Smith, Steven B. “On Leo Strauss’s Critique of Spinoza.” Cardozo Law Review 25 (2003-2004): 741.

Excerpt:

”

 In an essay from 1932 entitled Das Testament Spinozas, Leo
 Strauss observed that the reception of Spinoza has undergone various
 stages from condemnation as a soulless atheist and materialist, to
 canonization by the German romantics who saw him as a mystical
 pantheist and "God intoxicated man," and finally to neutrality by
 scholars who had come largely to accept the results of his historico-
 critical approach to the Bible.' The official acceptance of Spinoza was
 possible, Strauss writes, only once the famous querrelle des anciens et
 des modernes had been decided in favor of'the modems and the
 legitimacy of modem thought had long since been accepted. It was this
 that permitted Spinoza to enter "the small band of superior ninds" that
 Strauss, following Nietzsche, refers to as the "good Europeans":
 To this community belong all the philosophers of the seventeenth
 century, but Spinoza belongs to it in a special way. Spinoza did not
 remain a Jew, while Descartes, Hobbes, and Leibniz remained
 Christians. Thus it is not in accordance with Spinoza's wishes that
 he be inducted into the pantheon of the Jewish nation. Under these
 circumstances it seems to us an elementary imperative of Jewish
 self-respect that we Jews should at last again relinquish our claim on
 Spinoza. By so doing, we by no means surrender him to our
 enemies.   Rather, we leave him to that distant and strange
 community of "neutrals" whom one can call, with considerable
 justice, the community of "good Europeans."2"

Online:
Heinonline