Religious Diversity and Early Modern English Texts: Catholic, Judaic, Feminist, and Secular Dimensions

8. Prophetic Voices: Joachim de Fiore, Moses Maimonides, Philip Sidney, Mary Herbert, and the Psalms

195 In the Defence of Poesy (c. 1581), Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586) identifies poetic creativity with the prophetic tradition of David’s Psalms in which preexisting texts considered sacred are translated into edifying ethical and spiritual precepts for the present or are interpreted as prescripted consequences for the future. This conception of prophecy is found in the works of two radically different medieval religious and philosophical thinkers: the Cistercian abbot Joachim de Fiore (1135–1202) and the Jewish Talmudist and philosopher Moses Maimonides (1135–1204). For Joachim the prophetic message of God was transmitted from the Hebraic and Aramaic Old Testament into the Septuagint Bible. The Christian Gospels of the apostles and the interpretations of St. Paul’s Epistles and John of Patmos’s book of Revelation were added and translated into the Vulgate Bible, which was eventually canonized by the early church fathers and successive Catholic Church councils. Joachim argues that the Bible is a “historical narrative” from the beginning of time projected into a vision of the End of Days. It traces the ultimate evolution of humanity through its tribulations and divinely inspired consolations from generation to generation , culminating in a state of spiritual perfectibility that is prerequisite for the Second Coming. For Maimonides the word of God from Moses in the Hebrew written Torah, the oral Torah of Sinaitic origin, and the prophetic tradition were interpreted and illuminated by successive generations of the Anshei Knesset Hagadol, Tanaim, Amoraim, Sevoraim, and Geonim. He believed that although there is an authoritative difference between the prophetic tradition and the Oral Law tradition, sages with great learning Elliott M. Simon Prophetic Voices Joachim de Fiore, Moses Maimonides, Philip Sidney, Mary Herbert, and the Psalms 8 196 Elliott M. Simon in each generation should aspire to clarify and understand the holy laws of the Torah according to their capabilities. Whereas Joachim was concerned with translating historical periods into stages of spiritual enlightenment, Maimonides was concerned with translating the equivocal literal and figurative language of biblical expression into an intellectual apprehension of truth in the Bible. Although the Psalms are not considered formally prophetic literature, in both the Jewish and Christian traditions David preceded the prophets and was considered “divinely inspired.” Those who composed Davidic psalms shared that inspiration and believed that from the House of David a messiah would eventually appear. Psalms represent the most profound and universal artistic expression of the personal interaction between the human and the divine. Joachim and his Christian followers linked the idea of human creativity with the arduous study of prior biblical texts to express a progressively higher spiritual consciousness. Following the Jewish Talmudic tradition, Maimonides also linked human creativity with the study of prior biblical and philosophical texts to illuminate an intellectual understanding of biblical language and to identify the true meaning of the “divine Word” and its application to the changing circumstance of Jews in each generation. Both Joachim and Maimonides argued that each person in every generation can translate the Psalms into the spiritual, intellectual, and artistic expression of their pious devotion to God. These theories of historical continuity and requisite transmission of sacred texts promoted by subsequent theologians and religious philosophers and later Protestant biblical translators appealed to Philip Sidney and Mary Sidney Herbert, who created their own prophetic voices in their translation of the Psalms. Throughout the later Middle Ages and well into the Renaissance Joachim’s theory of the Bible as a prophetic narrative had a profound in- fluence on Christian movements dealing with spiritual and ecclesiastical reform. Similarly, Maimonides’ conceptions of scriptural exegesis and prophetic transmission had a profound influence on Jewish biblical commentators and on Christian Hebraists, who turned to Hebraic hermeneutics to justify their assertions of divine continuity and authority for their versions of the biblical revelations. With Joachim translators of the Psalms could see themselves as historical incarnations of David speaking to their own people with a voice of higher spiritual illumination; with Maimonides they could see themselves interpreting the equivocal language of the biblical texts and translating their particular idioms of spiritual signification into concrete linguistic images. For Sidney prophecy aspires to communicate a divine wisdom akin to Joachim’s interpretation of the Bible as a “sacred spiritual history” and Prophetic Voices 197 Maimonides’ exegesis of biblical poetic language as a revelation of God’s word. Sidney believed that Psalms could be used as a literary model...