Dissident Dispatches

by Andrew Fraser

  Reasons for Differences

  The most striking difference in the Synoptic accounts of the temptation of Jesus is that between Mark’s brief narrative, on the one hand, and the comparatively detailed story recounted by Matthew and Luke, on the other. The conventional explanation for this contrast is that Mark’s was the first Gospel to be written and that the fuller accounts in Matthew and Luke draw not just upon Mark but on another common source, since lost, known to scholars as Q (standing for the German word Quelle meaning “source”). John Nolland, for example, suggests that “Luke clearly shares a common source with Matthew” and almost “entirely replaces the Markan temptation narrative with an account based on this second source”.849 Some scholars even posit the possibility of a Q2 or Q3 to explain differences between Matthew and Luke.850 On such hypotheses, Matthew and Luke reproduce the story in Q (1, 2, or 3…) “with only minor modification (the most significant of which is an inversion of the order of the second and third temptations)”.851

  Leon Morris suggests that the reverse order of the second and third temptations in Matthew and Luke “has never been explained satisfactorily”. In his view, “[a]ll the suggestions seem to give psychological reasons for the variation, and in the end these must remain subjective estimates”.852 So, for example, RT France believes that Matthew sought to bring “the central issue…into the open” by ending his narrative “on a more decisive note” as the devil “drops his disguise” and issues “a blatant challenge to God’s authority” by asking Jesus to “fall down and worship me” (Matt 4:9). When the devil ups the ante in that final throw of the dice, Matthew again exercises his “subjective” authorial licence to symbolize the escalation of moral hazard with each succeeding temptation “by the geographical escalation from the wilderness to a high point in Jerusalem and then to a very high mountain”.853

  Darrell L Bock agrees that “it is…clear that one of the Gospel writers has rearranged the order [of the temptations] for literary reasons”.854 In his view, Luke presents the temple “temptation last, because it places the climax in the city where ultimately the drama surrounding Jesus’ life will be resolved”. Nolland notes that of the “many suggestions for the changed order only the Jerusalem climax is at all persuasive”. Clearly, the “central motif of the third temptation is the facing of death in Jerusalem. This temptation occupies the climactic third position because just such a facing of death in Jerusalem represents the climax of Jesus’ ministry (Luke 9:51; 13:32–33)”.855 Such “subjective” literary reasons for the relative ordering of the three temptations are difficult to disentangle from what might be considered the more “objective” theological motives driving the Gospel writers.

  Theological Significance of Textual Variations

  Bock acknowledges that Luke’s motives “for his rearrangement” were not purely literary but theological as well. At the same time, he insists that the “small” differences between Luke and Matthew were “theologically irrelevant”.856 There is some reason to question that judgement. Clearly, Matthew’s authorial decisions were shaped by his own distinctive theological motives. Puskas and Crump contend that Matthew “was almost certainly a Jewish Christian deeply concerned about the fate of Israel”. His accusatory attitude towards Israel’s leadership was not a criticism of “Judaism per se…but of the spiritual obstinacy that blinded the people of Israel to their promised deliverer”. For that reason, Matthew heard echoes of the recurrent apostasy of the Jewish people in the voice of the tempter.857 Schmutzer maintains, therefore, that “it is arguable that Matthew has intentionally set the order of Jesus’ tests to reflect the form of the Shema — a spiritual plumb line by which the people were constantly measured…Viewing the tests in light of the Shema helps explain the movement beginning with the inner being, then adding the whole person, and finally concluding with all one claims as one’s own”.858

  Luke on the other hand was more preoccupied with the spread of the gospel to the Gentiles.859 Like Matthew and Jesus himself, Luke certainly understood “the devil’s tests as redemptive distortions, unacceptable detours” from Jesus’ divinely-appointed messianic mission.860 Almost by definition, as a Gentile Christian Luke was less concerned than Matthew with the fate of Israel according to the flesh. Instead, Luke saw a figurative leap by Jesus from the Jerusalem temple to the ends of the earth as the inevitable and necessary fulfilment of Scripture. Once his third temptation failed to move Jesus, the devil, too, must have suspected that the very nature of Jesus’ messianic mission entailed some such leap of faith. For that reason, Luke ends his story with the devil awaiting a more opportune time to annul the work of the Holy Spirit by turning the faithful Son of God away from the Father (Luke 4:13).

  The divergent theological perspectives implicit in the reversal in the order of the second and third temptations might have prompted some first century readers to harmonize the divergent texts. Such a possibility is consistent with some version of the venerable Augustinian and Griesbach hypotheses disputing the temporal priority of Mark’s Gospel.861 In other words, there may be no need to explain the differences between Mark, on the one hand, and Matthew and Luke, on the other, by reference to one or more purely hypothetical Q manuscripts. Perhaps the story of the temptation of Jesus in Mark’s Gospel aims simply to transcend the “subjective” differences between Jewish and Gentile Christians arising out of the contrasting narratives first provided by Matthew and Luke.

