lx. 1) has been given before.] On another point in this history we find the same inversion of thought current in Jewish legend. In the Commentary just referred to, [a u. s. col. d.] the placing of Messiah on the pinnacle of the Temple, so far from being of Satanic temptation, is said to mark the hour of deliverance, of Messianic proclamation, and of Gentile voluntary submission. 'Our Rabbis give this tradition: In the hour when King Messiah cometh, He standeth upon the roof of the Sanctuary, and proclaims to Israel, saying, Ye poor (suffering), the time of your redemption
draweth nigh. And if ye believe, rejoice in My Light, which is risen upon you.....Is. lx. 1.....upon
you only ....Is. lx. 2.....In that hour will the Holy One, blessed be His Name, make the Light of the
Messiah and of Israel to shine forth; and all shall come to the Light of the King Messiah and of
Israel, as it is written.....Is. lx. 3.....And they shall come and lick the dust from under the feet of
the King Messiah, as it is written, Is. xlix. 23......And all shall come and fall on their faces before
Messiah and before Israel, and say, We will be servants to Him and to Israel. And every one in Israel shall have 2,800 servants, [2 The number is thus reached: as there are seventy nations, and ten of each are to take hold on each of the four corners of a Jew's garment, we have 70 x 10 x 4 =2,800.] as it is written, Zech. viii. 23.' One more quotation from the same Commentary: [b u. s. 11 lines fur ther down.] 'In that hour, the Holy One, blessed be His Name, exalts the Messiah to the heaven of heavens, and spreads over Him of the splendour of His glory because of the nations of the world, because of the wicked Persians. They say to Him, Ephraim, Messiah, our Righteousness, execute judgment upon them, and do to them what Thy soul desireth.'
In another respect these quotations are important. They show that such ideas were, indeed, present to the Jewish mind, but in a sense opposite to the Gospel-narratives. In other words, they were regarded as the rightful manifestation of Messiah's dignity; whereas in the Evangelic record they are presented as the suggestions of Satan, and the Temptation of Christ. Thus the Messiah of Judaism is the Anti-Christ of the Gospels. But if the narrative cannot be traced to Rabbinic legend, may it not be an adaptation of an Old Testament narrative, such as the account of the forty days' fast of Moses on the mount, or of Elijah in the wilderness? Viewing the Old Testament in its unity, and the Messiah as the apex in the column of its history, we admit, or rather, we must expect, throughout points of correspondence between Moses, Elijah, and the Messiah. In fact, these may be described as marking the three stages in the history of the Covenant. Moses was its giver, Elijah its restorer, the Messiah its renewer and perfecter. And as such they all had, in a sense, a similar outward consecration for their work. But that neither Moses nor Elijah was assailed by the Devil, constitutes not the only, though a vital, difference between the fast of Moses and Elijah, and that of Jesus. Moses fasted in the middle, Elijah at the Presence of God; [1 The Rabbis have it, that a man must accommodate himself to the ways of the place where he is. When Moses was on the Mount he lived of'the bread of the Torah' (Shem. R. 47).] Elijah alone; Jesus assaulted by the Devil. Moses had been called up by God; Elijah had gone forth in the bitterness of his own spirit; Jesus was driven by the Spirit. Moses failed after his forty days' fast, when in indignation he cast the Tables of the Law from him; Elijah failed before his forty days' fast; Jesus was assailed for forty days and endured the trial. Moses was angry against Israel; Elijah despaired of Israel; Jesus overcame for Israel.
Nor must we forget that to each the trial came not only in his human, but in his representative capacity, as giver, restorer, or perfecter of the Covenant. When Moses and Elijah failed, it was not only as individuals, but as giving or restoring the Covenant. And when Jesus conquered, it was not only as the Unfallen and Perfect Man, but as the Messiah. His Temptation and Victory have therefore a twofold aspect: the general human and the Messianic, and these two are closely connected. Hence we draw also this happy inference: in whatever Jesus overcame, we can overcome. Each victory which He has gained secures its fruits for us who are His disciples (and this alike objectively and subjectively). We walk in His foot-prints; we can ascend by the rock-hewn steps which His Agony has cut. He is the perfect man; and as each temptation marks a human assault (assault on humanity), so it also marks a human victory (of humanity). But He is also the Messiah; and alike the assault and the victory were of the Messiah. Thus, each victory of humanity becomes a victory for humanity; and so is fulfilled, in this respect also, that ancient hymn of royal victory, 'Thou hast ascended on high; Thou hast led captivity captive; Thou hast received gifts for men; yea, for the rebellious also, that Jehovah God, might dwell among them.' [a Ps. lxviii. 18.] [2 The quotation in Eph. iv. 8 resembles the rendering of the Targum (see Delitzsch Comm. u. d. Psalter, vol. i. p. 503).]
