Jeffrey Gibson

Strictly speaking, this "more" is on a slightly different issue -- the meaning of the noun peirasmos, not the verb peirazw, and more specifically what the noun's referent in Matt. 6:13//Lk. 11:4 is.

And the article you refer to is only a draft. But thanks for pointing it out. If nothing else, it goes to show that the "standard wisdom" put forward by many here, that scholars don't challenge established views, is nonsense and that those who do get the boot from the academy.

Jeffrey

Jeffrey Gibson

No, . You assume that that's what the devil is up to -- and I dare say on the basis of several unquestioned presuppositions, namely,


1. that the verb used by the evangelists to describe or denote what Satan/the devil is up to – the verb peirazw – bore the meaning "to entice, to draw someone through the prospect of pleasure or advantage, to do evil";

2, that Satan/the devil is depicted within the story as hostile toward Jesus and approaches him with the desire to corrupt him and to bring about his demise, since to draw people into doing evil, to get them to commit sin -- that is to say, to "tempt" them – is what, according to Jewish tradition, Satan/the Devil does;

3. that the story, at least in its Matthean and Lukan forms, not only depicts Jesus as initially beset either with doubts about the truth of the divine declaration of his identity given at his baptism or with a fundamental uncertainty about the way in which he was to accomplish a mission that, in the light of his baptismal experience of being named uios, he felt or suspected was his. It also presents these doubts and this uncertainty as providing Satan/ the Devil with both the occasion and opportunity for "tempting" Jesus as well as the method and the means to do so; and

4. that it is presumed within the Lukan and Matthean versions of the "temptation" story that the title by which the Devil addresses Jesus within the story (i.e., Son of God) is used there as an equivalent to swthr or christos (= [Final or Last] Deliverer/[King] Messiah), and therefore that the Devils's petitions are to be read against, and as alluding to, the expectations about the [Last] deliverer/[King] Messiah that are found in rabbinical and other Jewish texts which speak of the (Final or Last) Deliverer/(King) Messiah acting as the 'first Deliverer', Moses, did and dispensing 'manna' and of the King Messiah manifesting himself spectacularly in the Temple at his parousia to Israel.

5. that it is also presumed within the story that Jesus is, knows himself, and is assumed by the devil, to be endowed with the power to work miracles.

But it's my claim that the text doesn't actually bear any of this out. Moreover, it seems self evident that your view is not what the Devil is up to if, as seems abundantly clear (and as I've noted in another thread) what the evangelists are doing with their framing and imbuing of the story with allusions to, and citations of texts from, Deut. 6-8 and other OT accounts of the story of Israel's wilderness testing, is presenting Jesus' testing as a recapitulation of that to which the wilderness generation was subjected

No seduction or enticement there, let alone with worldly goods and power.

Nor do I. But who says he was?

Jeffrey

Toto

Just trying to understand this:

I see no need to assume that Satan was tempting Jesus with evil. (Think of the Last Temptation of Christ - Jesus was tempted with living an ordinary life that would have been upright for any mere mortal.

Strongs:

I don't make these assumptions - they are much more complicated than the fairly simple story in the gospels.

This does appear to be implied by the text. Why else would Satan ask Jesus to throw himself down and put God to the test of saving him, and Jesus not just respond that would be stupid?

Do you have a link to that other thread?

So you think that this is just a drama that recapitulates the Exodus and the gospel writers never intended to portray Satan as at all evil? (just doing his job?)

In Psalm 95:9 (cf Heb 3:9 quoting the Septuagint Psalm 94, which uses the word peirasmos) it says that the Hebrew people tested God in the wilderness. How does this work?

Solo

...that looks like pretty much what it was, Jeffrey, although the verb does not - I am told - imply in and of itself "bad" or "evil" things. It could be ethically neutral testing of one's character or two-way testing of fidelity. Be that as it may, the temptation of Satan appears to be meant as malicious, if only by the identity of the tempter. Don't see where the objection to that could be.

This only intensifies 1., and I would say, unnecessarily so. The devil evidently does not doubt Jesus "sonship". He tests its qualities on the rule of "single master".

But it could be that the "doubt" itself invites (or even , is) the devil. This would be absolutely borne out by reference to "similar cases" e.g. in Buddha, Mohammed and Paul, who after the encounter with the Divine Essence undergo a test of "authenticity". You can throw in YHWH's sudden assault on Moses (Exodus 4:24) on his way to Pharaoh.


The Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, (or via: amazon.co.uk) ed. G.K. Beale & D.A. Carson views the turning of stones into bread as enticement to Jesus to repeat Moses' mistake in testing God to draw water out of stones (Num 20:1-13). The opinion that Mt considers then Jesus superior to Moses and the final fulfilment of God's commitment to Israel seems reasonable as it confirms Paul's two-Adam anthropology (cf. 1 Cr 10:3-4). I am surprised that you would reject the eschatological interpretation of the Matthean wilderness testing of Jesus implied in that.

I am not sure who sees it that way but I assume it would be only within the context of the devil attempting of to induce Jesus to test God, i.e. in converting stones into bread and in confirming the power to levitate.

What is your "claim", Jeffrey ? What the devil are you up to ?

Jiri

P.S.: Fitzmyer`s analysis of the Temptation petitions

Jeffrey Gibson

Could you tell me on the basis of what study of the use of peirazw you base your claim?

Please show me where Satan/the devil is said to be malicious - let alone entices people to sin -- in the Judaism of the time. (And please make sure you are not confusing this figure with Belial who, as the DSS indicate, was a separate figure altogether). The sectarians of Qumran do not profess this belief. Nor do those who produced the pseudepigraphical testamentary and apocalyptic literature in which Satan/the Devil is mentioned or makes an appearance. Nor is the belief ever vented or given expression in Pharisaic circles where, as Bamberger and others have noted, such titles as "The Enemy" or "The Evil One", familiar to us from the New Testament, in which the impression that Satan acts out of hostility are grounded, never appear. On the contrary, what we find here is the belief that the motive behind this figure' actions toward humankind is zeal for divine justice and a desire to see the wrongdoer, whom he is divinely commissioned to reveal and stand against, acknowledged as such. If he displays any attitude at all towards human beings it not hostility, but cynicism over their motives for being obedient to God.

And while it is true that we find references to Satan/the devil acting as a seducer in the literature of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism, these references are actually few and far between. More prominently emphasized, notably even when he is spoken of as a one who attempts to lead the elect astray, is the view that he is a dedicated servant of God who is entrusted with, and who out of piety carries out, the thankless but necessary task of "sifting" the faithful from the faithless among God's people. (cf Baba Bathra)

Moreover, it is precisely this view, and not any understanding of Satan/the Devil as seducer, that is highlighted in the Synoptic stories of Jesus wilderness "temptation". This is clear not only from the fact that he is designated therein as "the one who tests" but that the testing that he undertakes is expressly noted as something that is divinely and initiated and directed by, as well as in concert with, the plan and purposes of, God.


And please show me where in the "temptation" story he is portrayed as acting maliciously or out of hostility. To my eyes, there is actually very little evidence that supports the view that he is, especially when we set the Wilderness "temptation" narratives over against the themes and atmosphere of conflict that pervades the other Synoptic stories of Jesus in "temptation" that we find in Mk. 8:11-13 and pars., Mk. 10:13-17//Matt pars., Mk. 12:13-17 and pars, where it is clear, given both the form and wording of those stories, that those who "tempt" Jesus do indeed do so with hostile intent. Notably, nothing of what the evangelists use in those stories - including the form employed in the recounting of them -- to signal or state that Jesus' "tempters" approach him with bad intent, can be found anywhere in any version of the Wilderness "temptation" story. Nor, when evaluated soberly, do any of the constituent elements of these narratives -- including the extended dialogue between the Devil and Jesus that appears in Matthew's and Luke's versions of the story -- indicate any hostility on the Devil's part toward Jesus.

Does Moses perform the miracle or does God do it for him?

Is it Jesus himself whom the devil says will levitate Jesus or God?

And as to Jesus being the one the devil asks to turn stones to bread, see my "A turn on turning stones to bread. A new understanding of the Devil's intention in Q 4.3" in Biblical Research 1996, vol. 41, pp. 37-57, the abstract of which is here.

You'll see shortly when my entry on the "Temptations" of Jesus for the Brill Encyclopedia of the Historical Jesus is completed.

Jeffrey

Jeffrey Gibson

This is his analysis of the "lead us not into 'temptation' clause/petition of the LP (Mtt. 6:13//Lk. 11:2), not the Devil's petitions in Mt. 4:1-11//Lk. 4:1-13.

