THE SEVEN-FOLD WORK Heptaplus: From the Greek 'hepta' (seven) and 'aplous' (fold). Pico uses this title because he offers seven different layers of interpretation for the creation story. OF GIOVANNI PICO OF MIRANDOLA ON THE

SEVEN-FOLD EXPLANATION OF THE SIX DAYS OF GENESIS

ADDRESSED TO LORENZO

DE' MEDICI. PROLOGUE.

My emulation of your studies, Lorenzo de’ Medici, moved me to review the secret volumes of Moses. During this past winter, I observed that whatever leisure the Republic allowed you, you spent no more willingly or diligently than in that reading. At the same time, a private reason also invited me: for some time now, under your auspices but growing in your name, I have been working on another project. In it, I attempted not only to defend the hymns of David—translated by the Seventy interpreters This refers to the Septuagint, the earliest Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. and continually sung in the Church—from all suspicion and slander, but also to illuminate them with the torches of interpretation. I found no treatment more useful, none more fruitful, and none more consistent—or to speak more truly, more necessary—than a study of those books. It happened, moreover, during these days, that I was constantly occupied with those celebrated works of the six days in the creation of the world. Great reasons suggest themselves that we should believe the secrets of all nature are contained within them. For even if I omit the fact that our prophet Moses, traditionally regarded as the author of the first five books of the Bible., filled with God and by the dictation of the heavenly Spirit, the master of all truth, received these things: have not the testimonies of our own people, his own people, and finally the nations, given him to us as the most expert in all human wisdom, doctrines, and letters?

There exists among the Hebrews a book by that most wise Solomon, titled Wisdom—not the one now in our hands, which is the work of Philo Pico follows a common Renaissance belief that the deuterocanonical "Book of Wisdom" was actually written by the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria., but another composed in the "Jerusalem" tongue, which they call the secret language. In this, that man, considered an interpreter of the nature of things, confesses that he received all such knowledge from the inner sanctuaries of the Mosaic law. Likewise, as far as our own people are concerned, both Luke and Philo are most serious authorities that he was most learned in all the doctrine of the Egyptians. Moreover, all the Greeks who were held to be more divine—Pythagoras, Plato, Empedocles, and Democritus—employed the Egyptians as teachers. Well known is that saying of the philosopher Numenius: "What else is Plato but Moses speaking Attic?" original: "atticum Moſem". This famous quote suggests that Plato’s philosophy was simply the wisdom of Moses translated into the Greek of Athens..

But even Hermippus the Pythagorean attests that Pythagoras transferred very many things from the Mosaic law into his own philosophy. But if, meanwhile, Moses appears unrefined in his books and popular rather than a philosopher, a theologian, or a master of some great wisdom, let us remember that it was a celebrated custom of the ancient sages to write of divine matters either not at all, or to write of them in a disguised manner. From this, they were called "mysteries" original: "myſteria", and they are not mysteries if they are not hidden. This was observed by the Indians, by the Ethiopians—who are named for their nakedness—and by the Egyptians. This was also what those Sphinxes Sphinxes: In the Renaissance, Sphinxes placed before Egyptian temples were believed to symbolize the guarding of sacred, "hieroglyphic" secrets from the uneducated masses. before the temples suggested.

Instructed by them, Pythagoras became a master of silence; nor did he himself commit anything to writing, except for a very few things which, when dying, he commended to his daughter Damo. For the Golden Verses original: "aurea carmína" that are circulated are not by Pythagoras, as is commonly believed even by the more learned, but by Philolaus. Thereafter, the Pythagoreans most religiously guarded that law [of silence]. Lysis complained that it was violated by Hipparchus. Finally, Porphyry is the authority that the disciples of Ammonius—Origen, Plotinus, and Herennius—swore to it. Our Plato likewise [wrapped his truths] in the covering of enigmas, fables, mathematical images, and somewhat obscure...