Some of the developments in contemporary semiotics were anticipated in the early modern period. For example, as Hans Aarsleff demonstrated in From Locke to Saussure (1982), the English philosopher John Locke not only was one of the first to predict a “Semeiotike” or science of signs, but also he represented already the turn toward a critical perspective in which the relation between sign and referent was called into question, as Ferdinand de Saussure was later to do in making the arbitrariness of the sign an axiom of his own theory of language. As is generally now recognized, both Locke and his predecessor Thomas Hobbes were influenced by late medieval nominalism. A less well-known source for Hobbes’s and Locke’s critique of signs was classical skepticism, which impacted the development of early modern philosophy, including the philosophies of Pierre Gassendi and René Descartes, with whom Hobbes corresponded. My presentation will trace the influence of skepticism on Hobbes’s critique of religion as a “phantasm” or false appearance of political phenomena. In his main work, Leviathan (1651), Hobbes attempted to demythologize the biblical tradition through a deconstruction of theological language. He also deployed concepts and arguments from classical skepticism in order to call into question our ability to distinguish between religious and political authority. Reconstructing Hobbes’s argument furthers our understanding of the contribution of skepticism to secularization and disenchantment.