Precious materials and salt

Meaning

II.2.22 praises a salt whose destructive impurities have been removed: the after-purification condition governs the claimed resistance to fire and power to preserve radical moisture. The author then calls Christ the Teacher of Teachers and explains why Christ compared the apostles to salt. Diamonds, rubies, pearls, gold and silver are imagined alternative comparisons which, the author argues, Christ could have chosen but did not; they are not part of the cited biblical wording.

The historical text attributes the medicine drawn from earth to Solomon; modern note 129 identifies the parallel in Sirach/Ecclesiasticus 38:4 and the apostles’ salt comparison in Matthew 5:13. The printed attribution and the apparatus identification remain separate. The religious comparisons express the author’s scale of value and salt’s claimed superiority, not independent proof of a particular salt’s medical efficacy.