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.”

Beginning from the Baptism of John

[As I wrote up this week’s article, it quickly grew to be twice the length of a normal article, so I will divide it into two posts. The second half will be posted in a day or two.]

In Acts of the Apostles 1:15-26, the disciples had to choose a replacement for Judas. Peter lays out the qualifications: “one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us” (vv. 21-22a). Indeed, all four gospels start the public ministry of Jesus with John baptizing in the wilderness. But in so doing, they expose an awkward fact: John baptized Jesus.

Damage Control

In being baptized by John, Jesus assumed an inferior position as a disciple of John. This was an embarrassment to the early Church, particularly in its dealings with the followers of John the Baptist during the spread of the ministry. Jesus accepting John’s baptism for the repentance of sins also raised awkward questions about the sinlessness of Jesus. This inconvenient truth of Jesus being baptized by John required some “damage control” on the part of the evangelists.

Mark (1:9-11) gets the baptism of Jesus out of the way as quickly as possible and uses the occasion to reveal Jesus’ vision of God declaring, “You are my Son…I am well pleased.” Matthew (3:13-17) presents John humbling himself before Jesus, saying, “I need to be baptized by you.” In true Matthean style, Jesus intones that John must baptize him “to fulfill all righteousness.” The Gospel of John (1:29-34) avoids the subject altogether. In the Fourth Gospel, the evangelist has the Baptist recount how he saw the Spirit descend upon Jesus like a dove – the same language used in the synoptic accounts of Jesus’ baptism – but the evangelist avoids saying this occurred at the moment of Jesus’ baptism.

Luke (3:21-22) has one of the oddest approaches to the story. He doesn’t deny that Jesus was baptized, but he does avoid stating that John did the baptizing. Like Matthew, he recounts some of John’s preaching and adds some ethical teaching, but then he ushers John off the stage with his arrest by Herod Antipas. In the gospels of Mark and Matthew, John’s imprisonment is announced right after Jesus’ baptism, but Luke contorts the chronology (and logic of the story) by placing the baptism of Jesus after John is out of the picture. It’s not a goof because in several speeches in Acts of the Apostles, the speaker (like in the example above) recalls how the gospel story began with John’s baptism of repentance, but in every case Luke avoids mentioning that Jesus was also baptized by John.

“The Baptism of Christ” (1515) by Joachim Patinir

The Historical John the Baptist

What do we really know about John the Baptist? Just as with Jesus, the gospels provide most of the information we have of the Baptist, but the Jewish historian Josephus also mentioned John in Antiquities (18.5.2). Josephus’ description of John’s ministry of baptism, his popularity and his execution by Herod Antipas is consistent with what the gospels tell us.

Both the synoptic gospels and the Fourth Gospel cite Isaiah 40:3 as the rallying cry of the Baptist: “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.” The Qumran community – from whose library we got the Dead Sea Scrolls – also used this quote from Isaiah to explain why they formed their community in the desert.

Mark provides only a small sample of John’s preaching (Mk 1:7-8) describing “a mightier one” who is coming after him, one whose sandals John is not fit to untie (the role of a slave was to untie the master’s sandals and wash his feet). John’s water baptism is a promise of the baptism in the Holy Spirit that will come with his successor. This saying is repeated in Matthew and Luke who both used Mark as their source material, but also in the Fourth Gospel (John 1:26-27), suggesting that this tradition is very old.

Both Matthew and Luke have more to say about John’s preaching, using almost the same words. Biblical scholars hypothesize that the two evangelists used a lost collection of sayings – dubbed Q, from the German word Quelle (“source”) – that Mark did not know about. Two “Baptist blocks” of material from Q related to John can be found in Mt 3:7-12 (which matches Lk 3:7-9 and Lk 3:15-18) and Mt 11:2-19 (which matches Lk 7:18-35).

The First Baptist Block of Sayings

The beginning of the first Baptist block portrays John as a fiery preacher of the imminent wrath of God: “The axe is laid to the root of the trees and every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Lk 3:9). The second half of the first Baptist block continues the fiery theme with the “mightier one” clearing out the threshing floor, gathering the wheat into the granary and burning the chaff. The implication is that to avoid the coming judgment one needs to repent and bear the fruit of repentance; simply being a “child of Abraham” will not save you.

Luke interrupts the first Baptist block of material from Q with vv. 10-14, verses which have no parallel in Matthew. In Luke, John offers ethical advice on how one can act to show repentance. He tailors his advice to reflect his audience. For the multitudes, share your coat or food. For the tax collectors, collect no more than is required. For soldiers, no extortion or intimidations; be content with your pay. This ethical advice has an echo in Josephus who wrote that the Baptist preached “cultivating virtue and practicing justice toward one another and piety toward God.”

Josephus provides a political reason for Herod’s arrest and execution of the Baptist: “Herod began to fear that John’s powerful ability to persuade people might lead to some sort of revolt.” Herod considered it wiser to arrest John before the situation got out of control and imprisoned him in the mountain fortress of Machaerus on the east side of the Dead Sea. Mark (6:17-29) and Matthew (14:3-12) provide more details on the reasons behind the imprisonment and death of the Baptist, but Luke is satisfied in only the briefest note (3:19-20).

The Second Baptist Block of Sayings

The second “Baptist block” can be divided into three units. In the first unit (Lk 7:18-23), the imprisoned John sends his disciples to ask Jesus if he is “the one to come.” Jesus tells them to report what they see – the blind see, the lame walk, etc.

The second unit (Lk 7:24-28) is a carefully crafted composition consisting of Jesus’ rhetorical question (and three different answers) to the crowds concerning John: “What did you go out to see?” The final answer emphatically praises John as more than a prophet, saying none born of women is greater than him, yet the least in the kingdom of God is greater than John.

In the third unit (Lk 7:31-34) Jesus compares the current generation to children in the marketplace. Like the children who refused to dance to the flute, John fasted and avoided strong drink. Like the children who refused to mourn, the Son of Man (Jesus’s term for himself) did not fast and drank wine. John was called a mad man and Jesus was called “a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.”

[In part two, we will look at a tradition buried in the Fourth Gospel that seems to have been suppressed in the synoptic gospels and put the pieces together to give us a picture of how John influenced Jesus.]