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.”

Demon at the Door

Chapters 1-11 of Genesis, recounting events from the creation of the cosmos to the Tower of Babel, are frequently referred to as “primeval history,” but that term is a bit of a misnomer because it has nothing to do with “history” in our understanding of the word. Only when we arrive at the story of Abraham in Genesis 12 does the narrative appear to take place in what we would call “recorded history.” A better term for it would be “primeval mythology” because it attempts to explain how the world came to be in its present form.

Curiously, there are very few references to any of the characters or events in Gen 1-11 in the rest of the OT. For example, you might find a couple of mentions of Noah outside of Genesis, compared to dozens of references to Moses and the events of the Exodus outside of the Pentateuch. But the situation changes in the NT as there are frequent references to Adam, Noah, and Cain and Abel because the early Christians drew from the primeval history theological points about sin, covenant, and the shedding of innocent blood.

Just as we saw with early Christian interpretations of the events in the Garden of Eden as “the Fall,” NT references to the story of Cain and Abel read more into the story than is actually found in the text. For example, Heb 11:4a explains why YHWH looked with favor on Abel’s offering: “By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain’s.” And 1 John 3:12b clarifies Cain’s motive: “And why did [Cain] murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous.”

“Cain and Abel” by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (1794-1872)

But the Genesis text doesn’t explain at all why Abel’s sacrifice was acceptable and Cain’s was not. According to Gen 4, Cain was a farmer and Abel a shepherd. Cain made an offering to YHWH from his crop and Abel from the firstborn of his flock. “And YHWH had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard” (4:4b-5a, NRSV). No explanation is given. Maybe none is possible. Why do I prefer vanilla ice cream over chocolate? It just is. God has ultimate freedom to do what God wants: "I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy" (Ex 33:19b).

Understandably, Cain was somewhat put out by this and YHWH noticed. What follows has been called “the most difficult verse in Genesis” due to translation difficulties:

YHWH said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be lifted? And if you do not do well, sin is a demon [or, is lurking] at the door; its desire is for you, but you can master it.” (4:6-7)

Even if the exact translation and meaning is uncertain, the author is clearly assigning Cain responsibility for what happens next. If he makes the right choice, his face – currently fallen – will be lifted up once again. But if he makes the wrong choice, well… Cain is reminded that although sin desires him, he must overcome it. The words here are a deliberate echo of YHWH God's words to the woman in Gen 3:16c: “Your desire shall be for your man but he will master you.”

This is not the only callback to the Eden story. After Cain’s crime, YHWH metes out the punishment. Whereas YHWH cursed the ground after Adam’s sin, here he curses Cain “from the ground.” If the ground would yield thorns and thistles for Adam, for Cain the farmer, it will yield nothing at all. He has no choice but to become a restless wanderer on earth. A restless wanderer who, we will learn in 4:17, builds the first city on earth.

Indeed, the basic plot of Gen 3 and 4 are the same: a crime is committed, YHWH questions the perpetrator(s), punishment is pronounced, the punishment is mitigated, and expulsion is the final result. We have one example of a crime against God and another of a crime against one’s brother. These two categories sum up the categories of individual sin. (There’s still the category of communal sin which we’ll see in Gen 11:1-9.)

What I find interesting is that the motivations leading to the crimes in both cases are understandable because they are so common. In Gen 3:6, the woman looked at the tree, saw that its fruit was “good to eat and pleasant to look at.” This is a completely natural reaction of the senses of taste and sight to the fruit of the trees in the garden. YHWH God made them to look and taste good. She also found the fruit “to be desired to make one wise.” The verb translated “to make wise” could also be translated “to cause success,” “to make prosperous,” or “to bring understanding.” Who doesn’t want to have success in life? Who doesn’t want to prosper?

If you recall that the fruit is to be understood symbolically and not literally, the woman is being tempted by something that is worthy in and of itself – pleasing to the senses and/or capable of making one wise or successful. It is only wrong to eat of the fruit because it has been forbidden. Now we see the genius of the author because this temptation is not something that only happened in the primeval past, but something that continues to happen today. We are constantly tempted to indulge the senses or take a shortcut to success. Whole industries have been built around satisfying those primal desires. We can understand how Eve was tempted because we’re tempted in the same ways.

We can also understand how Cain felt. Anyone who has ever experienced envy over a favored sibling or has been passed over for a promotion or jilted by a lover can understand how Cain felt when YHWH rejected his sacrifice and accepted Abel’s. The difference between us and Cain is that we don’t take it to the extreme that he did; we master the demon at the door. And that’s another thing the author is telling us. Desires and feelings are purely natural reactions, and we have little control over them, but how we act on those desires and feelings is completely under our control.