ABSTRACT
The creation story in Genesis is no better than a ridiculous fable out of Homer. Yet within that 'ridiculous' tale lie everlasting verities. Even Christ's parables could seem the work of a simple, ignorant man: yet they too are Sileni: inside them is to be found boundless wisdom. For a more developed meditation on Christ's madness Erasmus turns to the psalms. Christian exegetes found Christ everywhere in the Old Testament, not least in the psalms. In them, Erasmus uncovered, half hidden, half revealed, the mad Christ of the Christians. In his meditation on the psalms, Erasmus allowed himself the freedom to range widely over the whole field of his Christian convictions. Erasmus saw much of the Old Testament as a Silenus, an idea and a word later seized upon by Rabelais in the Prologue to Gargantua. Erasmus explains its meaning in his commentary on the adage 'the Sileni of Alcibiades'.
