In the West, pantheism was formalized as a separate theology and philosophy based on the work of the 17th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza. Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese descent raised in the Sephardi Jewish community in Amsterdam. He developed highly controversial ideas regarding the authenticity of the Hebrew Bible and the nature of the Divine, and was effectively excluded from Jewish society at age 23, when the local synagogue issued a "herem" against him. A number of his books were published posthumously, and shortly thereafter included in the Catholic Church's "Index of Forbidden Books". The breadth and importance of Spinoza's work would not be realized for many years – as the groundwork for the 18th-century Enlightenment and modern biblical criticism, including modern conceptions of the self and the universe.