| 55. Temptation Considered as a Natural Occurrence; and Also as a parable. | ||||
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. | ||||