The Temptations of Christ

The temptation of Jesus in the wilderness by Satan is recounted briefly in Mark 1:12ff and elaborated upon in Matthew 4:1-11 and Luke 4:1-13. It occurred after the baptism of Jesus during which God declared him to be his “beloved son.”

 

The Wilderness Temptations Compared

 

All accounts in every version of the New Testament state that Jesus’ sojourn in the wilderness began immediately after the baptism in the Jordan. The immediacy is intricately connected with the baptism events. Mark’s account, coming from Peter according to some scholars, was written a generation after the event. It is also worth asking how the story was passed down over those years.

 

Did Jesus relate the story of the temptation to Peter or any of the other Apostles? Certainly there were no witnesses. If Jesus had recounted the story of the temptation, why is Mark’s account far shorter than that of Matthew and Luke, both gospels written twenty years after Mark’s? In those latter gospels, the order of temptations two and three are reversed.

 

Mark describes Jesus in the wilderness, tempted by Satan. He was “with wild beasts” and angels ministered to him. The other accounts provide far more detail and chronology. Did these details comprise an oral tradition?

 

Chrysostom, an early 4^th Century Church Father, spiritualizes the story by comparing Christ in the wilderness with Eve’s Genesis encounter with Satan; both were alone and tempted, yet Eve succumbed.

 

While this might serve as a misogynist analogy on the part of Chrysostom, the narrative parallels promote more questions than answers. Might such analogies suggest the development of thought based on existing culture?

 

Substance of the Temptations

 

Elaine Pagels, in The Origin of Satan, incorporates the event into a larger framework of good versus evil: “All of the New Testament gospels…depict Jesus’ execution as the culmination of the struggle between good and evil – between God and Satan – that began at his baptism.” (12)

 

Both Matthew and Luke record three separate temptations. In every case, Jesus responded to the temptation with scripture. From Luke 4:1-13 it is clear that Satan also knew scripture, using it to tempt Jesus into proving who he was, a fact Satan already knew from the second temptation.

 

The second temptation is quite remarkable for a number of reasons. In verse 5, the writer states that Satan “led him up” to show him all kingdoms in a “moment of time.” Most modern versions include the phrase “took him up” or “led him up;” the King James Version, however, states that Satan took him up to a “high mountain.”

 

Williams translates the “moment of time” as “a second of time.” Presumably, this included “all kingdoms” within the chronology of mankind, clearly indicating a beginning and an end. Both Satan and Jesus went beyond human time, the living moment, to see all of creation in an instant.

 

In offering this to Jesus, Satan relates that, “It has been handed over to me, and I give it to whomever.” From this Christendom has deduced that the role of Satan and the earth, including its institutions, involves a very direct relationship. For many Christians, it helps to explain evil in the world and why bad things happen to good people.

 

It is also obvious that Satan knew the mission and message of Jesus. This was nothing short of an act of redemption, not only for mankind, i.e. reconciling sinful man with God, but destroying forever a cosmological evil that had upset the celestial equilibrium.

 

Sources:

 

Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, “Mark,” Thomas C. Oden, General Editor (Intervarsity Press, 1988)

Elaine Pagels, The Origin of Satan Random House, 1995)

Charles B. Williams, The New Testament in the Language of the People (Moody Press, 1963)

New American Standard Bible, Reference Edition (Moody Press, 1973)

The New American Bible for Catholics (World Bible Publishers, 1991)