53. Place and Time of the Temptation of Jesus-Divergencies of the Evangelist... (Chapter 2. Baptism and Temptation of Jesus.) (The Life of Jesus Critically Examined) (Strauss, David Friedrich)

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.