Most modern, popular Christian ideas about Satan are not Biblical, part 2

Yesterday I began a discussion about ha satan in the Hebrew Bible with this post. In that discussion, I proposed the idea that ha satan - literally "the accuser" - is using the legal imagery of a prosecuting attorney, which is later juxtaposed with the Holy Spirit as paraklétos, the defense attorney, as a metaphor teaching us to watch out for the accusing, scapegoating voices of blame and instead listen to the voice of love, kindness, and generosity.

But some might argue: Satan is definitely a personality in the New Testament. First off, I would argue that while Satan/diabolos (which is simply the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew satan and is sometimes translated "the devil") is a more developed concept by the time we reach the New Testament, I would still encourage readers to challenge their preconceived notions of this "Satan" as a being of pure evil who is the nemesis of God, the ultimate bad guy, the supreme evil, the prince of Hell, and remember that in the Hebrew Bible he is a fully fledged member of God's court who fulfills the role of the prosecuting attorney/district attorney/state prosecutor. And secondly, I simply do not believe any of the New Testament data necessitates viewing Satan as a literal entity, but is still metaphorical language that teaches us to watch out for these accusing, slandering, scapegoating voices of blame.

To illustrate this I would like to delve into a well-known story about Satan in the New Testament. I will note now that I will likely limit this post to covering that story, and I might do a couple follow-up posts, one to delve into Revelation and another to delve into the language of demons in the New Testament.

But let's talk about the desert temptation. First off, I feel that readers who are not familiar with modern scholarship should at the very least read a summary of the two-source hypothesis (note the helpful diagram in the right column). And when you know that modern scholarship has a very large consensus saying that Mark was the first gospel, and Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source document, one might find it very interesting that Mark's version of this story - found in Mark 1:12-13 is very simple:

"And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tested by Satan, and he was with the wild beasts, and the angels waited on him."

Note how there is no mention of what, exactly, the testing involved - it just says he was in the wilderness for forty days and was tested by Satan. By the time we get to the other synoptics, Matthew and Luke, this story becomes far more developed. We find the story in Matthew 4:1-11 and Luke 4:1-13. Now I am going to make a case that these stories should be viewed as parables about Jesus - this will be hard for some people to swallow, as many Christians are taught (as I was) to take every story in the Bible as if it were a historical account. But ancient writers didn't think this way. Ancient writers often attempted to communicate meaning by using metaphorical, symbolical, even mythical tales to do so.

Now if you are going to take this story as a literal, historical account, there are a few problems you have to deal with. First off, how does anyone know what happened if Jesus was out there alone? Some might say: Jesus told someone. Well, a very common theme in the gospels is that when Jesus told his disciples things, they misunderstood. And Jesus was constantly speaking in parables - how do we know this wasn't a parable? Then we have the problem of Jesus teleporting - you ever notice that in the middle of the story he teleports to the top of the temple in Jerusalem, and then teleports back to the desert? Matthew 4:5 says that "the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple". Interestingly, Luke doesn't have this, but instead says in Luke 4:5, very ambiguously I might add, that Satan "led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world." Luke's language honestly sounds more like a vision to me, rather than a historical occurrence. But if we take Matthew's account as the historical account, why don't any other historians mention two men appearing at the pinnacle of the temple? The temple was a very busy place - it would be like someone appearing on top of the capital building in Washington DC and yet no newspapers wrote about it.

Also, it's very unlikely that someone would be able to fast for 40 days and nights with no water in the middle of the desert and survive.

But, I would argue, something metaphorical and symbolical is going on here, because these accounts are painting a picture that parallels Jesus with Moses. First off, the accounts add to the Markan account that he fasted for 40 days - now read Exodus 34:28:

"He was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he neither ate bread nor drank water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten commandments."

