The Complete Works of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

HEPTAPLUS###

When it came to mind, I began to survey with sharp eyes the vast fields of the prophet referring to Moses as the author of Genesis, searching to see whether—since the most learned interpreters were no less "cultivators" of the law than its explainers—they might have left some part untouched according to the law’s decree, to be harvested by us, the weaker ones. From this, I too might gather a few ears of grain to place upon the altars of the Church as the first fruits of my labors, so that I might not be excluded from the privileges of the temple as if I were a false Israelite or one who contributed nothing at all. The matter succeeded according to my wish; not because I could do anything that they could not, but because they, following the law's precept, did not wish to block the path for the industry of those who came after them. Furthermore, such is the vastness of the field and its fertility that no number of "grains" referring to interpretations can equal it; so that although nearly infinite and most capable efforts have been exerted upon it with all their strength, we can still say that Gospel phrase: The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. original: "Messis multa operarii pauci," citing Matthew 9:37. Therefore, what the most holy men have written on this book—
Latin interpreters

Ambrose and Augustine, likewise Strabo and Bede, and Remigius, and from the more recent ones, Giles Egidius Romanus and Albert Albert the Great; and likewise what the
Greeks

Greeks wrote: Philo, Origen, Basil, Theodoret, Apollinaris, Didymus, Diodorus, Severus, Eusebius, Josephus, Gennadius, and Chrysostom—all these will be left entirely untouched by us. Indeed, it would be both reckless and superfluous for a weak man to exert himself in that part of the field where the most robust minds have already labored. Regarding those things also which either Jonathan or Onkelos or the elder Simeon
Chaldeans

handed down in the Chaldean language referring to the Aramaic Targums, which are paraphrases of the Hebrew Bible, or what the
Hebrews

Hebrews wrote—either the ancients Eleazar, Abba Johannes, Nehunia, Isaac, and Joseph, or the more recent Gersonides, Saadia, both Abrahams, Moses likely Maimonides and Nachmanides, Solomon Rashi, and Menahem—we shall make no mention of them for the present.

Seven new expositions

Instead, we shall bring forward, besides all these, seven other expositions of our own discovery and meditation. In these, our first care will be to overcome, if we can, three difficulties with which there seems to have been a great and difficult struggle for all those who have undertaken to explain this book.

The first difficulty

The first is the danger that anything said by Moses might seem either insufficient or lacking in learning and wisdom. Some have freed themselves from this by saying that he did not speak of all things, nor bring forward grand and sublime matters, because he was speaking to an unrefined rude: Pico uses "rudi populo" to describe the ancient Israelites as a simple or uneducated audience people who were not yet capable of understanding everything. We can believe that the unrefined listeners were satisfied if the light of knowledge—which the wise would look into—was covered by thick words, as if enclosed in a horn lantern: "cornea testa," a common metaphor for a protective casing that lets light through but softens it, so that the eyes of the duller folk would not be dazzled. Let him therefore have brought the light so that it might benefit healthy eyes, yet let him have brought it enclosed and veiled so that it would not hurt those with weak sight. For he neither should, nor could, nor wanted to help the learned any less than the unlearned.

The second difficulty

The second difficulty is that the "tenor" the flow or consistent character of the interpretation should be self-consistent and fitting, and that the whole series should be referred back to that same sense from which it first proceeded, as if by a single stroke and mindful of its purpose. We should not, for instance, introduce him speaking of "Ideas" Platonic forms in one place and then, in the very next clause, have him dealing with physical elements or with man. This would be an arbitrary and violent kind of exposition. Yet, to avoid this in the explanation of this book has seemed to many, I will not say difficult, but certainly laborious for all. So great is the perplexity, the ambiguity, and the variety of the entire reading.
See the labor

See how much work it is, and how not easily done is that which we have conceived in our mind (may we achieve it!): that not just in one sense, but in a sevenfold sense, always beginning a new work from the start, we might interpret this entire creation of the world in a continuous and unmixed order of exposition, using nothing from the works of previous interpreters.

The third difficulty

The third difficulty consists in this: that we must not make the prophet assert anything extraneous or monstrous, or alien to the nature of things as they are now seen, or contrary to the truth which our own people have accepted as discovered by the better philosophers. Rather, let us show that it is the Divine Spirit speaking through the prophet. For why...