Thesis 11>6
Latin
Tria magna dei nomina quaternaria, quae sunt in secretis cabalistarum, per mirabilem appropriationem tribus personis trinitatis ita debere attribui, ut nomen <Hebrew> sit patris, nomen <Hebrew> sit filii, nomen <Hebrew> sit spiritus sancti, intelligere potest qui in scientia cabalae fuerit profundus.
OCR: Farmer's 'Trıa' (dotless i) is read 'Tria' (farmer1998:26487). The three Hebrew names appear in the OCR as the glyph runs '<N?NN>', '«nmm»' and '«?YTN»' (farmer1998:26489); Wirszubski prints them as aleph-he-yod-he, yod-he-waw-he and aleph-daleth-nun-yod, that is Ehyeh, YHWH and Adonai (wirszubski1989:8460). The 1486 print left blank spaces for the names (copenhaver2019:17834; busi2014:21960), and Farmer's apparatus shows it punctuating 'sit patris. Nomen ... filu. Nomen ... sancti.' (farmer1998:26509). 'quaternaria' is the reading of the editio princeps; later editions read 'quaternarii' (wirszubski1989:8490). Farmer reports that Kieszkowski's edition fills the blanks with three Hebrew names none of which has four letters (farmer1998:26520).
English
That the three great four-lettered names of God found in the secrets of the Cabalists must, by a marvellous appropriation, be assigned to the three Persons of the Trinity, so that the name [Ehyeh] belongs to the Father, the name [YHWH] to the Son and the name [Adonai] to the Holy Spirit, can be understood by anyone deep in the science of Cabala. unverified draft
The names in square brackets are supplied from Wirszubski's reconstruction of the blanks (wirszubski1989:8460), which Farmer also adopts (farmer1998:26522). 'quaternaria' means 'of four letters': Ehyeh, YHWH and Adonai each have four in Hebrew (copenhaver2019:17836). The Latin order, with the main verb 'intelligere potest' last, is kept.
Doctrine
The thesis assigns three divine names, each written with four Hebrew letters, to the three Persons: Ehyeh to the Father, YHWH, the Tetragrammaton or ineffable name, to the Son, and Adonai to the Holy Spirit (wirszubski1989:8458; farmer1998:26522). Wirszubski argues that the hierarchical order of the names presupposes their equation with three sefirot: Ehyeh with the Superior Crown (Keter, the first sefirah), YHWH with Glory (Tiferet, the sixth), and Adonai with Kingdom (Malkhut, the tenth) (wirszubski1989:8474). The sefirot are the ten emanated powers of God in theosophical Kabbalah, called numerationes in Pico's Latin (wirszubski1989:6836). Wirszubski takes the thesis as a superb example of his claim that sefirot and divine names are as inseparably linked in Pico's Christian Kabbala as in his Hebrew sources (wirszubski1989:8470). Farmer agrees that Ehyeh and Adonai are the usual names of the first and last sefirot, crown and kingdom, and that they are almost surely paired here with Father and Holy Spirit; YHWH goes with the Son because Pico himself makes that connection in 11>15 (farmer1998:26570). Copenhaver reads the assignment the same way, connecting the Father with the first sefirah, the Son with the sixth and the Holy Spirit with the tenth (copenhaver2019:18364).
unverified draft
Context
Wirszubski holds that Pico's letter symbolism as a vehicle of Trinitarian interpretation is inconceivable without the equation of the Tetragrammaton with the second Person (wirszubski1989:8452). He sets the thesis against Arnaldo de Villanova's Allocutio super Tetragrammaton, a Trinitarian reading of the name that is entirely devoid of Kabbala proper, and argues that the comparison brings out the novelty of Pico's Kabbalistic treatment (wirszubski1989:8480). In the Busi and Ebgi volume the chapter on sun and Messiah, signed 'R.E.', reads the thesis through the Kabbalists' identification of Tiferet with the sun and with the name YHWH, quoting a Kabbalistic work cited as The Gate of Heaven for the four-letter name as the root of all names (busi2014:21933; busi2014:21944; busi2014:22029). Copenhaver links the thesis to Orphic thesis 10>5, where a 'threefold God' creates the world: Elohim, the Creator's name in the first chapter of Genesis, has five letters that add up to 86, the number Pico took for the Orphic Hymns, whereas the Trinitarian mystery of the three four-letter names was kept secret (copenhaver2019:17823; copenhaver2019:17837).
