Book V - Snyder Bible

326
purpose of the mind, and hinders the desire of philosophizing;
and therefore they say that the time was that in which the
marriage was celebrated. Thus they make Peleus and the
nymph Thetis to be the dry and the moist element, by the admixture
of which the substance of bodies is composed. They
hold that Mercury is speech, by which instruction is conveyed
to the mind; that Juno is chastity, Minerva courage, Venus lust,
Paris the understanding. If therefore, say they, there is in a
man a barbarous and uncultivated understanding, and ignorant
of right judgment, he will despise chastity and courage,
and will give the prize, which is the apple, to lust; and thereby,
ruin and destruction will come not only upon himself, but also
upon his countrymen and the whole race. These things, therefore,
it is in their power to compose from whatever matter
they please; yet they can be adapted to every man; because if
any one has a pastoral and rustic and uncultivated understanding,
and does not wish to be instructed, when the heat of
his body shall make suggestions concerning the pleasure of
lust, straightway he despises the virtues of studies and the
blessings of knowledge, and turns his mind to bodily pleasures.
And hence it is that implacable wars arise, cities are destroyed,
and countries fall, even as Paris, by the abduction of
Helen, armed the Greeks and the barbarians to their mutual
Chapter XLII: Interpretation of Scripture
Then Kefa, commending his statement, said: Ingenious
men, as I perceive, take many counterfeitslooking much like
truthfrom the things which they read; and therefore great
care is to be taken, that when the law of Elohim is read, it be
not read according to the understanding of our own mind. For
there are many sayings in the set-apart Scriptures which can
be drawn to that sense which every one has preconceived for
himself; and this ought not to be done. For you ought not to
seek a foreign and extraneous sense, which you have brought
from without, which you may confirm from the authority of
the Scriptures, but to take the sense of truth from the Scrip-