "volume of the law" of Deuteronomy 11–27 as the model for law given by a single authority
Read Deuteronomy first and you see exactly what Hobbes is dismantling — and rebuilding — when he gets to scripture

Deuteronomy gives Hobbes both his evidence and his throne — he grounds the sovereign's authority in "Moses' seat" and the Mosaic covenant
It also hands him a weapon: Hobbes reads Deuteronomy's own line that "no man knoweth of his sepulchre to this day" as proof the text was written after Moses died, opening his case against Mosaic authorship
A founding act of biblical criticism, built out of Deuteronomy 34 and the "volume of the law" in chapters 11–27