If, then, the history of the temptation is not to be understood as confined to the soul of Jesus, and if we have before shown that it cannot be regarded as supernatural; nothing seems to remain but to view it as a real, yet thoroughly natural, event, and to reduce the tempter to a mere man. After John had drawn attention to Jesus as the Messiah (thinks the author of the Natural History of the Prophet of Nazareth),[72] the ruling party in Jerusalem commissioned an artful Pharisee to put Jesus to the test, and to ascertain whether he really possessed miraculous powers, or whether he might not be drawn into the interest of the priesthood, and be induced to give his countenance to an enterprise against the Romans. This conception of the διάβολος is in dignified consistency with that of the ἄγγελοι, who appeared after his departure, to refresh Jesus, as an approaching caravan with provisions, or as soft reviving breezes.[73] But this view, as Usteri says, has so long completed its phases in the theological world, that to refute it would be to waste words.

If the foregoing discussions have proved that the temptation, as narrated by the synoptical Evangelists, cannot be conceived as an external or internal, a supernatural or natural occurrence, the conclusion is inevitable, that it cannot have taken place in the manner represented.

The least invidious expedient is to suppose that the source of our histories of the temptation was some real event in the life of Jesus, so narrated by him to his disciples as to convey no accurate impression of the fact. Tempting thoughts, which intruded themselves into his soul during his residence in the wilderness, or at various seasons, and under various circumstances, but which were immediately quelled by the unimpaired force of his will, were, according to the oriental mode of thought and expression, represented by him as a temptation of the devil; and this figurative narrative was understood literally.[74] The most prominent objection to this view, that it compromises the impeccability of Jesus,[75] being founded on a dogma, has no existence for the critic: we can, however, gather from the tenor of the evangelical history, that the practical sense of Jesus was thoroughly clear and just; but this becomes questionable, if he could ever feel an inclination corresponding to the second temptation in Matthew, or even if he merely chose such a form for communicating a more reasonable temptation to his disciples. Further, in such a narrative Jesus would have presented a confused mixture of fiction and truth out of his life, not to be expected from an ingenuous teacher, as he otherwise appears to be, especially if it be supposed that the tempting thoughts did not really occur to him after his forty days’ sojourn in the wilderness, and that this particular is only a portion of the fictitious investiture; [[258]]while if it be assumed, on the contrary, that the date is historical, there remains the forty days’ fast, one of the most insurmountable difficulties of the narrative. If Jesus wished simply to describe a mental exercise in the manner of the Jews, who, tracing the effect to the cause, ascribed evil thoughts to diabolical agency, nothing more was requisite than to say that Satan suggested such and such thoughts to his mind; and it was quite superfluous to depict a personal devil and a journey with him, unless, together with the purpose of narration, or in its stead, there existed a poetical and didactic intention.

Such an intention, indeed, is attributed to Jesus by those who hold that the history of the temptation was narrated by him as a parable, but understood literally by his disciples. This opinion is not encumbered with the difficulty of making some real inward experience of Jesus the basis of the history;[76] it does not suppose that Jesus himself underwent such temptations, but only that he sought to secure his disciples from them, by impressing on them, as a compendium of messianic and apostolic wisdom, the three following maxims: first to perform no miracle for their own advantage even in the greatest exigency; secondly, never to venture on a chimerical undertaking in the hope of extraordinary divine aid; thirdly, never to enter into fellowship with the wicked, however strong the enticement.[77] It was long ago observed, in opposition to this interpretation, that the narrative is not easily recognized as a parable, and that its moral is hard to discern.[78] With respect to the latter objection, it is true that the second temptation would be an ill-chosen image; but the former remark is the more important one. To prove that this narrative has not the characteristics of a parable, the following definition has been recently given: a parable, being essentially historical in its form, is only distinguishable from real history when its agents are of an obviously fictitious character.[79] This is the case where the subjects are mere generalizations, as in the parables of the sower, the king, and others of a like kind; or when they are, indeed, individualized, but so as to be at once recognized as unhistorical persons, as mere supports for the drapery of fiction, of which even Lazarus, in the parable of the rich man, is an example, though distinguished by a name. In neither species of parable is it admissible to introduce as a subject a person corporeally present, and necessarily determinate and historical. Thus Jesus could not make Peter or any other of his disciples the subject of a parable, still less himself, for the reciter of a parable is pre-eminently present to his auditors; and hence he cannot have delivered the history of the temptation, of which he is the subject, to his disciples as a parable. To assume that the history had originally another subject, for whom oral tradition substituted Jesus, is inadmissible, because the narrative, even as a parable, has no definite significance unless the Messiah be its subject.[80]

