After the censure, Spinoza is said to have addressed an "Apology" (defence), written in Spanish, to the elders of the synagogue, "in which he defended his views as orthodox, and condemned the rabbis for accusing him of 'horrible practices and other enormities' merely because he had neglected ceremonial observances". This "Apology" does not survive, but some of its contents may later have been included in his "Theological-Political Treatise". For example, he cited a series of cryptic statements by medieval Biblical commentator Abraham ibn Ezra intimating that some apparently anachronistic passages of the Pentateuch (e.g., "Canaanite was then in the land", Genesis 12:6, which ibn Ezra called a "mystery" and exhorted those "who understand it [to keep silent") were not of Mosaic authorship as proof that his own views had valid historical precedent.