 Here we see that, for Strauss, the tension between revelation and philosophy is not one between irrationality and rationality but between fundamentally irreconcilable criteria for what constitutes the rational starting point of truth. Philosophy begins and ends for Strauss with the philosopher’s sense of wonder, while revealed religion begins and ends with adherence to the divine law. Yet as Strauss suggests, this situation puts philosophy at a disadvantage and revelation at an advantage. Never claiming to rest on evident knowledge, revelation can rationally approach its truth claims, not to prove them but to understand them. But philosophy, which values reason first and foremost, is led to the unpleasant truth that it is in fact predicated on something that is and remains unevident: that the human question for knowledge is the right life.