Our Nicene common ancestor: an ecclesiological-historical argument for Trinitarian orthodoxy

1. The historical pedigree criterion
2. The Gamaliel criterion
3. Applying the criteria
4. Our Nicene common ancestor
5. Conclusion
Addendum: Possible objections considered

In this article I offer a theological argument for Trinitarian orthodoxy. The argument is indirect in that it does not look at the doctrine of the Trinity directly (or at related issues such as the deity of Christ and the personality of the Holy Spirit). Rather, the argument is based entirely on the doctrine of the church (ecclesiology) and the history of the church. The default alternative position will be that of Christadelphians, although it would apply equally to other non-Trinitarian restorationist movements such as Jehovah's Witnesses or the Church of God General Conference.

1. The historical pedigree criterion

Many people who are active on social media have probably seen the satirical meme below at some point. I don't know who created the meme, but I'm guessing it was intended to discredit the claims of fundamentalist and/or restorationist movement(s) to have the definitive truth over against the myriads of other present and past ecclesiastical traditions.

One of the assumptions implicit in this meme is that the historical pedigree of a Christian movement affects the credibility of its theological claims. It is the recent appearance of 'our movement' that makes its claim to have definitively 'gotten the Bible right' sound ridiculous.1 If 'our movement' had not 'come along' lately but could trace its history back to antiquity through an unbroken chain of tradition, the credibility of its truth claims would increase.

We can call the criterion presupposed by the meme the historical pedigree criterion. It is clearly a retrospective criterion, used to evaluate the theological legitimacy of contemporary Christian movements in view of their past. A weak statement of this criterion would be simply that a movement should have a long and impressive historical pedigree in order to claim theological legitimacy for itself. A stronger statement of this criterion would be that a movement should be able to plausibly claim direct, unbroken historical descent from the apostolic church. Obviously the theological shape of the church in the apostolic and early post-apostolic period is disputed (due to differing interpretations of the New Testament and other early Christian literature), and the available historical data increases as we move forward in time. Nevertheless, if we want the truth claims of 'our movement' to be taken seriously, we should be able to offer a credible historical argument for its continuous existence since antiquity.

2. The Gamaliel criterion

In contrast to the retrospective historical pedigree criterion, the theological legitimacy of a religious movement might also be assessed prospectively. A criterion for doing so is found within the New Testament in the speech of Rabbi Gamaliel the Elder to the Sanhedrin. In response to a speech from Peter and the apostles, the members of the Sanhedrin 'were enraged and wanted to kill them'. Gamaliel, Luke tells us, placated their wrath as follows:

34 But a Pharisee in the council named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law held in honor by all the people, stood up and gave orders to put the men outside for a little while. 35 And he said to them, "Men of Israel, take care what you are about to do with these men. 36 For before these days Theudas rose up, claiming to be somebody, and a number of men, about four hundred, joined him. He was killed, and all who followed him were dispersed and came to nothing. 37 After him Judas the Galilean rose up in the days of the census and drew away some of the people after him. He too perished, and all who followed him were scattered. 38 So in the present case I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone, for if this plan or this undertaking is of man, it will fail; 39 but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God!" So they took his advice... (Acts 5:34-39 ESV)

Gamaliel's argument is built upon two simple and opposite premises. (1) A movement that is not of God will inevitably 'fail' and 'come to nothing'; whereas (2) a movement that is of God is impossible to overthrow; it is indestructible and will endure. Hence, the future of the Jesus movement is theologically predetermined, and neither the action nor the inaction of the Sanhedrin can alter it.

What does Luke think of Gamaliel's argument? Within the broader narrative context of Acts it is obvious that he endorses it, because the reader learns that in contrast to the movements of Theudas and Judas the Galilean, the Jesus movement did not come to nothing, but prospered and fulfilled its founder's prediction that it would extend 'to the end of the earth' (Acts 1:8). This prediction is symbolically fulfilled in Acts 26-28 by Paul's arrival in Rome for an impending audience with the emperor himself. The implicit argument of Acts is that the continued existence and spread of the Jesus movement - amid persecution, no less - proves in terms of Gamaliel's argument that it cannot be overthrown because it is 'of God'.

