IN conformity with the Gospel view of the fact, the customary answer given by the orthodox to this question is, that Jesus, by his submission to John's baptism, signified his consecration to the Messianic office; an explanation which is supported by a passage in Justin, according to which it was the Jewish notion, that the Messiah would be unknown as such to himself and others, until Elijah as his forerunner should anoint him, and thereby make him distinguishable by all. The Baptist himself, however, as he is represented by the first evangelist, could not have partaken of this design; for had he regarded his baptism as a consecration which the Messiah must necessarily undergo, he would not have hesitated to perform it on the person of Jesus (iii. 14.).

Our former inquiries have shown that John's baptism related partly to The Coming One, its recipients promising a believing preparation for the expected Messiah; how then could Jesus, if he was conscious of being himself the The Coming One, submit himself to this baptism? The usual answer from the orthodox point of view is, that Jesus, although conscious of his Messiahship, yet, so long as it was not publicly attested by God, spoke and acted, not as the Messiah, but merely as an Israelite, who held himself bound to obey every divine ordinance relative to his nation. But, here, there is a distinction to be made. Negatively, it became Jesus to refrain from performing any Messianic deeds, or using any of the Messiah's prerogatives, before his title was solemnly attested; even positively, it became him to submit himself to the ordinances which were incumbent on every Israelite; but to join in a new rite, which symbolized the expectation of another and a future Messiah, could never, without dissimulation, be the act of one who was conscious of being the actual Messiah himself. More recent theologians have ^{P.243} therefore wisely admitted, that when Jesus came to John for baptism, he had not a decided conviction of his Messiahship. They indeed regard this uncertainty as only the struggle of modesty.

Paulus, for instance, observes that Jesus, notwithstanding he had heard from his parents of his Messianic destination, and had felt this first intimation confirmed by many external incidents, as well as by his own spiritual development, was yet not over eager to appropriate the honour, which had been as it were thrust upon him.

But, if the previous narratives concerning Jesus be regarded as a history, and therefore, of necessity, as a supernatural one; then must he, who was heralded by angels, miraculously conceived, welcomed into the world by the homage of magi and prophets, and who in his twelfth year knew the temple to be his father's house, have long held a conviction of his Messiahship, above all the scruples of a false modesty. If on the contrary it be thought possible, by criticism, to reduce the history of the childhood of Jesus to a merely natural one, there is no longer anything to account for his early belief that he was the Messiah; and the position which he adopted by the reception of John's baptism becomes, instead of an affected diffidence, a real ignorance of his Messianic destiny. Too modest, continue these commentators, to declare himself Messiah on his own authority, Jesus fulfilled all that the strictest self-judgment could require, and wished to make the decisive experiment, whether the Deity would allow that he, as well as every other, should dedicate himself to the coming Messiah, or whether a sign would be granted, that he himself was the e)rxomenoj. But to do something seen to be inappropriate, merely to try whether God will correct the mistake, is just such a challenging of the divine power as Jesus, shortly after his baptism, decidedly condemns. Thus it must be allowed that, the baptism of John being a baptism ei)j ton e)rxomenon, if Jesus could submit himself to it without dissimulation or presumption, he could not at the time have held himself to be that e)rxomenon, and if he really uttered the words "Let it be so for now," etc. (which, however, could only be called forth by the refusal of the Baptist a refusal that stands or falls with his previous conviction of the Messiahship of Jesus,) he could only mean by them, that it became him, with every pious Israelite, to devote himself by anticipation to the expected Messiah, in baptism, although the evangelist, instructed by the issue, put on them a different construction.

But the relation hitherto discussed is only one aspect of John's baptism; the other, which is yet more strongly attested by history, shows it as a baptisma metanoiaj a "baptism of repentance." The Israelites, we are told Matt. iii. 6, were baptized of John, confessing weir sins: shall we then suppose that Jesus made such a confession? They received the command to repent: did Jesus acknowledge such a command? This difficulty was felt even in the early Church. In the Gospel of the Hebrews, adopted by the Nazarenes, ^{P.246} the narrations directly convey no other meaning, than that the whole scene was externally visible and audible, and thus they have been always understood by the majority of commentators. But in endeavouring to conceive the incident as a real one, a cultivated and reflecting mind must stumble at no insignificant difficulties. First, that for the appearance of a divine being on earth, the visible heavens must divide themselves, to allow of his descent from his accustomed scat, is an idea that can have no objective reality, but must be the entirely subjective creation of a time when the dwelling-place of Deity was imagined to be above the vault of heaven.

Further, how is it reconcilable with the true idea of the Holy Spirit as the divine, all-pervading Power, that he should move from one place to another, like a finite being, and embody himself in the form of a dove? Finally, that God should utter articulate tones in a national idiom, has been justly held extravagant.

Even in the early Church, the more enlightened fathers adopted the opinion, that the heavenly voices spoken of in the biblical history were not external sounds, the effect of vibrations in the air, but inward impressions produced by God in the minds of those to whom he willed to impart himself: thus of the appearance at the baptism of Jesus, Origen and Theodore of Mopsuestia maintain that it was a vision, and not a reality. To the simple indeed, says Origen, in their simplicity, it is a light thing to set the universe in motion, and to sever a solid mass like the heavens; but those who search more deeply into such matters, will, he flunks, refer to those higher revelations, by means of which chosen persons, even waking, and still more frequently in their dreams, are led to suppose that they perceive something with their bodily senses, while their minds only are affected: so that consequently, the whole appearance in question should be understood, not as an external incident, but as an inward vision sent by God; an interpretation which has also met with much approbation among modern theologians.

In the first two Gospels and in the fourth, this interpretation is favoured by the expressions, "were opened to" "he saw," and "I beheld," which seem to imply that the appearance was subjective, in the sense intended by Theodore, when he observes that the descent of the Holy Spirit was not seen by all present, bu that, by a certain spiritual contemplation, it was visible to John alone; to John however we must add Jesus, who, according to Mark, participated in the vision. But in opposition to this stands the statement of Luke: the expressions which he uses, "it came to pass-was opened, and descended, and a ^{P.247} voice came," bear a character so totally objective and exterior, especially if we add the words, "in a bodily form," that (abiding by the notion of the perfect truthfulness of all the Gospel records,) the less explicit narratives must be interpreted by the unequivocal one of Luke, and the incident they recount must be understood as something more than an inward revelation to John and Jesus. Hence it is prudent in Olshausen to allow, in concession to Luke, that there was present on the occasion a crowd of persons, who saw and heard something, yet to maintain that this was nothing distinct or comprehensible. By this means, on the one hand, the occurrence is again transferred from the domain of subjective visions to that of objective phenomena; while on the other, the descending dove is supposed visible, not to the bodily eye, but only to the open spiritual one, and the words audible to the soul, not to the bodily car. Our understanding fails us in this pneumatology of Olshausen, wherein there are sensible realities transcending the senses; and we hasten out of this misty atmosphere into the clearer one of those, who simply tell us, that the appearance was an external incident, but one purely natural.

This party appeals to the custom of antiquity, to regard natural occurrences as divine intimations, and in momentous crises, where a bold resolution was to be taken, to adopt them as guides. To Jesus, spiritually matured into the Messiah, and only awaiting an external divine sanction, and to the Baptist who had already ceded the superiority to the friend of his youth, in their solemn frame of mind at the baptism of the former by the latter, every natural phenomenon that happened at the time, must have been pregnant with meaning, and have appeared as a sign of the divine will. But what the natural appearance actually was, is a point on which the commentators are divided in opinion. Some, with the synoptic writers, include a sound as well as an appearance; others give, with John, an appearance only. They interpret the opening of the heavens, as a sudden parting of the clouds, or a flash of lightning; the dove they consider as a real bird of that species, which by chance hovered over the head of Jesus; or they assume that the lightning or some meteor was compared to a dove. from the manner of its descent. They who include a sound as a part of the machinery in the scene, suppose a clap of thunder, which was imagined by those present to be a Bath Kol, and interpreted into the words given by the first evangelist. Others, on the contrary, understand what is said of audible words, merely as an explanation of the visible sign, which was regarded as an attestation that Jesus was the Son of God. this last opinion sacrifices the synoptic writers, who undeniably speak of an audible voice, to John, and thus contains a critical doubt as to the historical character of the narratives, which, consistently followed out, leads to quite other ground than that of the naturalistic inter- ^{P.248} pretation. If the sound was mere thunder, and the words only an interpretation put upon it by the bystanders; then, as in the synoptic accounts the words are evidently supposed to have been audibly articulated, we must allow that there is a traditional ingredient in these records. So far as the appearance is concerned, it is not to be denied that the sudden parting of clouds, or a flash of lightning, might be described as an opening of heaven; but in no way could the form of a dove be ascribed to lightning or a meteor.