But even so, there are other considerations necessarily preliminary to the study of one of the most important parts in the life of Christ. They concern these two questions, so closely connected that they can scarcely be kept quite apart: Is the Evangelic narrative to be regarded as the account of a real and outward event? And if so, how was it possible, or, in what sense can it be asserted, that Jesus Christ, set before us as the Son of God, was 'tempted of the Devil'? All subsidiary questions run up into these two.
As regards the reality and outwardness of the temptation of Jesus, several suggestions may be set aside as unnatural, and ex post facto attempts to remove a felt difficulty. Renan's frivolous conceit scarcely deserves serious notice, that Jesus went into the wilderness in order to imitate the Baptist and others, since such solitude was at the time regarded as a necessary preparation for great things. We equally dismiss as more reverent, but not better grounded, such suggestions as that an interview there with the deputies of the Sanhedrin, or with a Priest, or with a Pharisee, formed the historical basis of the Satanic Temptation; or that it was a vision, a dream, the reflection of the ideas of the time; or that it was a parabolic form in which Jesus afterwards presented to His disciples His conception of the Kingdom, and how they were to preach it. [1 We refrain from naming the individual writers who have broached these and other equally untenable hypotheses.] Of all such explanations it may be said, that the narrative does not warrant them, and that they would probably never have been suggested, if their authors had been able simply to accept the Evangelic history. But if so it would have been both better and wiser wholly to reject (as some have done) the authenticity of this, as of the whole early history of the Life of Christ, rather than transform what, if true, is so unspeakably grand into a series of modern platitudes. And yet (as Keim has felt) it seems impossible to deny, that such a transaction at the beginning of Christ's Messianic Ministry is not only credible, but almost a necessity; and that such a transaction must have assumed the form of a contest with Satan. Besides, throughout the Gospels there is not only allusion to this first great conflict (so that it does not belong only to the early history of Christ's Life), but constant reference to the power of Satan in the world, as a kingdom opposed to that of God, and of which the Devil is the King. [2 The former notably in St. Matt. xii. 25-28; St. Luke xi. 17 &c. The import of this, as looking back upon the history of the Temptation, has not always been sufficiently recognised. In regard to Satan and his power many passages will occur to the reader, such as St. Matt. vi. 13; xii. 22; xiii. 19, 25, 39; xxvi. 41; St. Luke x. 18; xxii. 3, 28, 31; St. John viii. 44; xii. 31; xiii. 27; xiv. 30; xvi. 11.] And the reality of such a kingdom of evil no earnest mind would call in question, nor would it pronounce a priori against the personality of its king. Reasoning a priori, its credibility rests on the same kind of, only, perhaps, on more generally patent, evidence as that of the beneficent Author of all Good, so that with reverence be it said, we have, apart from Holy Scripture, and, as regards one branch of the argument, as much evidence for believing in a personal Satan, as in a Personal God. Holding, therefore, by the reality of this transaction, and finding it equally impossible to trace it to Jewish legend, or to explain it by the coarse hypothesis of misunderstanding,exaggeration, and the like, this one question arises: Might it not have been a purely inward transaction, or does the narrative present an account of what was objectively real?
At the outset, it is only truthful to state, that the distinction does not seem of quite so vital importance as it has appeared to some, who have used in regard to it the strongest language. [1 So Bishop Ellicott, Histor. Lectures, p. 111.] On the other hand it must be admitted that the narrative, if naturally interpreted, suggests an outward and real event, not an inward transaction; [2 Professor Godet's views on this subject are very far from satisfactory, whether exegetically or dogmatically. Happily, they fall far short of the notion of any internal solicitation to sin in the case of Jesus, which Bishop Ellicott so justly denounces in strongest language.] that there is no other instance of ecstatic state or of vision recorded in the life of Jesus, and that (as Bishop Ellicott has shown), [3 U. s.p. 110, note 2.] the special expressions used are all in accordance with the natural view. To this we add, that some of the objections raised, notably that of the impossiblity of showing from one spot all the kingdoms of the world, cannot bear close investigation. For no rational
interpretation would insist on the absolute literality of this statement, any more than on that of the survey of the whole extent of the land of Israel by Moses from Pisgah. [a Deut. xxxiv. 1-3.] [4 According to Siphre (ed. Friedmann p. 149 a and b), God showed to Moses Israel in its happiness, wars, and misfortunes; the whole world from the Day of Creation to that of the Resurrection; Paradise, and Gehenna.] All the requirements of the narrative would be met by supposing Jesus to have been placed on a very high mountain, whence south, the land of Judaea and far-off Edom; east, the swelling plains towards Euphrates; north, snow-capped Lebanon; and west, the cities of