Gamaliel's argument is consistent with other New Testament texts that presuppose what might be termed 'the perseverance of the church'. Jesus famously declared to Simon Peter that 'the gates of Hades shall not prevail against [my church]' (Matt. 16:18), a promise which seems to require at very least her perpetual existence. Similarly, in Jesus' final words to his disciples in Matthew, he promises to be with them to 'the end of the age' (Matt. 28:20), a phrase which in Matthaean context can only mean 'until the Parousia' (Matt. 13:40-43, 49-50; 24:3). It is difficult to imagine the church lapsing into non-existence as long as her Lord is 'with her'. The metaphor of the church as Christ's body also assumes the church's perpetual existence since Christ's body is nourished by him (Eph. 5:29-30), and the same could be said of the metaphor of the church as Christ's bride (Rev. 21:9; 22:17). We are only scratching the surface of biblical ecclesiology here, but it is enough to make our point.

Gamaliel's argument gives us a clear prospective criterion for evaluating the theological legitimacy of religious movements, including 'our movement'. If 'our movement' is not of God, it will eventually come to nothing. If, on the other hand, 'our movement' is of God, it will endure - regardless of any human attempts to suppress or destroy it.

3. Applying the criteria

Let us discuss the application of Gamaliel's criterion first, since this is more easily done. Gamaliel's criterion is not useful for evaluating present-day Christian movements, because we must wait and see whether each one will 'come to nothing', which may take centuries. However, Gamaliel's criterion is useful for evaluating past Christian movements, because we can conclude that any movement that 'came to nothing' was not of God. This allows us to rule out the theological legitimacy of many historical Christian movements. These would include the Ebionites, Marcionites, various Gnostic sects, Montanists, Arians, Sabellians, Donatists, Cathars (Albigensians), Paulinicians, and many others. The 'gates of Hades' finally prevailed against all of these movements, so evidently none of them was the object of Christ's ecclesiological promises.

The historical pedigree criterion can be applied to present-day Christian movements, but its application is not as straightforward. This is because most present-day Christian movements formed through schism from or within a parent movement at some point in the past. However, in many such schisms, both (or all, if more than two) the 'child' movements claim to be the legitimate heir of the parent. An obvious example would be the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches after the Great Schism of 1054. Neither party regarded (or regards) itself as having broken away and formed a new movement; each believed it had excommunicated the leading bishop of the other and then continued as the true and legitimate Church. Hence, post-1054 both the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches could make a plausible historical claim that the pre-1054 Catholic/Orthodox Church was part of their historical pedigree.

In determining whether a nominally new 'child' movement can be plausibly be called the legitimate heir of an older 'parent' movement, the following should apply:

(H1) There should be a direct historical link between the two movements, i.e. among the early members of the 'child movement' were individuals who had previously belonged to the 'parent movement'.

(H2) The 'child' movement, from its nominal beginning, should have identified the parent movement as its theologically legitimate historical antecedent and identified itself as the legitimate continuation of the parent movement.

(H3) The doctrinal beliefs of the 'child movement' should align with those of the 'parent movement'.

Now, the vast majority of present-day Christian movements are going to come up against a historical barrier as they follow their pedigree back in time, and that barrier is the Reformation. Nearly all Protestant movements existing today either broke away directly from the Roman Catholic Church (e.g. Lutherans, Anglicans, Presbyterians), or broke away from a movement that broke away from the Roman Catholic Church (e.g. Methodists), or broke away from a movement that broke away from a movement that broke away from the Roman Catholic Church, and so on. Other movements congealed through the coming together of like-minded people from various Protestant backgrounds. Hence, as we move backward in time, the historical pedigree of nearly every Protestant movement is absorbed into the Roman Catholic Church once we reach about 1500. All such movements must claim either (a) that the Roman Catholic Church, at least prior to the Reformation, was (or contained) the true body of Christ; or (b) there was an extended period of time prior to the Reformation during which the true body of Christ did not exist, i.e. came to nothing. If (a), then it must be conceded that people who were nominally Roman Catholic constituted the true body of Christ, at least for a time. If (b), then no movement meets the historical pedigree criterion, and Christianity itself is falsified by the Gamaliel criterion and the failure of the Lord's promises.