The form is expressly the point of comparison in Luke only, but it is doubtless so intended by the other narrators; although Fritzsche contends that the words "like a dove," w(j peristeran, in Matthew refer only to the rapid motion. The flight of the dove has nothing so peculiar and distinctive, that, supposing this to be the point of comparison, there would not be in any of the parallel passages a variation, a substitution of some other bird, or an entirely new figure. As, instead of this, the mention of the dove is invariable through all the four Gospels, the simile must turn upon something exclusively proper to the dove, and this can apparently be nothing but its form.

Hence those commit the least violence on the text, who adopt the supposition of a real dove. Paulus, however, in so doing, incurred the hard task of showing by a multitude of facts from natural history and other sources, that the dove might be tame enough to fly towards a man: how it could linger so long over one, that it might be said, "it rested upon him," he has not succeeded in explaining, and he thus comes into collision with the narrative of John, by which he had sustained his supposition of the absence of a voice.

IF then a more intelligible representation of the scene at the baptism of Jesus is not to be given, without doing violence to the Gospel text, or without supposing it to be partially erroneous, we are necessarily driven to a critical treatment of the accounts; and indeed, according to Schleiermacher, this is the prevalent course in relation to the above point in the Gospel history. From the narrative of John, as the pure source, it is sought to derive the synoptic accounts, as turbid streams. In the former, it is said, there is no opening heaven, no heavenly voice; only the descent of the Spirit is, as had been promised, a divine witness to John that Jesus is the Messiah; but in what manner the Baptist perceived that the Spirit rested on Jesus, he does not tell us, and possibly the only sign may have been the discourse of Jesus. ^{P.249}

One cannot but wonder at Schleiermacher's assertion, that the manner in which the Baptist perceived the descending spirit is not given in the fourth Gospel, when here also the expression "like a dove", tells it plainly enough; and this particular marks the descent as a visible one, and not a mere inference from the discourse of Jesus. Usteri, indeed, thinks that the Baptist mentioned the dove, merely as a figure, to denote the gentle, mild spirit which he had observed in Jesus. But had this been all, he would rather have compared Jesus himself to a dove, as on another occasion he did to a lamb, than have suggested the idea of a sensible appearance by the picturesque description, I saw the Spirit descending from, heaven like a dove. It is therefore not true in relation to the dove, that first in the more remote tradition given by the synoptic writers, what was originally figurative, was received in a literal sense; for in this sense it is understood by John, and if he have the correct account, the Baptist himself must have spoken of a visible dove-like appearance, as Bleek, Neander, and others, acknowledge.

While the alleged distinction in relation to the dove, between the first three evangelists and the fourth, is not to be found; with respect to the voice, the difference is so wide, that it is inconceivable how the one account could be drawn from the other. For it is said that the testimony which John gave concerning Jesus, after the appearance: "This is the Son of God" (John i. 34), taken in connection with the preceding words: "He that sent me, to baptize, the same said to me etc." , became, in the process of tradition, an immediate heavenly declaration, such as we see in Matthew: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Supposing such a transformation admissible, some instigation to it must be shown.

Now in Isaiah xlii. 1, the Lord says of his servant: "Behold (my servant,) my beloved in whom my soul delights" words which, excepting those between the parentheses, are almost literally translated by the declaration of the heavenly voice in Matthew. We learn from Matt. xii.17ff. that this passage was applied to Jesus as the Messiah; and in it God himself is the speaker, as in the synoptic account of the baptism.

Here then was what would much more readily prompt the fiction of a heavenly voice, than the expressions of John. Since, therefore, we do not need a misapprehension of the Baptist's language, to explain the story of the divine voice, and since we cannot use it for the derivation of the allusion to the dove; we must seek for the source of our narrative, not in one of the Gospel documents, but beyond the New Testament, in the domain of cotemporary ideas, founded on the Old Testament, the total neglect of which has greatly diminished the value of Schleiermacher's critique on the New Testament. ^{P.250} To regard declarations concerning the Messiah, put by poets into the mouth of the Lord, as real, audible voices from heaven, supposed such vocal communications to fall to the lot of distinguished rabbis, and of the Messianic prejudices, which the early Christians both shared themselves, and were compelled, in confronting the Jews, to satisfy. In the passage quoted from Isaiah, there was a divine declaration, in which the present Messiah was pointed to as it were with the finger, and which was therefore specially adapted for a heavenly annunciation concerning him. How could the spirit of Christian legend be slow to imagine a scene, in which these words were audibly spoken from heaven of the Messiah? But we detect a further motive for such a representation of the case by observing, that in Mark and Luke, the heavenly voice addresses Jesus in the second person, and by comparing the words which, according to the Fathers, were given in the old and lost Gospels as those of the voice. Justin, following his Memoirs of the Apostles, thus reports them: "You are my Son, this day have I begotten you." In the Gospel of the Hebrews, according to Epiphanius, this declaration was combined with that which our Gospels contain.

Clement of Alexandria and Augustine seem to have read the words even in some copies of the latter; and it is at least certain that some of our present manuscripts of Luke have this addition. Here were words uttered by the heavenly voice, drawn, not from Isaiah, but from Psalm ii. 7, a passage considered Messianic by Jewish interpreters; in Heb. i. 5, applied to Christ; and, from their being couched in the form of a direct address, containing a yet stronger inducement to conceive it as a voice sent to the Messiah from heaven.

If then the words of the psalm were originally attributed to the heavenly voice, or if they were only taken in connection with the passage in Isaiah, (as is probable from the use of the second person, av el, in Mark and Luke, since this form is presented in the psalm, and not in Isaiah,) we have a sufficient indication that this text, long interpreted of the Messiah, and easily regarded as an address from heaven to the Messiah on earth, was the source of our narrative of the divine voice, heard at the baptism of Jesus. To unite it with the baptism, followed as a matter of course, when this was held to be a consecration of Jesus to his office.

We proceed to the descent of the spirit in the form of a dove.

In this examination, we must separate the descent of the Spirit from the form of the dove, and consider the two particulars apart. That the Divine Spirit was to rest in a peculiar measure on the Messiah, was an expectation necessarily resulting from the notion, that the Messianic times were to be those of the outpouring of the Spirit upon all flesh (Joel iii. 1 ff.); and in Isaiah xi. 1 f. it was expressly said

^{P.251} of the stem of Jesse, that the spirit of the Lord would rest on it in all its fulness, as the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, of might, and of the fear of the Lord. The communication of the Spirit, considered as an individual act, coincident with the baptism, had a type in the history of David, on whom, when anointed by Samuel the spirit of God came from that day forward (1 Sam. xvi. 13). Further, in the Old Testament phrases concerning the imparting of the Divine Spirit to men, especially in that expression of Isaiah, there already lay the germ of a symbolical representation; for that Hebrew verb is applied also to the halting of armies, or, like the parallel Arabic word, even of animals.

