The Literal Meaning of Genesis
BOOK TWELVE 189
Hence, in view of the fact that signs of things and not the things themselves are given forth by the tongue, the member of the body which is moved in the mouth in speech, St. Paul, using a metaphor, designated as tongue any production of signs before they are understood. But once the understanding has grasped the sign (and this activity is proper to the mind), then there is revelation or knowledge or prophecy or teaching. Accordingly he says, [f 1 come to you speaking in tongues, what shall I profit you, unless I speak to you either in revelation, or in knowledge, or in prophecy, or in teaching?+? And he means to say that this happens when the intellect grasps the signs, or, in other words, the tongue, so that what is done is done not by the spirit alone but also by the mind.
CHAPTER 9
The meaning of spirit.
20. Hence those to whom signs were manifested in the spirit by means of certain likenesses of corporeal objects had not yet the gift of prophecy, unless the mind had performed its function, in order that the signs might be understood; and the man who interpreted what another had seen was more a prophet than the man who had seen. Thus it is obvious that prophecy belongs more to the mind than to the spirit, in the rather special sense in which the word spirit is taken, namely, in the sense of a power of the soul inferior to the mind, wherein likenesses of corporeal objects are produced. And so Joseph, who understood the meaning of the seven ears of corn and the seven kine, was more a prophet than Pharaoh, who saw them in a dream; for Pharaoh saw only a form impressed upon his spirit, whereas Joseph understood through a light given to his mind.*? And for this reason the former had the gift of tongues; the latter, the gift of prophecy. In the one there was the production of the images of things; in the other, the interpretation of the images produced.
Less a prophet, therefore, is he who, by means of the images