  Conclusion

  Matthew and Luke rely heavily upon Old Testament quotations which readily resonate with an Exodus theme: Jesus undergoes a forty-day period of testing reminiscent of the forty years the Israelites spent in the wilderness following their flight from Egypt. Throughout Matthew and, especially, Luke, the new Exodus remains a work in progress. Mark’s temptation story is about Paradise Restored. As such, it is more than a simple condensation of the temptation narratives in Matthew and Luke. Among the shortest of short stories, Mark 1:12–13 also presents a finely-focused image of the fulfilment of prophecy. Jesus appears as a second Adam in a wilderness transformed into the Garden of the Lord, the sacred space of a new creation in which wild beasts and angels live together in the harmony of the Holy Spirit. Matthew 4:1–11 and Luke 4:1–13 are windows into the heart of the historical Jesus, at once the Son of God and the King of the Jews. Mark’s hypothetically subsequent revision of the temptation story effectively distils from either or both Matthew and Luke the perfected telos of national Israel’s covenantal history

  3: Exegesis Paper

  The Temptation of Jesus in Mark 1:12–13: Satan versus the Perfected Telos of Israel’s Covenantal History

  Introduction

  For centuries, New Testament scholars have debated the order in which the Synoptic Gospels appeared. Very early on, Augustine (354–430 AD) supported the canonical view that Matthew was written prior to Mark. But more recently, the dominant view has been that Mark was one of the sources (along with Qⁿ) for both Matthew and Luke.862 If there were major discrepancies between the temptation narratives presented in the Synoptic Gospels, their relative priority might pose an exegetical problem. True, Mark’s temptation story is much shorter than the parallel passages in Matthew and Luke. But, despite that difference, the areas of agreement between the three Gospels include the essential elements not just of the temptation but of the baptism of Jesus as well. Indeed, the baptism and temptation stories in each of the accounts should be read together. In all three Gospels, the baptism stories agree that (1) Jesus was baptized by John; (2) the heavens were torn asunder; (3) a voice from heaven was heard; (4) the voice declared Jesus to be his Son; and (5) the Spirit descended. Similarly, the temptation narratives agree that (1) the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness; (2) Jesus’ sojourn there lasted forty days; and (3) he was tempted by Satan.863

  If one believes that the two longer but remarkably similar temptation stories found in Matthew 4:1–11 and Luke 4:1–13 built upon and embellished Mark’s spare account, they can be read as exemplary exe
geses of the account in Mark 1:12–13. Alternatively, Mark’s version can be read as a condensation of lengthier, more detailed accounts that Mark found in the other two gospels. Either way, Matthew and Luke help us to place Mark’s vision of Paradise Restored in the historical context of first century Judaism. In Mark, while Satan tempts Jesus for forty days, the divine presence of the Son and the Holy Spirit in communion with the Father transforms the wilderness into a sacred space. Jesus becomes a second Adam in another Garden of the Lord, living together with angels and wild beasts in the harmony of the Holy Spirit.864 In effect, Mark projects a mythic vision of prophecy fulfilled: having been tempted by Satan in 1:13, the Son of God emerges out of the desert in 1:14 as the perfected telos — the predestined point and purpose — of national Israel’s covenantal history.

  Whether Matthew and Luke predate the Gospel of Mark or expand upon it, their temptation stories provide essential insight into the means by which Satan tempted Jesus in the desert. They reveal the psychic fault line within Jesus’ messianic consciousness. The Son of God is bound by filial loyalty to the Father; yet Jesus is also by right the uncrowned king of the Jews, and hence bound by religious obligations rooted in blood, law, and tradition to share and respect the worldly ambitions of his tribe and people. Mark’s mythic image of Jesus remains curiously passive while Satan actively works his wiles. By contrast, in Matthew and Luke, Jesus resolutely resists three temptations. Significantly, Satan offered enticements calculated to fire the imagination of first-century Jewish Zealots keen to restore Israel to her former imperial glory. Two of those temptations call upon miraculous powers possessed by the Son of God while the third prospect of dominion over all the kingdoms of the world is pitched to a king of the Jews. Significantly, in response to the devil Jesus cites three passages from Deuteronomy, calling to mind the forty years that Israel spent in the wilderness being tested by God. Satan himself quotes Psalm 91, providing yet another important clue to the Jewish identity of the figure — known variously as “Satan,” the “devil,” or the “tempter” — who tempts Jesus by means which remain mysterious to the naïve reader of Mark 1:13.

  Who Was Satan?

  The identity of Satan is, therefore, the key to the meaning of the temptation story in Mark 1:12–13, no less than those in Matthew 4:1–11 and Luke 4:1–13. To make a successful identification, all three temptation narratives must be read with special attention to their historical and theological context. By treating these temptation stories in isolation or in ripping them out of their covenantal context, modern Christians easily miss the historically unique and unrepeatably messianic significance of the baptism and temptation of Jesus. To fully understand the temptation narrative in Mark, we must recognize just who and what the cryptic figure of Satan represents and why he sought to distort Jesus’ redemptive mission.865

  Matthew 4:1–11 and Luke 4:1–13 help us to see that Satan’s three temptations reflect the irrepressible conflict between the two personae incarnate in Jesus’ messianic consciousness, the exalted Son of God and the historical king of the Jews. During those forty days in the desert, Jesus struggled to reconcile those potentially contradictory roles. In Mark 1:13 Jesus resolves his messianic identity crisis; in doing so, he learns how to preach the Word to his people — the lost sheep of Israel (Matt 10:6) — in accordance with the will of the Father. He also learns that Satan will dog his footsteps to the cross and beyond.