The imagination, once stimulated by such an expression, would be the more strongly impelled to complete the picture, by the necessity for distinguishing the descent of the Spirit on the Messiah, in the Jewish view, from the mode in which it was imparted to the prophets (e.g. Isaiah Ixi. 1) in the Christian view, from its ordinary communication to the baptized (e. g. Acts xix. 1 ff.). The position being once laid down, that the Spirit was to descend on the Messiah, the question immediately occurred: How would it descend? This was necessarily decided according to the popular Jewish idea, which always represented the Divine Spirit under some form or other. In the Old Testament, and even in the New (Acts ii. 3), fire is the principal symbol of the Holy Spirit; but it by no means follows that other sensible objects were not similarly used. In an important passage of the Old Testament (Gen. i. 2), the Spirit of God is described as "hovering" a word which suggests, as its sensible representation, the movement of a bird, rather than of fire. Thus the expression in, Deut. xxxii. 11 is used of the hovering of a bird over its young. But the imagination could not be satisfied with the general figure of a bird; it must have a specific image, and every thing led to the choice of the dove.

In the east, and especially in Syria, the dove is a sacred bird, and it is so for a reason which almost necessitated its association with the Spirit moving on the face of the primitive waters (Gen. i. 2).

The brooding dove was a symbol of the quickening warmth of nature it thus perfectly represented the function which, in the Mosaic cosmogony, is ascribed to the Spirit of God, the calling forth of the world of life from the chaos of the first creation. Moreover, when the earth was a second time covered with water, it is a dove, sent by Noah, which hovers over its waves, and which, by plucking an olive leaf, and at length finally disappearing, announces the renewed possibility of living on the earth. Who then can wonder that in Jewish writings, the Spirit hovering over the primeval ^{P.252} waters is expressly compared to a dove, and that, apart from the narrative under examination, the dove is taken as a symbol of the Holy Spirit? How near to this lay the association of the hovering dove with the Messiah, on whom the dove-like spirit was to descend, is evident, without our having recourse to the Jewish writings, which designate the Spirit hovering over the waters, Gen. 1. 2, as the Spirit of the Messiah, and also connect with him its emblem, the Noachian dove.

When, in this manner, the heavenly voice, and the Divine Spirit down-hovering like a dove, gathered from the contemporary Jewish ideas, had become integral parts of the Christian legend concerning the circumstances of the baptism of Jesus; it followed, of coarse, that the heavens should open themselves, for the Spirit, once embodied, must have a road, before it could descend through the vault of heaven.

The result of the preceding inquiries, viz, that the alleged miraculous circumstances of the baptism of Jesus have merely a mythical value, might have been much more readily obtained, in the way of inference from the preceding chapter; for if, according to that, John had not acknowledged Jesus to be the Messiah, there could have been no appearances at the baptism of Jesus, demonstrative to John of his Messiahship. We have, however, established the mythical character of the baptismal phenomena, without presupposing the result of the previous chapter; and thus the two independently obtained conclusions may serve to strengthen each other.

Supposing all the immediate circumstances of the baptism of Jesus unhistorical, the question occurs, whether the baptism itself be also a mere myth. Fritzsche seems not disinclined to the affirmative, for he leaves it undecided whether the first Christians knew historically, or only supposed, in conformity with their Messianic expectations, that Jesus was consecrated to his Messianic office by John, as his Forerunner. This view may be supported by the observation, that in the Jewish expectation, which originated in the story of David, combined with the prophecy of Malachi, there was ^{P.253} adequate inducement to assume such a consecration of Jesus by the Baptist, even without historical warrant; and the mention of John's baptism in relation to Jesus (Acts i. 22,) in a narrative, itself traditional, proves nothing to the contrary. Yet, on the other hand, it is to be considered, that the baptism of Jesus by John furnishes the most natural basis for an explanation of the Messianic project of Jesus. When we have two contemporaries, one of whom announces the proximity of the Messiah's kingdom, and the other subsequently assumes the character of Messiah; the conjecture arises, even without positive information, that they stood in a relation to each other, that the latter owed his idea to the former. If Jesus had the Messianic idea excited in him by John, yet, as is natural, only so far that he also looked forward to the advent of the Messianic individual, whom he did not, in the first instance, identify with himself; he would most likely submit himself to the baptism of John. this would probably take place without any striking occurrences; and Jesus, in no way announced by it as the Baptist's superior, might, as above remarked, continue for some time to demean himself as his disciple.

If we take a comparative retrospect of our Gospel documents, the pre-eminence which has of late been sought for the fourth Gospel, appears totally unmerited. The single historical fact, the baptism of Jesus by John, is not mentioned by the fourth evangelist, who is solicitous about the mythical adjuncts alone, and these he in reality gives no more simply than the synoptic writers, his omission of the opening heaven excepted; for the divine speech is not wanting in his narrative, if we read it impartially. In the words, i. 33: "He that sent me to baptize with water, said to me, The one on whom you will see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he who baptizes with the Holy Ghost," we have not only substantially the same purport as, that conveyed by the heavenly voice in the synoptic Gospels, but also a divine declaration; the only difference being, that here John is addressed exclusively, and prior to the baptism of Jesus. This difference originated partly in the importance, which the fourth evangelist attached to the relation between the Baptist and Jesus, and which required that the criteria of the Messianic individual, as well as the proximity of his kingdom, should have been revealed to John at his call to baptize; and it. might be partly suggested by the narrative, in 1 Sam. xvi., according to which Samuel, being sent by the Lord to anoint a king selected from the sons of Jesse, is thus admonished by the Lord, on the entrance of David; Arise and anoint him, for this is he (v. 12.). The descent of the Spirit, which in David's case follows his consecration, is, by the fourth evangelist, made an antecedent sign of the Messiahship of Jesus. ^{P.254}

AT the beginning of this chapter, we inquired into the subjective views of Jesus in his reception of John's baptism, or the idea which he entertained of its relation to his own diameter. We close this discussion with an inquiry into the objective purpose of the miracles at the baptism of Jesus, or the mode in which they were to subserve the manifestation of his Messiahship.

The common answer to such an inquiry is, that Jesus was thereby inducted to his public office, and declared to be the Messiah, i.e. that nothing was conferred on him, and that simply the character which he already possessed was manifested to others. But, it may be asked, is such an abstraction intended by our narrators? A consecration to an office, effected by divine, co-operation, was ever considered by antiquity as a delegation of divine powers for its fulfilment; hence, in the Old Testament, the kings, as soon as they are anointed, are filled with the spirit of God (1 Sam. x. 6, 10, xvi. 13); and in the New Testament also, the apostles, before entering on their vocation, are furnished with supernatural gifts (Acts ii.). It may, therefore, be beforehand conjectured, that according to the original sense of the Gospels, the consecration of Jesus at his baptism was attended with a supply of higher powers; and this is confirmed by an examination of our narratives. For the synoptic writers all state, that after the baptism, the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness, obviously marking this journey as the first effect of the higher principle infused at his baptism: and in John, the words pneuma ep' auton applied to the descending Spirit, seem to intimate, that from the time of the baptism there was a relation not previously subsisting, between the pneuma a(gion and Jesus.

This interpretation of the marvels at the baptism of Jesus, seems in contradiction with the narratives of his conception. If Jesus, as Matthew and Luke state, was conceived by the Holy Ghost; or it, as John propounds, the divine Logoj, the Word, was made flesh in him, from the beginning of his earthly existence; why did he yet need, at his baptism, a special intromission of the pneuma a(gion?

Several modern expositors have seen, and sought to solve, this difficulty. Olshausen's explanation consists in the distinction between the potential and the actual; but it is self-contradictory, for if the character of the Xristoj which was manifested actu, with the ripened manhood of Jesus, at his baptism, was already present potentially in the child and youth; there must have also been an inward principle of development, by means of which his powers would gradually unfold themselves from within, instead of being first awakened by a sudden descent of the Spirit from without. this, however, does not preclude the possibility that the divine principle, existing in Jesus, as supernaturally conceived, from the moment of his birth, ^{P.255} might need, owing to the human form of its development, some impulse from without; and Luke has more justly proceeded on this contrast between external impulse and inward development. The logoj present in Jesus from his birth, needed, he thinks, however strong might be the inward bent, some external stimulus and vivification, in order to arrive at full activity and manifestation in the world; and that which awakens and guides the divine life-germ in the world is, on apostolic showing, the Holy Spirit. Allowing this, yet the inward disposition and the requisite force of the outward stimulus stand in an inverse relation to each other; so that the stronger the outward stimulus required, the weaker is the inward disposition; but in a case where the inward disposition is consummate, as it must be supposed in Jesus, engendered by the Spirit, or animated by the logoj, the exterior impulse ought to be a minimum, that is, every circumstance, even the most common, might serve as a determination of the inward tendency. But at the baptism of Jesus we see the maximum of exterior impulse, in the visible descent of the divine Spirit; and although we allow for the special nature of the Messianic task, for the fulfilment of which he must be qualified, yet the maximum of inward disposition, which fitted him to be the ui(oj qeou, cannot at the same time be supposed as existing in him from his birth: a consequence which L cke only escapes, by reducing the baptismal scene to a mere inauguration, thus, as has been already shown, contradicting the Gospel records.

