At the beginning of Homer's Odyssey, his son Telemachus is at home wishing for his father's return and not knowing if he is dead or alive. The house is full of the suitors who are drinking all the wine and eating all the food, trying to woo his mother Penelope.
The Gods on Olympus decide it's time for Odysseus to return home from the island of Ogygia, and in referencing Orestes avenging the death of his father Agamemnon by killing his murderer Aegisthus, it is determined that Athena Goddess of wisdom will go to visit Telemachus and inspire him to grow up, take his place as the head of the household and put the suitors in their place - to tell him that his father is still alive and will return, and that Telemachus should be ready to kill the suitors either fighting them one at a time, or through some other plan.
So when Athena arrives, Telemachus greets her and welcomes her, setting out food and drink, and they get to talking. Their meeting is quite brief, but by the end of the conversation, Athena transforms Telemachus' inner character from that of a child, to that of a man.
In my translation, Athena says to him, "Childishness no longer beseems your years: you must put it away."
This transformative meeting with the 'clear-eyed goddess of wisdom' which in an instant transforms Telemachus from having an inner state of childishness to an inner state of manliness, seems to me to have been a reference from a work of epic literature which Paul would have surely been familiar with. And I think it's possible that when he wrote the part about putting away childish things in the passage on love, he was thinking about the instant and transformative nature of initiatory awakening in terms of wisdom, in the form of Athena, visiting Telemachus and instantly transforming him.
The Gods on Olympus decide it's time for Odysseus to return home from the island of Ogygia, and in referencing Orestes avenging the death of his father Agamemnon by killing his murderer Aegisthus, it is determined that Athena Goddess of wisdom will go to visit Telemachus and inspire him to grow up, take his place as the head of the household and put the suitors in their place - to tell him that his father is still alive and will return, and that Telemachus should be ready to kill the suitors either fighting them one at a time, or through some other plan.
So when Athena arrives, Telemachus greets her and welcomes her, setting out food and drink, and they get to talking. Their meeting is quite brief, but by the end of the conversation, Athena transforms Telemachus' inner character from that of a child, to that of a man.
In my translation, Athena says to him, "Childishness no longer beseems your years: you must put it away."
This transformative meeting with the 'clear-eyed goddess of wisdom' which in an instant transforms Telemachus from having an inner state of childishness to an inner state of manliness, seems to me to have been a reference from a work of epic literature which Paul would have surely been familiar with. And I think it's possible that when he wrote the part about putting away childish things in the passage on love, he was thinking about the instant and transformative nature of initiatory awakening in terms of wisdom, in the form of Athena, visiting Telemachus and instantly transforming him.