If such a parable concerning himself or any other person, could not have been delivered by Jesus, yet it is possible that it was made by some other individual concerning Jesus; and this is the view taken by Theile, who has recently explained the history of the temptation as a parabolic admonition, directed by some partisan of Jesus against the main features of the worldly [[259]]messianic hope, with the purpose of establishing the spiritual and moral view of the new economy.[81] Here is the transition to the mythical point of view, which the above theologian shuns, partly because the narrative is not sufficiently picturesque (though it is so in a high degree); partly because it is too pure (though he thus imputes false ideas to the primitive Christians); and partly because the formation of the mythus was too near the time of Jesus (an objection which must be equally valid against the early misconstruction of the parable). If it can be shown, on the contrary, that the narrative in question is formed less out of instructive thoughts and their poetical clothing, as is the case with a parable, than out of Old Testament passages and types, we shall not hesitate to designate it a mythus.

[[Contents]]

§ 56.

THE HISTORY OF THE TEMPTATION AS A MYTHUS.

Satan, the evil being and enemy of mankind, borrowed from the Persian religion, was by the Jews, whose exclusiveness limited all that was good and truly human to the Israelitish people, viewed as the special adversary of their nation, and hence as the lord of the heathen states with whom they were in hostility.[82] The interests of the Jewish people being centred in the Messiah, it followed that Satan was emphatically his adversary; and thus throughout the New Testament we find the idea of Jesus as the Messiah associated with that of Satan as the enemy of his person and cause. Christ having appeared to destroy the works of the devil ([1 John iii. 8]), the latter seizes every opportunity of sowing tares among the good seed ([Matt. xiii. 39]), and not only aims, though unsuccessfully, at obtaining the mastery over Jesus himself ([John xiv. 30]), but continually assails the faithful ([Eph. vi. 11]; [1 Pet. v. 8]). As these attacks of the devil on the pious are nothing else than attempts to get them into his power, that is, to entice them to sin; and as this can only be done by the indirect suggestion or immediate insinuation of evil, seductive thoughts, Satan had the appellation of ὁ πειράζων, the tempter. In the prologue to the book of Job, he seeks to seduce the pious man from God, by the instrumentality of a succession of plagues and misfortunes: while the ensnaring counsel which the serpent gave to the woman was early considered an immediate diabolical suggestion. ([Wisdom ii. 24]; [John viii. 44]; [Rev. xii. 9].)

In the more ancient Hebrew theology, the idea was current that temptation (‏נִסָּה‎, LXX. πειράζειν) was an act of God himself, who thus put his favourites, as Abraham ([Gen. xxii. 1]), and the people of Israel ([Exod. xvi. 4], and elsewhere), to the test, or in just anger even instigated men to pernicious deeds. But as soon as the idea of Satan was formed, the office of temptation was transferred to him, and withdrawn from God, with whose absolute goodness it began to be viewed as incompatible ([James i. 13]). Hence it is Satan, who by his importunity obtains the divine permission to put Job to the severest trial through suffering; hence David’s culpable project of numbering the people, which in the second book of Samuel was traced to the anger of God, is in the later chronicles ([1 Chron. xxii. 1]) put directly to the account of the [[260]]devil; and even the well-meant temptation with which, according to Genesis, God visited Abraham, in requiring from him the sacrifice of his son, was in the opinion of the later Jews, undertaken by God at the instigation of Satan.[83] Nor was this enough—scenes were imagined in which the devil personally encountered Abraham on his way to the place of sacrifice, and in which he tempted the people of Israel during the absence of Moses.[84]