We must here give a similar decision to that at which we arrived concerning the genealogies; viz, that, in that circle of the early Christian Church, in which the narrative of the descent of the pneuma on Jesus at his baptism was formed, the idea that Jesus was generated by the same pneuma cannot have prevailed; and while, at the present day, the communication of the divine nature to Jesus is thought of as contemporary with his conception, those Christians must have regarded his baptism as the epoch of such communication.

In fact, those primitive Christians whom, in a former discussion, we found to have known nothing, or to have believed nothing, of the supernatural conception of Jesus, were also those who connected the first communication of divine powers to Jesus with his baptism in the Jordan. For no other doctrine did the orthodox Fathers of the Church more fiercely persecute the ancient Ebionites, with their gnostic fellow-believer Cerinthus, than for this: that the Holy Spirit first united himself with Jesus at his baptism. In the gospel ^{P.256} of the Ebionites it was written that the Pneuma not only descended on Jesus in the form of a dove, but entered into him; and according to Justin, it was the general expectation of the Jews, that higher powers would first be granted to the Messiah, when he should be anointed by his forerunner Elijah.

The development of these ideas seems to have been the following. When the Messianic dignity of Jesus began to be acknowledged among the Jews, it was thought appropriate to connect his coming into possession of the requisite gifts, with the epoch from which he was in some degree known, and which, from the ceremony that marked it, was also best adapted to represent that anointing with the Holy Spirit, expected by the Jews for their Messiah: and from this point of view was formed the legend of the occurrences at the baptism. But as reverence for Jesus was heightened, and men appeared in the Christian Church who were acquainted with more exalted Messianic ideas, this tardy manifestation of Messiahship was no longer sufficient; his relation with the Holy Spirit was referred to his conception: and from this point of view was formed the tradition of the supernatural conception of Jesus. Here too, perhaps, the words of the heavenly voice, which might originally be those of Ps. ii. 7, were altered after Isaiah 43.1. For the words, "This day have I begotten you," were consistent with the notion that Jesus was constituted the Son of God at his baptism; but they were no longer suitable to that occasion, when the opinion had arisen that the origin of his life was an immediate, divine act. By this later representation, however, the earlier one was by no means supplanted, but on the contrary, tradition and her recorders being large-hearted, both narratives that of the miracles at the baptism, and that of the supernatural conception, or the indwelling of the logoj in Jesus from the beginning of his life, although, strictly, they exclude each other, went forth peaceably side by side, and so were depicted by our evangelists, not excepting even the fourth. Just as in the case of the genealogies: the narrative of the imparting of the Spirit at the baptism could not arise after the formation of the idea that Jesus was engendered by the Spirit; but it might be retained as a supplement, because tradition is ever unwilling to renounce any of its acquired treasures.

The transition from the baptism to the temptation of Jesus, as it is made by the synoptic writers, is attended with difficulty in relation both to place and time.

With respect to the former, it strikes us at once, that according to all the synoptic Gospels, Jesus after his baptism was led into ^{P.257} the wilderness to be tempted, implying that he was not previously in the wilderness, although, according to Matt. iii. 1, John, by whom he was baptized, exercised his ministry there. This apparent contradiction has been exposed by the most recent critic of Matthew's gospel, for the sake of proving the statement that John baptized in the wilderness to be erroneous. But they who cannot resolve to reject this statement on grounds previously laid down, may here avail themselves of the supposition, that John delivered his preliminary discourses in the wilderness of Judea, but resorted to the Jordan for the purpose of baptizing; or, if the banks of the Jordan be reckoned part of that wilderness, of the presumption that the evangelists can only have intended that the Spirit led Jesus further into the recesses of the wilderness, but have neglected to state this with precision, because their description of the scene at the baptism had obliterated from their imagination their former designation of the locality of John's agency.

But there is, besides, a chronological difficulty: namely that while, according to the synoptic writers, Jesus, in the plenitude of the Spirit, just communicated to him at the Jordan, betakes himself, in consequence of that communication, for forty days to the wilderness, where the temptation occurs, and then returns into Galilee;

John, on the contrary, is silent concerning the temptation, and appears to suppose an interval of a few days only, between the baptism of Jesus and his journey into Galilee; thus allowing no space for a six weeks' residence in the wilderness. The fourth evangelist commences his narrative with the testimony which the Baptist delivers to the emissaries of the Sanhedrin (i. 19.); the next day (e)paurion) he makes the Baptist recite the incident which in the synoptic Gospels is followed by the baptism (v. 29); again, the next day (e)paurion) he causes two of his disciples to follow Jesus (v. 35); further, the next day (e)paurion v. 44), as Jesus is on the point of journeying into Galilee, Philip and Nathanael join him; and lastly, on, the third day, thn trithn h(meran (ii. 1), Jesus is at the wedding in Cana of Galilee. The most natural inference, is, that the baptism took place immediately before John's narrative of its attendant occurrences, and as according to the synoptic Gospels the temptation followed close on the baptism, both these events must be inserted between v. 28 and 29, as Euthymius supposed. But between that which is narrated down to v. 28, and the sequel from v. 29 inclusive, there is only the interval of a morrow, e)paurion, while the temptation requires a period of forty days; hence, expositors have thought it necessary to give e)paurion the wider sense of "afterwards;" this however is inadmissible, because the expression thn trithn h(meran, "the third day," follows in connection with e)paurion, and restricts its meaning to the morrow. We might therefore be inclined, with Kuin l, to separate, the baptism and the temptation, to place the baptism after v. 28, and to regard the next day's interview between ^{P.258} Jesus and John (v. 29) as a parting visit from the former to the latter: inserting after this the journey into the wilderness and the temptation. But without insisting that the first three evangelists seem not to allow even of a day's interval between the baptism and the departure of Jesus into the wilderness, yet even later we have the same difficulty in finding space for the forty days. For it is no more possible to place the residence in the wilderness between the supposed parting visit and the direction of the two disciples to Jesus, that is, between v. 34 and 35, as Kuin l attempts, than between v. 28 and 29, since the former as well as the latter passages are connected by e)paurion, the morrow. Hence we must descend to v. 43 and 44; but here also there is only the interval of a morrow, and even chap. ii. 1, we are shut out by the phrase trithn h(meran third day, so that, proceeding in this way, the temptation would at last be carried to the residence of Jesus in Galilee, in direct opposition to the statement of the synoptic writers; while, in further contradiction to them, the temptation is placed at a further and further distance from the baptism. Thus neither at v. 29, nor below it, can the forty days' residence of Jesus in the wilderness with the temptation be intercalated; and it must therefore be referred, according to the plan of L cke and others, to the period before v. 19, which seems to allow of as large an interpolation as can be desired, inasmuch as the fourth evangelist there commences his history.

Now it is true that what follows from v. 19 to 28 is not of a kind absolutely to exclude the baptism and temptation of Jesus as earlier occurrences; but from v. 29 to 34, the evangelist is far from making the Baptist speak as if there had been an interval of six weeks between the baptism and his narrative of its circumstances, That the fourth evangelist should have omitted, by chance merely, the story of the temptation, important as it was in the view of the other evangelists, seems improbable; it is rather to be concluded, either that it was dogmatically offensive to him, so that he omitted it designedly, or that it was not current in the circle of tradition from which he drew his materials.