The exception to this 'historical barrier' among present-day Protestants are those who might legitimately claim (in terms of H1, H2 and H3 above) that their historical pedigree runs through the Vaudois (a.k.a. Waldenses), who existed before the Protestant Reformation and whose leaders embraced the Reformation in the 16th century. However, those who claim ecclesiological descent from the Vaudois can only push their historical barrier about three centuries further back, to the late 12th century. Their founder, Peter Waldo, was a Roman Catholic who began teaching ideas contrary to Church doctrine and was excommunicated. (For Christadelphian readers who are familiar with Alan Eyre's books, it may be of interest to hear that the Vaudois were Trinitarian.)

The Roman Catholic Church, of course, traces its historical pedigree back through the Great Schism of 1054 (seeing itself as the legitimate heir of pre-1054 catholic orthodoxy2) and thence through catholic orthodoxy of the medieval and patristic periods. The Eastern Orthodox Church does the same. The Oriental Orthodox Church traces its historical pedigree back to 451 when it became separated from the wider catholic-orthodox church over the Chalcedonian Definition. The Oriental Orthodox Church lodges a claim alongside that of the Roman Catholic-Eastern Orthodox Church to be the rightful heir of the pre-451 catholic-orthodox church. Similarly, the Church of the East traces its historical pedigree back to 431 when it became separated from the wider catholic-orthodox church over Nestorianism. The Church of the East thus lodges a claim alongside that of the Roman Catholic-Eastern Orthodox-Oriental Orthodox Church to be the rightful heir of the pre-431 catholic-orthodox church.

What are the implications of this ecclesiastical family tree that we have just verbally sketched?

4. Our Nicene common ancestor

Every Christian movement that exists today is descended from the catholic-orthodox church as it was in 430 A.D. (on the eve of the Nestorian schism of 431). And this was, of course, the church that had reached consensus on the doctrine of the Trinity at the ecumenical councils of Nicea (325) and Constantinople (381). There were various other Christian movements that existed in 430 A.D. (Arians, Montanists, Marcionites, Paulianists, Apollinarians, Gnostics, etc.) but these all eventually 'came to nothing'. Of the 'Christianities' that existed in 430 A.D., only Niceno-Constantinopolitan Trinitarian Christianity has continuously existed until the present day.

This means no Christian movement existing today can trace its historical pedigree back to the apostles without being absorbed into Trinitarian catholic orthodoxy at some point. All roads back to the apostles pass through Constantinople and Nicea. The early-fifth-century catholic church is the 'common ancestor' of all present-day Christian movements. And it must be emphasized that the early-fifth-century catholic church was not merely one in which the doctrine of the Trinity was popular or was the majority opinion. The doctrine of the Trinity had been dogmatically promulgated in the fourth century ecumenical councils, and non-Trinitarians had been anathemized. Everyone in communion with the catholic-orthodox church in the early fifth century was either a Trinitarian or a charlatan.

Indeed, for non-Trinitarian movements of today, their non-Trinitarian historical pedigree at best goes back about five centuries to the dawn of the Protestant Reformation (that is, if historical continuity in terms of criteria H1, H2 and H3 above exists between contemporary non-Trinitarians and 16th-century non-Trinitarians, which is debatable).3 Before that, their historical pedigree is Roman Catholic - a tradition that had indisputably been Trinitarian for more than a thousand years. The non-Trinitarian Christian movements that exist today are a Reformation or post-Reformation phenomenon. Despite ideological affinities, they have no direct historical links to the non-Trinitarian movements of antiquity, which all 'came to nothing' long before the Reformation, showing themselves by Gamaliel's criterion to be 'not of God'.

