| 54. The History of the Temptation Conceived in the Sense of the Evangelists. | ||||
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. | ||||