The period of forty days is assigned by all three of the synoptic writers for the residence of Jesus in the wilderness; but to this agreement is annexed the not inconsiderable discrepancy, that, according to Matthew, the temptation by the devil commences after the lapse of the forty days, while, according to the others, it appears to have been going forward during this time; for the words of Mark (i. 13), he was in the wilderness forty days tempted by Satan, and the similar ones of Luke i. 2, can have no other meaning. Added to this, there is a difference between the two latter evangelists; Mark only placing the temptation generally within the duration of forty days, without naming the particular acts of the tempter, which according to Matthew, were subsequent to the forty days; while Luke ^{P.259} mentions both the prolonged temptation (peirazesqai) of the forty days, and the three special temptations (peirasmoi) which followed. It has been thought possible to make the three accounts tally by supposing that the devil tempted Jesus during the forty days, as Mark states; that after the lapse of that time he approached him with the three temptations given by Matthew; and that Luke's narrative. includes the whole, Further, the temptations have been distinguished into two kinds; that which is only generally mentioned, as continued through the forty days being considered invisible, like the ordinary attempts of Satan against men; and the three particularized temptations being regarded as personal and visible assaults, resorted to on the failure of the first. But this distinction is evidently built on the air; moreover, it is inconceivable why Luke should not specify one of the temptations of the forty days, and should only mention the three subsequent ones detailed by Matthew.

We might conjecture that the three temptations narrated by Luke did not occur after the six weeks, but were given by way of specimen from among the many that took place during that time; and that Matthew misunderstood them to be a sequel to the forty days' temptation.But the challenge to make stones bread must in any case be placed at the end of that period, for it appealed to the hunger of Jesus, arising from a forty days' fast (a cause omitted by Mark alone.) Now in Luke also this is the first temptation, and if this occurred at the close of the forty days, the others could not have been earlier. For it is not to be admitted that the separate temptations being united in Luke merely by kai, and not by meta as in Matthew, we are not bound to preserve the order of them, and that without violating the intention of the third evangelist we may place the second and third temptation before the first. Thus Luke is convicted of a want of historical fact; for after representing Jesus as tempted by the devil forty days, he has no details to give concerning this long period, but narrates later temptations; hence we are not inclined, with the most recent critic of Matthew's Gospel to regard Luke's as the original, and Matthew's as the traditional and adulterated narrative. .Rather, as in Mark the temptation is noticed without further details than that it lasted forty days, and in Matthew the particular cases of temptation are narrated, the hunger which induced the first rendering it necessary to place them after the forty days; Luke has evidently the secondary statement, for he unites the two previous ones in a manner scarcely tolerable, giving the forty days' process of temptation, and then bringing forward particular instances as additional facts. It is not on this account to be concluded that Luke wrote after Mark, and in dependence on him; but supposing, on the contrary, that Mark here borrowed from Luke, he extracted only the first and general part of ^{P.260} the latter evangelist's narrative, having ready, in lieu of the further detail of single temptations, an addition peculiar to himself; namely, that Jesus, during his residence in the wilderness was perfectly at home with the wild beasts.

What was Mark's object in introducing the wild beasts, it is difficult to say. The majority of expositors are of opinion that he intended to complete the terrible picture of the wilderness; but to this it is not without reason objected, that the clause would then have been in closer connection with the words "he was in the wilderness," instead of being placed after "tempted." Usteri has hazarded the conjecture that this particularity may be designed to mark Christ as the antitype of Adam, who, in paradise, also stood in a peculiar relation to the animals, and Olshausen has eagerly laid hold on this mystical notion; but it is an interpretation which finds little support in the context. Schleiermacher, in pronouncing this feature of Mark's narrative extravagant doubtless means that this evangelist here, as in other instances of exaggeration, borders on the style of the apocryphal Gospels, for whose capricious fictions we are not seldom unable to suggest a cause or an object, and thus we must rest contented, for the present, to penetrate no further into the sense of his statement.

With respect to the difference between Matthew and Luke in the arrangement of the several temptations, we must equally abide by Schleiermacher's criticism and verdict, namely, that Matthew's order seems to be the original, because it is founded on the relative importance of the temptations, which is the main consideration, the invitation to worship Satan, which is the strongest temptation, being made the final one; whereas the arrangement of Luke looks like a later and not very happy transposition, proceeding from the consideration-alien to the original spirit of the narrative, that Jesus could more readily go with the devil from the wilderness to the adjacent mountain and from thence to Jerusalem, than out of the wilderness to the city and from thence back again to the mountain.

While the first two evangelists close their narrative of the temptation with the ministering of angels to Jesus, Luke has a conclusion peculiar to himself, namely, that the devil "left Jesus for a season" (v. 13), apparently intimating that the sufferings of Jesus were a further assault of the devil; an idea not resumed by Luke, but alluded to in John xiv. 30.

FEW Gospel passages have undergone a more industrious criticism, or have completely run through the circle of all possible ^{P.261} interpretations, than the story in question. For the personal appearance of the devil, which it seems to contain, was a thorn which would not allow commentators to repose on the most obvious interpretation, but incessantly urged them to new efforts. The series of explanations resulting, led to critical comparisons, among which those of Schmidt, Fritzsche, and Usteri, seem to have carried the inquiry to its utmost limits.

The first interpretation that suggests itself on an unprejudiced consideration of the text is this; that Jesus was led by the Divine Spirit received at his baptism, into the wilderness, there to undergo a temptation by the devil, who accordingly appeared to him visibly and personally, and in various ways, and at various places to which he was the conductor, prosecuted his purpose of temptation; but meeting with a victorious resistance, he withdrew from Jesus, and angels appeared to minister to him. Such is the simple exegesis of the narrative, but viewed as a history it is encumbered with difficulties.

To take the portions of the narrative in their proper order: if the Divine Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness with the design of exposing him to temptation, (as Matthew expressly says, a)nhxqh ei)j thn e))rhmon u(po tou Pneumatoj, peirasqhnai,) of what use was this temptation? That it had a vicarious and redeeming value will hardly be maintained, or that it was necessary for God to put Jesus to a trial; neither can it be consistently shown that by this temptation Jesus was to be made like us, and, according to Heb. iv. 15, tempted in all things like as we are; for the fullest measure of trial fell to his share in after life, and a temptation, effected by the devil in person, would rather make him unlike us, who are spared such appearances.

The forty days' fast, too, is singular. One does not understand how Jesus could hunger after six weeks of abstinence from all food, without having hungered long before; since in ordinary cases the human frame cannot sustain a week's deprivation of nourishment. It is true, expositors console themselves by calling the forty days a round number, and by supposing that the expression of Matthew nhsteusaj, and even that of Luke, ou)k e)fagen ou)den, are not to be taken strictly, and do not denote abstinence from all food, but only from that which is customary, so that the use of roots and herbs is not excluded. On no supposition, however, can so much be subtracted from the forty days as to leave only the duration of a conceivable fast; and that nothing short of entire abstinence from all nourishment was intended by the evangelists, Fritzsche has clearly shown, by pointing out the parallel between the fast of Jesus and that of Moses and Elijah, the former of whom is said to have eaten no bread and drunk no water for forty days (Exod. xxxiv. 28; Deut. ix. 9,18), ^{P.262} and the latter, to have gone for the same period in the strength of a meal taken before his journey (1 Kings xix. 8). Bat such a fast wants the credentials of utility, as well as of possibility. From the context it appears, that the fast of Jesus was prompted by the same Spirit which occasioned his journey to the wilderness, and which now moved him to a holy self-discipline, whereby men of God, under the old dispensation, purified themselves, and became worthy of divine visions. But it could not be hidden from that Spirit, that Satan, in attacking Jesus, would avail himself of this very fast, and make the hunger thence arising an accomplice in his temptation. And was not the fast, in this case, a kind of challenge to Satan, an act of presumption, ill becoming even the best warranted self-confidence?