Additionally, the three trials of Jesus parallel trials Moses went through with the Israelites before receiving the law. In the first trial, a shortage of food resulted in praying for manna from heaven (see Exodus 16) - this parallels with Jesus' first trial of being tempted to create bread from stones. Jesus' response to this temptation? In both Matthew 4:4 and Luke 4:4 he says "one does not live by bread alone" (Matthew adds "but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.") Now read Deuteronomy 8:3:

"He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. (emphasis mine)"

This response draws a direct parallel to the story of Moses.

Next, both Israel and Moses "put God to the test" with Israel asking "is the Lord among us or not?" in Exodus 17:7, and we have Moses "putting God to the test" in Numbers 20:10-13 when he says "Listen, you rebels; shall we bring water for you out of this rock?" and then strikes the rock, making water come out. God's response to Moses is that "Because you did not trust in me, to show my holiness before the eyes of the Israelites, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them." In the story of Jesus' temptation in the desert, when Jesus says "do not put the Lord your God to the test" (Mt. 4:7 and Lk. 4:12), it is a direct quote from Deuteronomy 6:16, which says "Do not put the Lord your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah." This draws another parallel to a trial of Moses and the Israelites in the desert before receiving the law.

And finally, the people of Israel turned from God to worship something else in Ex. 32:1-6. This parallels Satan's direction for Jesus to bow to him in Mt. 4:9 and Lk. 4:7. In the story of Jesus, the Accuser is telling Jesus: "if you bow down to me, I will make you a tyrant over all the kingdoms." In other words: bow down to the Domination System and you can rule as part of the Domination System. But the Kingdom of God is not like earthly kingdoms - it does not rule by force. Jesus taught his disciples to conquer through love - he said to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you (Mt. 5:44), bless those who curse you (Luke 6:28), turn the other cheek (Mt. 5:39), and later on Paul taught to "overcome evil with good" (Rom. 12:21).

So, I would argue that what is going on here is that the story is symbolically linking Jesus to Moses and painting his as the new law-giver. As Moses went through trials and fasted 40 days before receiving the law, so Jesus goes through trials and fasted 40 days before receiving the law.

But there is one final problem you have if you want to take this story as a literal, historical account. Why isn't in John? Or, what if it was? See, the thing you have to realize about John is that the author really likes metaphors - he even pokes fun of people who don't get metaphorical language (see John 3:4, where a Pharisee misunderstands Jesus teaching of being "born from above" and says "How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?"). And so, I would argue, John does have the three temptations, but they are spread throughout this gospel, and the author has these temptations coming to Jesus through people rather than through Satan, which shows us that John wants us to see Satan as a symbol, or a metaphor. John 6:30-33 has people asking for manna from heaven, and Jesus responding (in a very similar manner to the story of the desert temptation) that what they really need is the true bread from Heaven. Then in John 2:18, John has people asking for a sign from Jesus proving he is the Messiah, very similar to the trial in which Satan asks Jesus to put God to the test. And then in John 6:15, the author has people coming with the intention “to come and take Him by force to make Him king.” I think John is leading us to interpret the story of the dessert temptation metaphorically, rather than as a literal devil personified coming to tempt Jesus.

And here I'd like you to consider again - the popular view of Satan held by many modern Christians is that he is pure evil. But in the story of the desert temptation, the three trials are simply the conventional wisdom of the day regarding what a messiah should do. The people in Jesus' time believed that a messiah would miraculously give them food rather than teaching them to be generous with their own wealth so that none would go hungry. The people in Jesus' time thought Jesus should do magic tricks to prove that he was truly the Messiah - and even today, Christians who are challenged to view miracle stories as metaphorical/symbolical will balk, because we think a Messiah would be someone who would defy the laws of nature and do magic in order to "put God to the test" and prove God really sent this Messiah. And the people in Jesus' time thought that a Messiah would violently overthrow the empire of Rome - and in our time today, so many Christians still think that the Kingdom of God will come by force. But the point of this story is to contradict those views and show us the face of God in the face of this lowly carpenter who taught generosity, kindness, and love.