The Sistine Secrets by Benjamin Blech, Roy Doliner Page A

which most scholars today define as the outreach teachings of a Jew in the Hellenistic period. The anonymous Jewish poet, pretending to be a well-respected Greek philosopher, uses thinly disguised quotes from the Hebrew prophets and the Torah to woo the pagan gentiles away from their way of life, and to observe the Seven Basic Commandments of Noah—the universal covenant of law preceding the giving of the Torah to the Jews on Mount Sinai. To avoid revealing his identity as a Jew, he does not blatantly condemn idol worship per se, only the behavior and society around it. By the time of Pico and Michelangelo, this cunning forgery had long been accepted and passed along as an authentic ancient Greek work, and was woven into another, similar forgery, the so-called Sibyllines, supposed to be the twelve books of the mysterious female seers of the Classical world. In this way, the impressionable young apprentice was taught that ethical behavior came from yet another confluence, the teachings of the Jewish prophets and the pagan sibyls, all mixed together. This would show up years later—on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
    Making Michelangelo’s education unique were the lessons he was taught by Ficino and Pico. Daring, innovative, philo-Semitic, often branded heretical, they would explain why, when allowed to design an artwork of his own choosing, Michelangelo would often select a Jewish theme rather than the standard Christian and mythological images of the day. It also explains why, when commissioned by the pope to create works of art as homage to Jesus and the Church—including the Sistine Chapel—Michelangelo would brilliantly hide inside these works antipapal messages more in keeping with his true universalistic feelings.
    THE JEWISH INFLUENCES: MIDRASH, TALMUD, AND KABBALAH
     
    Because Ficino and, more particularly, Pico were powerfully inspired by Jewish thought and transmitted it to their prize student, we need to clarify the areas of that thought that most affected Michelangelo and much of his later artwork.
    First, we should mention the Midrash. Not the name of one book, it rather refers to many collections of stories, legends, and biblical commentaries from the hands of different scholars at about the beginning of the common era (i.e., after the year one in the common calendar). According to Jewish tradition, these are part of an oral tradition of transmitted knowledge going back many centuries, some even from the time of Moses. Unlike the Talmud, Midrash is more interested in theology than law, in concepts rather than commandments. It has been well said that the Talmud speaks to humanity’s mind but the Midrash is directed to its soul.
    We know that Michelangelo studied Midrash with his masters because so many of its insights appear in his depictions of biblical scenes. An excellent example is the panel in the Sistine ceiling known as The Garden of Eden. There we find Adam and Eve standing before the Tree of Knowledge. Throughout the Middle Ages, in every cultural tradition but one, the fruit of that tree was thought to be an apple. Indeed, the Latin word for apple reflected its infamous past— male, which means evil. (In modern Italian the vowels have been reversed, and we now call it mela. ) In the fourth century CE, the word malum appeared in the Latin Vulgate translation of Genesis in the phrase “the tree of knowledge of good and evil,” formally codifying the association between the apple and the forbidden fruit. There was only one exception to this commonly held belief: the Jewish tradition. According to a mystical principle, God never presents us with a problem unless he has already created its solution within the problem itself. When Adam and Eve sin by eating the forbidden fruit, they are stricken with shame from their new awareness of their nudity. The Bible tells us that their immediate solution was to cover themselves with fig leaves. According to the Midrash, the Tree of Knowledge was a fig