Even supposing that what you—or anyone else—have claimed to find in the prophets’ speech does not contradict plain reason, we could still not be sure that the person voicing that claim actually conceives what he is saying; he may simply have read into their words something they never meant.

How, then, if he himself has no conception of what he has said? In fact, they themselves admit that it is unintelligible to them and that they do not comprehend it. And what if the very statement he advances is, to sound reason, demonstrably false?

These are three preliminary points: even were he to grasp them and then say, “I have understood the prophet’s words,” his alleged understanding would prove nothing. What, then, if he goes on to say, “I have not understood them at all; this lies beyond the capacity of reason”?

Even such a claim would carry no evidentiary force, nor would we be obliged to accept that the prophets intended by their words a meaning he himself concedes is above the scope of the intellect—especially once it is clear that the meaning in question is false, of a kind that no rational person, prophet or otherwise, could ever have uttered.