Jeffrey

Solo

Don't want to go into the weeds with you on that. The statement was made after a quick check with my on-line lexical tools.

CURSES OF SATAN AND HIS LOT

Blessings and Curses (4Q286-7)

...Council of the Community shall say together, Amen, amen. Afterwards [they] shall damn Satan. They shall answer and say, Cursed be [S]atan in his hostile design, and damned in his guilty dominion. Cursed be all the spirits of his [lot] in their wicked design, and damned in their thoughts of unclean purity. For they are the lot of darkness and their visitation is for eternal destruction.
Cursed be the Wicke[d One in all...] of his dominions and may all the sons of Satan be damned in all their service until their annihilation [for ever, Amen, amen.]

in Geza Vermes, The Dead See Scrolls in English, Penguin 1987, p 160


Wisdom of Solomon 2:23-24 : For God created man for incorruption and made him in the image of his own eternity, but through the devil's envy, death entered the world, and those who belong to his party, experience it.

Check again Testament of Job (6-8) in Charlesworth's OTP V II. Beautiful illustrations of Satan's malevolence.


I can't speak to that specifically, though it makes me wonder where Paul got the idea that Satan was pain in the butt (or idiomatic thereabouts). I am aware that in mainstream Judaism, the issue of Satan has been mainly a non-issue. No sharply defined demonology, or war of good on evil ever described the middle ground of Jewish traditions, probably ever. In so far as I know, in the rabbinic teachings (checked Haggadah's creation account), Satan is an adversary but one controlled by God.

Well, that's news to me and frankly sounds flakey given what you claimed earlier in the paragraph. But as Ben says, all things are possible with God.


Have you got any idea how twisted this sounds ?

It makes me think of - of a scene from Voelker Schlondorff's film "Der Neunte Tag", where a SS-officer at Mauthausen screams fanatically at a Polish Catholic priest prisoner, just as he adorns his head with a barbed-wire crown and before he orders him hoisted on a makeshift cross: "Wo ist er [dein Gott] ? Siehst du ihn hier irgendwo ?" (Where is your God ? Do you see him here some place ?) The movie is a very good Catholic propaganda (truthfully dealing with the issue of Vatican acquiescence to Hitler) and obviously its vision of "evil" is Christian. Yet, something tells me that Elie Wiesel watching the movie would be instantly converted to the reality of that kind of Satan.


Any kind of "rebellion" or "falling out with God" or "banishment into adversity" that you re aware of ?

Interesting: why do you think then that Satan was an "offence" to Matthew's Jesus (in rebuke to Peter) ? He did not buy that from Mark, so far as I can see. Actually, Jesus seems to be pretty worked up in Mark too.

In suggesting that Jesus hurls himself off the temple's pinnacle. Not enough malevolence in that ? Or are you going to tell us that the devil knew Jesus was not going to do that ?

FYI, I have been collecting data on a well known phenomenon of psychotics hurling themselves of the roofs and windows of psychiatric hospitals. It's quite amazing actually, because this phenom seems to be almost archetypal. These are not suicides but instances where the patient experiences euphoria in which he/she believes in they have acquired levitational license. There is another subclass of these incidents and it concerns post-euphoric, agitated subjects, who - if they survive - recount that they wanted to test their flying ability which they believe they had previously but which they began to doubt. Make of it what you will, but if there is a devil who tells them to jump he is hostile and malicious, by my reckoning


Of course not, he is a professional tester, like the Mauthausen kommandant.

Looking forward to reading it, Jeffrey.

Jiri

2-J

Doesn't Luke's reference to Satan in this passage (from Luke 22) imply he is an evildoer?

1Now the Feast of Unleavened Bread, called the Passover, was approaching, 2and the chief priests and the teachers of the law were looking for some way to get rid of Jesus, for they were afraid of the people. 3Then Satan entered Judas, called Iscariot, one of the Twelve. 4And Judas went to the chief priests and the officers of the temple guard and discussed with them how he might betray Jesus. 5They were delighted and agreed to give him money. 6He consented, and watched for an opportunity to hand Jesus over to them when no crowd was present.

Jeffrey Gibson

Could be. But then again he is referred to explicitly as the one who "sifts" the steadfastness of the nominally faithful in Lk. 22:32.

Jeffrey

dog-on

Isn't Satan's entry into Judas part of God's plan? Why is this necessarily evil? Satan may just be God's puppeteer...