  Jesus’ sojourn in the wilderness prepared him to do battle for the hearts and minds of his people. Centuries earlier, Moses had gone to his own spiritual boot camp where he “stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights” to receive the law and commandments that God had prepared for the instruction of the Israelites (Exodus 24:12–18). After his death and resurrection but prior to his ascension, Jesus, acting through the Holy Spirit, gathered his apostles for another period of forty days to give them instructions “about the kingdom of God” (Acts 1:2–3). Clearly, the temptation of Jesus in Mark 1:12–13 encapsulates the world-historical conflict between the Israel of God and Old Covenant Israel according to the flesh. In fact, the same seismic shift in the foundations of the cosmic temple drove the entire cast of characters in Mark’s Gospel towards the creation of a new heaven and a new earth.866

  Accordingly, some scholars frankly describe the wilderness meeting between Jesus and Satan “as a battle between real beings”. Now the idea of Satan as a real being is as grating to the secular modernist mindset as the notion that the historical Jesus was the Son of God. But crediting the idea of a really-existing Satan may be preferable to the no less implausible view that “the temptation [was] a strictly internal psychological experience for Jesus” in which he reflects “in private on his baptismal call”. Darrell L Bock insists that the temptation of Jesus “is much more than a mere issue of internal psychological reflection. Whatever form the confrontation took, it was clear that two personalities were in the ring of battle”.867 Unfortunately, Bock leaves unanswered the historical and theological questions of just who sought to lead Jesus down the path to temptation, what was at stake for that person, and why he chose to confront Jesus just after his baptism by the Holy Spirit and before the beginning of his earthly ministry.

  Whatever it means to say that Satan possessed a real personality, he must have appeared to Jesus in a vision rather than as a flesh and blood individual. Certainly, the fact that there is no mountain high enough to see all the kingdoms of the earth spread out before one strongly suggests that the transportation of Jesus to that setting by Satan “was not physical but visionary. There in the wilderness Jesus ‘found himself’ first on top of the Jerusalem temple and then on an impossibly high mountain with a view of the whole world”.868 In other words, the gospel writers all present Satan as “a distinct celestial personality”869 who appeared to Jesus “as an individual spiritual enemy of God and his people”. Such a mythic image of the devil “is found only rarely in the [Old Testament] but by the first century had developed…into a standard feature of Jewish belief which the Christian church fully shared”.870 Presumably Jesus experienced Satan as a really existing spiritual power actually endowed with the capacity to make good on his promises. The question then becomes: Does the Satan who appears in the Synoptic temptation narratives represent something more than a fictional product of first century Jewish mythology or a psychological figment of the imagination? Those who answer that question in the affirmative are divided into two broad camps that may be described as the existentialists and the historicists.

  Existentialism versus Historicism

  Existentialist exegetes may also be described as Christian humanists. Scholars in this camp “place the emphasis on Jesus being tempted in a fully human manner with the temptations that typically befall the Christian”.871 As John Nolland puts it, “His temptations are superlative instances of every person’s temptations”.872 According to Susan R Garrett, Mark, in particular, “invites readers to find a place for themselves in Jesus’ story”. Mark’s Gospel as a whole, she writes, “casts members of his audience into the role of ‘tested followers,’ those whose commitment and loyalty to Jesus are tested” but who nevertheless persist in following him on the straight and narrow path”.873 The temptations in the wilderness are but one in a constant stream of tests and challenges faced by Jesus throughout his ministry and by his followers in the centuries to come. Even a scholar as deeply committed to the quest for the historical Jesus as NT Wright expounds the existentialist approach in his popular exegesis of the temptation story in Matthew: “The temptations we all face, day by day and at critical moments of decision and vocation in our lives, may be very different from those of Jesus, but they have exactly the same point”.874 No less than Jesus, we ordinary folk must confront the spiritual enemy of God in the innermost depths of our being.

  The most developed and rhetorically powerful existentialist, or Christian humanist, readings of the temptation stories can be found in two twentieth-century books: If You
Are the Son of God by the French scholar, Jacques Ellul and Between God and Satan by Helmut Thielicke, a German theologian. Both writers effectively abstract Satan from his first century Jewish context.875 They also detach the temptation from the baptism story while universalizing the three specific temptations held out to Jesus by Satan. Like Garrett, Ellul sees the prefatory temptations in the wilderness as a symbolic summation by all three evangelists of the “temptations Jesus was subjected to throughout his whole ministry” simply on account of his humanity. In the temptation narratives “the devil is only the representative of all of humanity and speaks in its name. He is only an artificial and symbolic character, the real tempter being humanity, both individual and social”.876