The Real Temptations of Christ

Temptations are funny things. Some things that are irresistible enticements for one person don’t even merit a second thought for another. For an ordinary mortal, turning a stone into bread isn’t a temptation, it’s an impossibility. Yet it is these sort of “temptations” that confront Jesus immediately after his baptism in Matthew and Luke.

The Synoptic Temptations

Mark’s account of the temptation in the desert is terse:

And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him. (Mk 1:12-13)

Both Matthew (4:1-11) and Luke (4:1-13) expand upon this brief statement with three specific temptations of the devil, and Jesus dismisses each temptation with a quote from Deuteronomy:

1. Turn stones into bread. – “one does not live by bread alone” (Deut 8:3)
2. Throw yourself from the pinnacle of the Temple. – “you shall not tempt the Lord” (Deut 6:16)
3. Worship me and gain the kingdoms of the world. – “you shall worship the Lord” (Deut 6:13)

The fact that Matthew and Luke cite both the same temptations and OT quotes is strong evidence that each drew from a common tradition that was unknown to Mark. Biblical scholars call this hypothetical collection of sayings the Q document.

The major difference between Matthew and Luke in this episode is that Luke reverses the order of temptations #2 and #3 so that the climax occurs at the pinnacle of the Temple. So which order was original in Q? Most commentators think Matthew retains the original order as the devil raises the stakes – as well as the altitude – throughout and the Deuteronomy quotes appear in reverse order. As we have seen in the discussion on the infancy narrative, Luke has a fascination with the Temple and Jerusalem, beginning and ending his gospel in the Temple. A significant chunk of his gospel (9:51-19:27) is dedicating to describing Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem, a feature unique to Luke.

If Matthew is closer to the Q source, Luke modifies it in an effort to make the temptations more believable. In Matthew, the devil asks the hungry Jesus to turn all the stones into bread. Not wishing to turn the desert into a bakery, Luke’s devil suggests he only transform one stone. Similarly, Matthew’s devil takes Jesus to a “very high mountain” to show him all the kingdoms of the world. Perhaps knowing that no mountain is tall enough to see the entire world, Luke’s devil shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the world in an instant.

The variation on the order of the temptations is a good sign that we’re not dealing on the level of history, but of theology. The point of the desert temptation scene seems to be that Jesus is recapitulating the history of Israel with his forty days representing Israel’s forty years wandering in the desert. In the context of the citations from Deuteronomy, Moses reminds the Israelites of how, during those forty years, they were humbled by hunger, tested God, and tempted to follow foreign gods. But, unlike Israel, Jesus did not succumb to these temptations.

Opting more for Iago or Emperor Palpatine, contemporary liturgical painter Eric Armusik foregoes a more devilish look for Satan in his The Temptation of Christ (2011).

Temptations in the Fourth Gospel

Both Matthew and Luke retain Mark’s chronology with the temptation in the desert serving as the conclusion of Jesus’ preparation for his public ministry. The Fourth Gospel does not present a similar episode. In John’s gospel, as we previously saw, there is no explicit baptism by John and Jesus gathers his first disciples on his return to Galilee before returning to Judea to begin his own brief baptizing ministry. Although there is no dramatic scene of the devil tempting Jesus in the Fourth Gospel, we do see echoes of the temptation episode scattered in chapters 6 and 7 of John.

1. John 6:1-15 is John’s version of the feeding of the multitude, the only miracle of Jesus that appears in all four gospels. Mk 6:45 (paralleled by Mt 14: 22) says that immediately after the miracle, Jesus made his disciples leave in a boat while he dismissed the crowd. John provides the reason: When Jesus realized that the crowd was about to “take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself” (v. 15). This attempt to make Jesus a political leader is thematically similar to temptation #3 above where the devil offers Jesus the kingdoms of the world.

2. The feeding of the multitude in Mark, Matthew and John – but not Luke – is immediately followed by the miracle of Jesus walking on water. The next day, the crowds follow Jesus to the other side of the sea. Thus begins (6:26-34) the Bread of Life discourse in John. The crowd asks Jesus for a sign, saying that Moses gave them manna in the desert. Jesus in the Fourth Gospel does not quote Deut 8:3, but his response is similar to his dismissal of temptation #1 that it is not earthly bread that gives life, but that which comes down from heaven.

3. After completion of the Bread of Life discourse in John 6, the brothers of Jesus suggest that he travel to Jerusalem for the festival of Tabernacles to work his signs and show himself to the world (7:1-9). Jesus rebuffs their suggestion because his “time has not yet come.” The similarity here is the enticement in temptation #2 to become a spectacle by performing a public act of power in Jerusalem.

The parallels between the three Q temptations and those presented in John are quite interesting. For the modern reader, the temptations as presented in John are more believable than the dramatic temptations presented in Matthew and Luke. But the gospels were not written as biographies of Jesus. They were written to present Jesus’ message of salvation. In such a document, presenting a confrontation between the devil and Jesus gets the theological point across more efficiently than describing three separate occasions in the life of Jesus wherein he was tempted to perform miracles for his own benefit or to gain political power.

Or, as I learned from Spider-Man: “With great power there must also come great responsibility.”