But the personal appearance of the devil is the great stumbling-block in the present narrative. If, it is said, there be a personal devil, he cannot take a visible form; and if that were possible, he would hardly demean himself as he is represented to have done in the Gospels. It is with the existence of the devil as with that of angels-even the believers in a revelation are perplexed by it, because the idea did not spring up among the recipients of revelation, but was transplanted by them, during exile, from a profane soil. Moreover, to those who have not quite shut out the lights of the present age, the existence of a devil is become in the highest degree doubtful.

On this subject, as well as on that of angels, Schleiermacher may serve as an interpreter of modern opinion. He shows that the idea of a being, such as the devil, is an assemblage of contradictions: that as the idea of angels originated in a limited observation of nature, so that of the devil originated in a limited observation of self, and as our knowledge of human nature progresses, must recede further into the background, and the appeal to the devil be henceforth regarded as the resource of ignorance and sloth. Even admitting the existence of a devil, a visible and personal appearance on his part, such as is here supposed, has its peculiar difficulties.

Olshausen himself observes, that there is no parallel to it either in the Old or New Testament. Further, if the devil, that he might have some hope of deceiving Jesus, abandoned his own form, and took that of a man, or of a good angel; it may be reasonably asked whether the passage, 2 Cor. xi. 14, Satan is transformed into an angel of light, be intended literally, and if so, whether this fantastic conception can be substantially true?

As to the temptations, it was early asked by Julian, how the devil could hopc to deceive Jesus, knowing, as he must, his higher ^{P.263} nature? And Theodore's answer that the divinity of Jesus was then unknown to the devil, is contradicted by the observation, that had he not then beheld a higher nature in Jesus, he would scarcely have taken the trouble to appear specially to him in person. In relation to the particular temptations, an assent cannot be withheld from thie canon, that, to be credible, the narrative must ascribe nothing to the devil inconsistent with his established cunning. Now the first temptation, appealing to hunger, we grant, is not ill-conceived; if this were ineffectual, the devil, as an artful tactician, should have had a yet more alluring temptation at hand; but instead of this, we find him, in Matthew, proposing to Jesus the neck-breaking feat of casting himself down from the pinnacle of the temple-a far less inviting experiment than the metamorphosis of the stones. This proposition finding no acceptance, there follows, as a crowning effort, a suggestion which, whatever might be the bribe, every true Israelite would instantly reject with abhorrence-to fall down and worship the devil. So indiscreet a choice and arrangement, of temptations has thrown most modern commentators into perplexity. As the three temptations took place in three different and distant places, the question occurs: how did Jesus pass with the devil from one to the other? Even the orthodox hold that this change of place was effected quite naturally, for they suppose that Jesus set out on a journey, and that the devil followed him. But the expressions, the devil takes him-sets him, "on top of a very high mountain" in Matthew; or "set him," in Luke, obviously imply that the transportation was effected by the devil, and moreover, the particular given in Luke, that the devil showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, points to something magical; so that without doubt the evangelists intended to convey the idea of magical transportations, as in Acts viii. 29, a power of carrying away, aprrdeiv, is attributed to the Spirit of the Lord. But it was early found irreconcileable with the dignity of Jesus that the devil should thus exercise a magical power over him, and carry him about in the air: an idea which seemed extravagant even to those who tolerated the personal appearance of the devil. The incredibility is augmented, when we consider the sensation which the appearance of Jesus on the roof of the temple must have excited, even supposing it to be the roof of Solomon's Porch only, in which case the gilded spears on the Holy Place, and the prohibition to laymen to tread its roof, would not be an obstacle. The well-known question suggested by the last ^{P.264} temptation, as to the situation of the mountain, from whose summit may be seen all the kingdoms of the world, has been met by the information that kosmoj here means no more than Palestine, and its several kingdoms and tetrarchies: but this is a scarcely less ludicrous explanation than the one that the devil showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the world on a map! No answer remains Taut that such a mountain existed only in the ancient idea of the earth as a plain, and in the popular imagination, which can easily stretch a mountain up to heaven, and sharpen an eye to penetrate infinity.

Lastly, the incident with which our narrative closes, namely, that angels came and ministered to Jesus, is not without difficulty, apart from the above-mentioned doubts as to the existence of such beings. For the expression dihkonoun can signify no other kind of ministering than that of presenting food; and this is proved not only by the context, according to which Jesus had need of such tendance, but by a comparison of the circumstances with 1 Kings xix. 5, where an angel brings food to Elijah. But of the only two possible suppositions, both are equally incongruous: that ethereal beings like angels should convey earthly material food, or that the human body of Jesus should be nourished with heavenly substances, if any such exist.

The impossibility of conceiving the sudden removals of Jesus to the temple and the mountain, led some even of the ancient commentators to the opinion, that at least the locality of the second and third temptations was not present to Jesus corporeally and externally, but merely in a vision; while some modern ones, to whom the personal appearance of the devil was especially offensive, have supposed that the whole transaction with him passed from beginning to end within the recesses of the soul of Jesus. Herewith they have regarded the forty days' fast either as a mere internal representation (which, however, is a most inadmissible perversion of the plainly historic text: "he fasted for forty days and forty nights" Matt. iv. 2), or as a real fact, in which case the formidable difficulties mentioned in the preceding section remain valid. The Internal representation of the temptations is by some made to accompany a state of eestatic vision, for which they retain a supernatural cause, deriving it either from God, or from the kingdom of darkness: others ascribe to the vision^{P.265} more of the nature of a dream, and accordingly seek a natural caixse for it, in the reflections with which Jesus was occupied during his waking moments. According to this theory, Jesus, in the solemn mood which the baptismal scene was calculated to produce, reviews his Messianic plan, and together with the true means for its execution, he recals their possible abuses; an excessive use of miracles and a love of domination, by which man, in the Jewish mode of thinking, became, instead of an instrument of God, a promoter of the plans of the devil. While surrendering himself to such meditations, his finely organized body is overcome by their exciting influence; he sinks for some time into deep exhaustion, and then into a dream-like state, in which his mind unconsciously embodies his previous thoughts in speaking and acting forms.

To support this transference of the whole scene to the inward nature of Jesus, commentators think that they can produce some features of the Gospel narrative itself. The expression of Matthew (iv. 1), "He was brought up by the Spirit into the wildereness" and still more that of Luke (iv. 1), he was led by the Spirit" correspond fully to the forms: egenomhn e)n Pneumati, Rev. i. 10, and to similar ones in Ezekiel; and as in these passages inward intuition is alone referred to, neither in the Gospel ones, it is said, can any external occurrence be intended. But it has been with reason objected, that the above forms may be adapted either to a real external abduction by the Divine Spirit (as in Acts viii. 39, 2 Kings ii. 16), or to one merely internal and visionary, as in the quotation from the Apocalypse, so that between these two possible significations the context must decide; that in works replete with visions, as are the Apocalypse and Ezekiel, the context indeed pronounces in favour of a merely spiritual occurrence; but in an historical work such as our Gospels, of an external one. Dreams, and especially visions, are always expressly announced as such in the historical books of the New Testament: supposing, therefore, that the temptation was a vision, it should have been introduced by the words, ei)den e)n o(ramati, e)n e)kstasei, as in Acts ix.12; x. 10; or e)faneh autw kat' onar as in Matt. i. 20; ii. 13. Besides, if a dream had been narrated, the transition to a continuation of the real history must have been marked by a (5teyep0e, being awaked, as in Matt. i. 24; ii, 14, 21; whereby, as Paulus truly says, much labour would have been spared to expositors.

It is further alleged against the above explanations, that Jesus does not seem to have been at any other time subject to eestaeies, and that he nowhere else attaches importance to a dream, or even recapitulates onc.j: To what end God should have excited such a vision in Jesus, it is difficult to conceive, or how the devil should have had power and permission to produce it; especially in Christ.

^{P.266} The orthodox, too, should not forget that, admitting the temptation to be a dream, resulting from the thoughts of Jesus, the false Messianic ideas which were a part of those thoughts, are supposed to have had a strong influence on his mind.