The last question we can briefly address is whether the catholic orthodox church as it was in 430 A.D. could plausibly claim theological legitimacy in terms of our two historical criteria. Unquestionably this church meets Gamaliel's criterion: the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed has been used in all of the Catholic/Orthodox ecclesiastical traditions from the fifth century down to the present day (and later in many Protestant movements). The Nicene catholic orthodox church has never 'failed' nor 'come to nothing' - that much is certain.

What about the historical pedigree criterion? Did the catholic orthodox church of 430 A.D. have a plausible claim to direct, unbroken historical descent from the apostolic church? It is undeniable that the patristic church made this claim, and was concerned with this question, as shown by its episcopal succession lists for the patriarchates (Rome, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem) and its great interest in the idea of apostolic succession. Moreover, this church stood in the tradition that had collected and transmitted the apostolic writings and this church had canonized them (defining the boundaries of the New Testament as we know it) in regional synods in the late fourth century. This church claimed as its own many theologians who wrote in the roughly two centuries between the apostolic age and the Council of Nicea (such as Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp of Smyrna, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus of Lyons, etc.) And whatever one thinks of the theological developments that occurred between the apostolic period and the fourth century, there is no evidence of historical discontinuity between the apostolic church and the Nicene church. The catholic-orthodox bishops down into the fifth century did not repudiate their ecclesiastical forebears, but held them to be worthy of great honour.

Thus, while some details of the claim are open to debate (such as the historical veracity of episcopal succession lists), it is clear that the church of 430 A.D. did claim a historical pedigree going back to the apostles, and that this claim has at least prima facie plausibility.

5. Conclusion

Non-Trinitarian movements have no plausible claim to direct, unbroken historical descent from the apostolic church. They can only claim to be the restoration of an authentic, apostolic Christian community which had ceased to exist for many centuries. This cessation of existence, this 'coming to nothing', however, violates Gamaliel's dictum and the promises of Christ to his bride. Hence, non-Trinitarian Christian movements have no historically plausible claim to being the indestructible apostolic church. If any Christian movement can make such a claim, it must be one that has remained faithful to the Nicene Trinitarian heritage that all contemporary Christian movements share. It is truly only this heritage that allows us to confess, in the words of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, 'one holy, catholic and apostolic Church'.

Addendum: Possible objections considered

The following are objections that might be raised against the argument of this article. I believe that such objections (especially the first three) are an implicit acknowledgment that the premises of the argument (the historical pedigree criterion and the Gamaliel criterion) are valid. The objections are made precisely because members of present-day heterodox Christian movements recognize the theological problem posed by their lack of historical pedigree. And the objections are not inferences drawn from historical evidence but are theologically motivated judgments imposed on history without evidence.

I. 'Our movement' has always existed since the apostles' time, but historical evidence is lacking because it was destroyed in times of censorship and persecution.

There is no doubt that, from the fourth century until the dawn of modernity, ecclesiastical and secular authorities cooperated to suppress 'heresies' using coercion and force - often brutal and lethal force. They did not adopt Rabbi Gamaliel's laissez faire approach. From the perspective of modernity with our liberal values, we can and should lament the morality of the catholic-orthodox Church's past atrocities committed against heretics (as well as Jews and Muslims). Value judgments aside, however, the cold historical reality is that the Catholic Church was largely successful in destroying 'heretical' movements up until the Reformation. This proves that none of the earlier 'heretical' movements constituted the true apostolic church; otherwise no human authority, as Gamaliel argued, would have been able to overthrow them.

Is it possible, however, that the true, non-Trinitarian church has continuously existed since the apostles' time, but that its existence is not well-documented due to persecution and suppression? Could it be that the movement went undetected for extended periods, and that at least a tiny remnant survived every attempt to destroy it? If so, we could not reasonably expect the writings of such a movement to have survived, could we?

There are a number of problems with this romantic, idealized reconstruction of sectarian history. First, no writings survive for most 'heretical movements' in Church history. We have no writings of Marcion, Paul of Samosata, Arius, Peter Waldo, and many other 'heresiarchs'. However, we still know something about them and their beliefs due to the polemic of their catholic opponents. Obviously, the sources are heavily biased and historians must read them critically. Yet there is ample historical evidence that these movements existed and eventually came to nought.