unverified draft
Reception
The thesis was not among those the commission censured; Blum notes that the Cabalistic theses according to Pico's own opinion went unchallenged (dougherty2008:2808). The blanks in the 1486 print were filled in different ways by later editors: Kieszkowski with three names none of which has four letters, according to Farmer, and Wirszubski with the three names of the medieval tradition (farmer1998:26520; wirszubski1989:8460). The same chapter of the Busi and Ebgi volume suggests that the printer had no Hebrew type and that Pico may have meant to fill the gaps by hand later (busi2014:21961). The German study cited as kabbalah_paradigma, whose author is not confirmed in the corpus registry, reads the thesis within a correspondence of sefirot and faculties, with the Son as Tiferet and intellect and the Spirit in Malkhut (kabbalah_paradigma:1557; kabbalah_paradigma:1535).
unverified draft
Historiography
Wirszubski, Farmer and Copenhaver agree on the identity of the names and differ on what Pico did with them (farmer1998:26570; copenhaver2019:17835). Wirszubski declines to say how Pico would have argued the thesis and claims only that the equations are Kabbalistic commonplaces requiring little inside knowledge (wirszubski1989:8472; wirszubski1989:8478). Copenhaver draws from the ten sefirot at least three possible Trinities, with the Son at the second, sixth or ninth sefirah, and notes that this thesis puts the Holy Spirit at the tenth rather than the third (copenhaver2019:18346; copenhaver2019:18377). He also shows Pico reconciling the Bahir, which reads the letters of Ish, 'man', as the first three sefirot, with this thesis's placing of the Persons at the first, sixth and tenth (copenhaver2019:18374). Wirszubski notes a tension of his own: YHWH as a rule represents Tiferet, yet several theses, 11>7 among them, identify the Son with Wisdom, the second sefirah (wirszubski1989:8541). The editor infers that the thesis fixes one of the Trinitarian mappings Pico used rather than a single system, which is why the Son's sefirah varies from thesis to thesis (wirszubski1989:8543; copenhaver2019:18360).
unverified draft
Pico's sources
- The Kabbalistic equation of Ehyeh with Keter, the Superior Crown (first sefirah), of YHWH with Tiferet, Glory (sixth sefirah), and of Adonai with Malkhut, Kingdom (tenth sefirah): presupposed by the hierarchical order of the three names; Wirszubski calls the equations Kabbalistic commonplaces (wirszubski1989:8474)
Quotations cited
- “The sixth thesis is a superb example” — Chaim Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola's Encounter with Jewish Mysticism (wirszubski1989:8472)
- “they are Kabbalistic commonplaces” — Chaim Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola's Encounter with Jewish Mysticism (wirszubski1989:8479)
- “Il tipografo non aveva lettere ebraiche” — Giulio Busi and Raphael Ebgi, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: Mito, magia, Qabbalah (busi2014:21961)
Not established
- How Pico would have argued the thesis; Wirszubski declines to say (wirszubski1989:8472).
- Which Hebrew names Kieszkowski supplied; Farmer does not name them at the line consulted.
- Whether Pico intended to fill the blanks by hand; the Busi and Ebgi volume offers this as a supposition.
Discussed in
- Giulio Busi and Raphael Ebgi, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: Mito, magia, Qabbalah (2014)
- (author to be confirmed from front matter), Erkenntnistheorie und christliche Kabbalah: Das Paradigma des Pico della Mirandola (n.d.)
- Chaim Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola's Encounter with Jewish Mysticism (1989)