If, then, the story of the temptation is not to be understood as confined to the soul of Jesus, and if we have before shown that it cannot be regarded as supernatural; nothing seems to remain but to view it as a real, yet thoroughly natural, event, and to reduce the tempter to a mere man. After John had drawn attention to Jesus as the Messiah, (thinks the author of the Natural History of the Prophet of Nazareth,) the ruling party in Jerusalem commissioned an artful Pharisee to put Jesus to the test, and to ascertain whether he really possessed miraculous powers, or whether he might not be drawn into the interest of the priesthood, and be induced to give his countenance to an enterprize against the Romans. This conception of the diaboloj is in dignified consistency with that of the a)ggeloj, who appeared after his departure to refresh Jesus, as an approaching caravan with provisions, or as soft reviving breezes. But this view, as Usteri says, has so long completed its phases in the theological world, that to refute it would be to waste words.

If the foregoing discussions have proved that the temptation, as narrated by the synoptic evangelists, cannot be conceived either as an external or internal, a supernatural or natural occurrence, the conclusion is inevitable, that it cannot have taken place in the manner represented.

The least invidious expedient is to suppose that the source of our histories of the temptation was some real event in the life of Jesus, so narrated by him to his disciples as to convey no accurate impression of the fact. Tempting thoughts, which intruded themselves into his soul during his residence in the wilderness, or at various seasons, and under various circumstances, but which were immediately quelled by the unimpaired force of his will, were, according to the oriental mode of thought and expression, represented by him as a temptation of the devil; and this figurative narrative was understood literally. The most prominent objection to this view, that it compromises the impeccability of Jesus, being founded on a dogma, has no existence for the critic: we can, however, gather from the tenor of the Gospel history, that the practical sense of Jesus was thoroughly clear and just; but this becomes questionable, if he could ever feel an inclination, corresponding to the second temptation in Matthew, or even if he merely chose such a form for communicating a more reasonable temptation to his disciples. Further, in such a narrative Jesus would have presented a confused mixture of fiction and truth out of his life, not to be expected from an in- ^{P.267} genuous teacher, as he otherwise appears to be, especially if it be supposed that the tempting thoughts did not really occur to him after his forty days' sojourn in the wilderness, and that this particular is only a portion of the fictitious investiture; while if it be assumed, on the contrary, that the date is historical, there remains the forty days' fast, one of the most insurmountable difficulties of the narrative. If Jesus wished simply to describe a mental exercise in the manner of the Jews, who, tracing the effect to the cause, ascribed evil thoughts to diabolical agency, nothing more was requisite than to say that Satan suggested such and such thoughts to his mind; and it was quite superfluous to depict a personal devil and a journey with him, unless, together with the purpose of narration, or in its stead, there existed a poetical and didactic intention.

Such an intention, indeed, is attributed to Jesus by those who hold that the story of the temptation was narrated by him as a parable, but understood literally by his disciples. This opinion is not encumbered with the difficulty of making some real inward experience of Jesus the basis of the story; it does not suppose that Jesus himself underwent such temptations, but only that he sought to secure his disciples from them, by impressing on them, as a compendium of Messianic and apostolic wisdom, the three following maxims: first, to perform no miracle for their own advantage even in the greatest exigency; secondly, never to venture on a chimerical undertaking in the hope of extraordinary divine aid; thirdly, never to enter into fellowship with the wicked, however strong the enticement. It was long ago observed, in opposition to this interpretation, that the narrative is not easily recognized as a parable, and that its moral is hard to discern. With respect to the latter objection, it. is true that the second temptation would be an ill-chosen image; but the former remark is the more important one. To prove that this narrative has not the characteristics of a parable, the following definition has been recently given: a parable, being essentially historical in its form, is only distinguishable from real history when its agents are of an obviously fictitious character.S this is the case where the subjects are mere generalizations, as in the parables of the sower, the king, and others of a like kind; or when they are, indeed, individualized, but so as to be at once recognized as unhistorical persons, as mere supports for the drapery of fiction, of which even Lazarus, in the parable of the rich man, is an example, though distinguished by a name. In neither species of parable is it admissible to introduce as a subject a person corporcally present, and necessarily determinate and historical. Thus Jesus could not make Peter or any other of his disciples the subject of a parable, ^{P.268} still less himself, for the reciter of a parable is pre-eminently present to his auditors; and hence he cannot have delivered the story of the temptation, of which he is the subject, to his disciples as a parable. To assume that the story had originally another subject, for whom oral tradition substituted Jesus, is inadmissible, because the narrative, even as a parable, has no definite significance unless the Messiah be its subject.

If such a parable concerning himself or any other person, could. not have been delivered by Jesus, yet it is possible that it was made by some other individual concerning Jesus; and this is the view taken by Thelle, who has recently explained the story of the temptation as a parabolic admonition, directed by some partisan of Jesus against the main features of the worldly Messianic hope, with the purpose of establishing the spiritual and moral view of the new economy, Here is the transition to the mythical point of view, which the above theologian shuns, partly because the narrative is not sufficiently picturesque (though it is so in a high degree); partly because it is too pure (though he thus imputes false ideas to the primitive Christians); and partly because the formation of the myth was too near the time of Jesus (an objection which must be equally valid against the early misconstruction of the parable). If it can be shown, on the contrary, that the narrative in question is formed less out, of instructive thoughts and their poetical clothing, as is the case with a parable, than out of Old Testament passages and types, we shall not hesitate to designate it a myth.

SATAN, The evil being and enemy of mankind, borrowed from the Persian religion, was by the Jews, whose exclusiveness limited all that was good and truly human to the people of Israel, viewed as the special adversary of their nation, and hence as the lord. of the heathen states with whom they were in hostility. The interests of the Jewish people being centred in the Messiah, it followed that Satan was emphatically his adversary; and thus throughout the New Testament we find the idea of Jesus as the Messiah associated with that of Satan as the enemy of his person and cause. Christ having appeared to destroy the works of the devil (1 John iii. 8), the latter seizes every opportunity of sowing tares among the good seed (Matt. xiii. 39), and not only aims, though unsuccessfully, at obtaining the mastery over Jesus himself (John xiv. 30), but continually assails the faithful (Eph. vi. 11; 1 Pet. 5. 8). As these attacks of the devil on the pious are nothing else than attempts to get them into ^{P.269} his power, that is, to entice them to sin; and as this can only be done by the indirect suggestion or immediate insinuation of evil, seductive thoughts, Satan had the appellation of 6 iTeipciuv, the tempter.

In the prologue to the book of Job, he seeks to seduce the pious man from God, by the instrumentality of a succession of plagues and misfortunes: while the ensnaring counsel which tin' serpent gave to the woman was early considered an immediate diabolical suggestion.(Wisdom ii. 24; John viii. 44; Rev. xii. 9.)

In the more ancient Hebrew theology, the idea was current that temptation ( isl, LXX. TTEipdeiv) was an act of God himself, who thus put his favourites, as Abraham (Gen. xxii. 1), and the people of Israel (Exod. xvi. 4, and elsewhere), to the test, or in just anger even instigated men to pernicious deeds. But as soon as the idea of Satan was formed, the office of temptation was transferred to him, and withdrawn from God, with whose absolute goodness it began to be viewed as incompatible (James i. 13). Hence it is Satan, who by his importunity obtains the divine permission to put Job to the severest trial through suffering; hence David's culpable project of numbering the people, which in the second book of Samuel was traced to the anger of God, is in the later chronicles (1 Chron. xxii.1) put directly to the account of the devil; and even the well-meant temptation with which, according to Genesis, God visited Abraham, in requiring from him the sacrifice of his son, was in the opinion of the later Jews, undertaken by God at the instigation of Satan.

Nor was this enough-scenes were imagined in which the devil personally encountered Abraham on his way to the place of sacrifice, and in which he tempted the people of Israel during the absence of Moses.

