“Silence” in the other world as a noetic indicator: From the Bible to Marsilio Ficino and “Hamlet”

The author analyzes the Qumran community’s views on the nature of the divine and human mind, universal “knowledge” and their correlation, as well as the community members’ ideas about the transcendent world, its inhabitants and their hypothetically “silent” communication in heaven on a noetic level. An attempt is made to identify the influence of these views on the passage from the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:4 about “inexpressible words” in Paradise. At the same time, the mystical experience of the Qumranites and “a man” (in all likelihood, Paul himself) reflected in 2 Corinthians 12:2–4 is compared. An allusion to the idea of “silent” spiritual communication, expressed by Marsilio Ficino in “Platonic Theology”, XIII, 2, 31, is also considered. The article further proposes a hypothesis concerning the influence of the conception reflected in 2 Cor. 12:2–4 and in the aforementioned passage of Ficino’s “Platonic Theology” upon Shakespeare—particularly upon the way in which, in “Hamlet”, the playwright characterizes the ontological essence of the earthly world as “words, words, words” (II, 2, 210), in contrast to the heavenly world, which he characterizes as “silence” (V, 2, 395: “the rest is silence,” that is, “further (i.e., in the heavenly world)—silence”).