In general, the Catholic Church sought to destroy the heretics themselves and their writings. However, they generally did not try to erase all memory of their existence. Rather, they catalogued and documented past heresies so that they would be better prepared to face future ones. This phenomenon is present already in the second century in the Syntagma, a lost work of Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus' extant five-volume work Against Heresies. Heresiological literature became a whole genre in the patristic and medieval church. Heresies were also named, described and anathemized in the canons of church synods and ecumenical councils.

In the High Middle Ages, with the onset of the Inquisition in the West, the Roman Catholic Church's documentation of heresy became even more meticulous. As Deane explains:

One of the most important elements of the development of medieval inquisitorial activity was its use of texts-its painstaking recording and copying of interrogations, their organization and cross-referencing for easy use, and the collection of supporting written materials on issues of law and theology. Each tribunal had archives of registers into which confessions and information were copied, and these provide some of our best sources for the history of inquisition.4

It is safe to assume that a reasonably complete historical record of 'heretical' Christian movements through the ages has been preserved. It is very unsafe to assume that 'our movement' existed from apostolic times down to the present despite centuries-long gaps in the historical record.

II. The true body of Christ has always existed, not as one identifiable ecclesiastical movement but as a chain of non-conformist movements that went by many different names.

A version of this sort of hypothesis, within the Christadelphian movement, is offered by Alan Eyre in his books The Protesters and Brethren in Christ. Eyre discusses many different nonconformist groups and individuals through church history which he identifies as Christ's true brethren. The problem is that some of these groups have no historical link to one another, and many of them had conflicting doctrinal beliefs, both with each other and with Christadelphians.5 Moreover, Eyre is almost silent about the late patristic and medieval periods, taking the great majority of his examples from the Reformation period (and making passing references to a few early patristic writers).

More broadly, there is no unifying historical or theological thread running through the various non-conformist or 'heretical' Christian movements that have existed through church history.

III. The true body of Christ has always existed, not necessarily as a separate, identifiable ecclesiastical 'movement' but as individual dissidents who held to the true apostolic teachings.

A third objection might be that the true body of Christ was preserved, not in any identifiable ecclesiastical movement(s) but in the hearts and minds of dissident individuals who remained nominally part of the wider church. Surely historians cannot peer into the hearts and minds of long-dead individuals who may have been afraid to openly voice their objections to official Church dogma?

In response, it would be useful to consider the minimum requirements to constitute 'the body of Christ'. Jesus famously said, 'Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them' (Matt. 18:20). Hence, no number of isolated individuals can be the true church, the household of faith, the body of Christ. This requires, at an absolute minimum, two or three people who gather in Jesus' name, i.e. hold meetings and share fellowship in the breaking of bread.

The question is, assuming that such a 'movement of two or three' did exist, would it have been able to maintain its identity across generations, and would it have been able to do so while remaining undetected or at least undocumented by the wider Church? The answer is, almost certainly not. Maintaining theological identity over time without distortion requires a body of extra-biblical teaching in written form. A Christian movement, even a tiny one, that holds religious gatherings with a separate communion and produces non-conformist theological literature is not going to remain unknown within the wider Church for long. If they were nominal Catholics, they would not in good conscience have partaken of the sacraments (e.g. baptizing their children or taking the Eucharist), and this would have drawn the attention of the authorities. Nor are the members of such a movement likely to have wanted to remain unknown. Dissemination of ideas and proselytization are core values shared by nearly all Christian movements. A person who thinks he has the true gospel and everyone around him has a false one is not going to keep his thoughts to himself. 'A city set on a hill cannot be hidden' (see Matt. 5:13-16).

Thus, it is impossible for isolated individuals to have constituted the body of Christ through history. There must at every point in time have been at least two people in fellowship for 'the household of faith' to exist. The conditions required for the perseverance of such a tiny community of believers across generations would also have necessarily led to the growth of the community and its discovery and suppression by the wider Church. And so we are back to the situation of Objection I above. It is utterly implausible that such a community could have survived across many centuries without becoming part of recorded history. To posit the existence of such a tiny, secret 'dissident community' through the centuries in the absence of any evidence is the stuff of a Dan Brown novel.

