“The First and Wisest of Them All”

Abstract

Focuses on the episode in book four in which Satan tempts Jesus with the glories of the classical tradition of learning symbolized by Athens. The rejection of Athens should be seen as “an ironic response to the question of what true and redemptive knowledge is.” The poem implicitly rejects a “hermeneutics of validity” for authentic thinking. The Son’s knowledge is inseparable from its expression.