If the most eminent men of piety in Hebrew antiquity were thus tempted, in the earlier view, by God, in the later one, by Satan, what was more natural than to suppose that the Messiah, the Head of all the righteous, the representative and champion of God's people, would be the primary object of the assaults of Satan? And we find this actually recorded as a rabbinical opinion, in the material mode ^{P.270} of representation of the later Judaism, under the form of a bodily appearance and a personal dialogue.

If a place were demanded where Satan might probably undertake such a temptation of the Messiah, the wilderness would present itself from more than one quarter. Not only had it been from Azazel (Lev. xvi. 8-10), and Asmodeus (Tobit viii. 3), to the demons ejected by Jesus (Matt. xii. 43), the fearful dwelling-place of the infernal powers: it was also the scene of temptation for the people of Israel. Added to this, it was the habit of Jesus to retire to solitary places for still meditation and prayer (Matt. xiv. 13; Mark i. 35; Luke vi. 12; John vi. 15); to which after his consecration to the Messianic office he would feel more than usually disposed. It is hence possible that, as some theologians! have supposed, a residence of Jesus in the wilderness after his baptism (though not one of precisely forty days' duration) served as the historical foundation of our narrative; but even without this connecting thread, both the already noticed choice of place and that of time are to be explained by the consideration, that it seemed consonant with the destiny of the Messiah that, like a second Hercules, he should undergo such a trial on his entrance into mature age and the Messianic office.

But what had the Messiah to do in the wilderness? That the Messiah, the second Saviour, should like his typical predecessor, Moses, on Mount Sinai, submit himself to the holy discipline of fasting, was an idea the more inviting, because it furnished a suitable introduction to the nrst temptation which presupposed extreme hunger. The type of Moses and that of Elijah (1 Kings xix. 8), determined also the duration of this fast in the wilderness, for they too had lasted forty days; moreover, the number forty was held sacred in Hebrew antiquity.

Above all, the forty days of the temptation of Jesus seem, as Olshausen justly observes, a miniature image of the forty years' trial in the wilderness, endured by the people of Israel as a penal emblem of the forty days spent by the spies in the land of Canaan (Numb. xiv. 34). For, that in the temptations of Jesus there was a special reference to the temptation of Israel in the wilderness, is shown by the circumstance that all the passages cited by Jesus in opposition to Satan are drawn from the recapitulatory description of the journeyings of the Israelites In Deut. vi. and viii.

The apostle Paul too, 1 Cor. x. 6, enumerates a series of particulars from the behaviour of the Israelites in the wilderness, with the consequent judgments of God, and warns Christians against similar ^{P.271} conduct, pronouncing the punishments inflicted on the ancients to be types for the admonition of the living, his contemporaries, on whom the ends of the world were come; wherefore, he adds, let Mm that thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. It is not probable that this was merely the private opinion of the apostle -it seems rather to have been a current notion that the hard trials of the people led by Moses, as well as of Moses individually, were types of those which awaited the followers of the Messiah in the catastrophe which he was to usher in, and still more emphatically the Messiah himself, who here appears as the antitype of the people, gloriously overcoming all the temptations under which they had fallen.

The Israelites were principally tempted by hunger during their wandering in the wilderness; hence the first temptation of the Messiah was determined beforehand. The rabbis, too, among the various temptations of Abraham which they recount, generally reckon hunger. That Satan, when prompting Jesus to seek relief from his hunger by an exertion of his own will instead of awaiting it in faith from God, should make use of the terms given in our Evangelists, cannot be matter of surprise if we consider, not only that the wilderness was stony, but that to produce a thing from stones was a proverbial expression, denoting the supply of an object altogether wanting (Matt. iii. 9; Luke xix. 40), and that stone and bread formed a common contrast (Matt. vii. 9). The reply of Jesus to this suggestion is in the same train of ideas on which the entire first act of temptation is constructed; for he quotes the lesson which, according to Deuteronomy viii. 3, the people of Israel tardily learned from the temptation of hunger (a temptation, however, under which they were not resigned, but were provoked to murmur): namely, that man shall not live by bread alone, etc.

But one temptation would not suffice. of Abraham the rabbis enumerated ten; but this number was too large for a dramatic narrative like that in the Gospels, and among lower numbers the sacred three must have the preference. Three times during his spiritual contest in Gethsemane Jesus severed himself from his disciples (Matt. xxvi.); three times Peter denied his Lord, and thrice Jesus subsequently questioned his love (John xxi.). In that rabbinical passage which represents Abraham as tempted by the devil in person, the patriarch parries three thrusts from him; in which particular, as well as in the manner in which Old Testament texts are bandied by the parties, the scene is allied to the Gospel one. ^{P.272}

The second temptation (in Matthew) was not determined by its relation to the precceding; hence its presentation seems abrupt, and the choice fortuitous or capricious. This may be true with respect to its form, but its substantial meaning is in close connection with the foregoing temptation, since it also has reference to the conduct of the Jewish people in the wilderness. To them the warning was given in Deut. vi. 16. to tempt God no more as they had tempted him at Massah; a warning which was reiterated 1 Cor. x. 9. to the members of the new covenant, though more in allusion to Numb. xxi. 4. To this crying sin, therefore, under which the ancient people of God had fallen, must the Messiah be incited, that by resisting the incitement he might compensate, as it were, for the transgression of the people. Now the conduct which was condemned in them as a tempting of the Lord, was occasioned by a dearth of water, and consisted in their murmurs at this deprivation. This, to later tradition, did not seem fully to correspond to the terms; something more suitable was sought for, and from this point of view there could hardly be a more eligible choice than the one we actually find in our history of the temptation, for nothing can be more properly called a tempting of God than so audacious an appeal to his extraordinary succour, as that suggested by Satan in his second temptation. The reason why a leap from the pinnacle of the temple was named as an example of such presumption, is put into the mouth of Satan himself.

It occurred to the originator of this feature in the narrative, that the passage Ps. xci. 11. was capable of perversion into a motive for a rash act. It is there promised to one dwelling under the protection of the Lord, (a designation under which the Messiah was preeminently understood,) that angels should bear Idm vp in their hands, lest at any time he should dash his foot against a stone.

Bearing up in their hands to prevent a. fall, seemed to imply a precipitation from some eminence, and this might induce the idea that the divinely-protected Messiah might hurl himself from a height with impunity. But from what height? There could be no hesitation on this point. To the pious man, and therefore to the head of all the pious, is appropriated, according to Ps. xv. 1; xxiv. 3, the distinction of going up to the Lord's holy hill, and standing within his holy place: hence the pinnacle of the temple, in the presump- ^{P.273} tuous mode of inference supposed, might be regarded as the height from which the Messiah could precipitate himself unhurt.

The third. temptation which Jesus underwent-to worship the devil-is not apparent among the temptations of God's ancient people. But one of the most fatal seductions by which the Israelites were led astray in the wilderness was that of idolatry; and the apostle Paul adduces it as admonitory to Christians. Not only is this sin derived immediately from the devil in a passage above quoted; but in the later Jewish idea, idolatry was identical with the worship of the devil (Baruch iv. 7; 1 Cor. x. 20). How, then, could the worship of the devil be suggested to the Messiah in the form of a temptation? The notion of the Messiah as he who, being the King of the Jewish people, was destined to be lord of all other nations, and that of Satan as the ruler of the heathen worldf to be conquered by the Messiah, were here combined. That dominion over the world which, in the christianized imagination of the period, the Messiah was to obtain by a long and painful struggle, was offered him as an easy bargain if he would only pay Satan, the tribute of worship. This temptation Jesus meets with the maxim inculcated on the Israelites, Deut. vi. 13, that God alone is to be worshipped, and thus gives the enemy a final dismissal.

Matthew and Mark crown their history of the temptation with the appearance of angels to Jesus, and their refreshing him with nourishment after his long fast and the fatigues of temptation. This incident was prefigured by a similar ministration to Elijah after his forty days' fast, and was brought nearer to the imagination by the circumstance that the manna which appeased the hunger of the people in the wilderness was named, a)rtoj a)ggelwn angels' food.(Ps. Ixxviii. 25. LXX; Wisdom xvi. 20).