Cast yourself down from this high place, said the devil to Jesus. Don’t you know the scripture? asked Satan. God’s angels will protect you, so that you won’t dash your foot against a stone. Satan is ...

We should read it not as an assortment of poems and songs but as a single rhapsody on God’s covenant promises. Late in the fourth century, a man named Palladius of Galatia left his home (somewhere in ...