IV. None of this is of theological importance. It is strictly the teachings of the Bible, not church history or tradition, that determine the theological legitimacy of a Christian movement.

The second sentence in this objection is naive because, even if we hold rigidly to a Sola Scriptura epistemology, our approach to interpreting the Bible will be heavily influenced by our view of church history and tradition. Were the Church Fathers wicked apostates? Or were they, as the classical label suggests, 'fathers' to whom we look for wisdom and guidance?

Moreover, we must realize that individual doctrines of the faith are interconnected and interdependent. Our evaluation of the doctrine of the Trinity cannot be divorced from our doctrine of the Church - our ecclesiology. This article has essentially offered an ecclesiological defense of the doctrine of the Trinity. The ecclesiological principles that undergird the historical argument are drawn straight from the Bible. We have Rabbi Gamaliel's teaching (implicitly endorsed by Luke) that a religious movement that is 'of God' cannot be overthrown while a religious movement that is 'not of God' inevitably comes to nothing. This coheres with Christ's promises to be present with his disciples until the end of the age, to nourish his body the church, and that the gates of Hades would not prevail against the church.

The argument of this article is therefore biblically based, even if its connection to the doctrine of the Trinity is only indirect. Anyone who seeks to justify their non-Trinitarian stance must contend not only with biblical teaching about God, Christ and the Holy Spirit, but also with biblical teaching about the Church as compared with how history actually unfolded. The question is, can 'our movement' plausibly claim to be the body of Christ, in which he has always been present, which he has continually nourished, which has never been overthrown despite the best efforts of human authorities? That all present-day Christian movements (including non-Trinitarian movements) share a common ancestor in the Nicene Trinitarian church suggests that no non-Trinitarian movement can make such a claim.6

If no non-Trinitarian movement can meet the two criteria that the true body of Christ should have, this casts a dark cloud of suspicion over the legitimacy of non-Trinitarian theology and provides a strong motivation to reopen the question of its biblical basis. Hence, this fourth objection does not address the problem but simply ignores it.

V. The New Testament forewarns about false teachers who would lead the church astray, a problem that had already begun in the apostles' time.

This claim does not directly impact the argument because it has no bearing on the validity of the historical pedigree criterion or the Gamaliel criterion. Indeed, if Nicene Christianity was the fruit of a 'great apostasy' (as some unitarian restorationists would claim), then the only form of Christianity that meets these two criteria is an apostate form, which effectively falsifies Christianity in toto.

New Testament passages that warn about false prophets or false teachers (and there are many) must be balanced against the many passages that promise active divine support for the church through the headship of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit. Moreover, the warning passages themselves witness to the robust reaction against false teaching that took place in the early church. Hence, the ecclesiological picture that emerges from the New Testament is not one of gloom and pessimism but of a church that faces daunting challenges within and without but is sustained by her gracious Lord.

Indeed, the writings of second-century, proto-orthodox Church Fathers such as Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp of Smyrna, Justin Martyr and Irenaeus of Lyons show a continuation of the apostolic tradition of standing strong against false teachings. Orthodoxy can point to many heresies that arose (fulfilling New Testament predictions) and which were successfully opposed. Thus, the New Testament warnings about false teachers pose no problem for orthodoxy unless we presuppose that 'orthodoxy' is the false teaching about which the New Testament forewarned (which is, of course, circular reasoning).7

Footnotes

• 1 The other aspect would be the sheer number of such recent movements of which 'our movement' is just one. In view of the numbers, the antecedent probability of 'our movement' having gotten the Bible uniquely right is very low. However, this problem is mitigated if 'our movement' is an ancient movement among a myriad of latecomers to the ecclesiastical scene. In that case, there is a logical basis for distinguishing 'our movement' from its contemporary competitors.
• 2 Throughout this post, 'catholic' with a lower-case 'c' is used in the sense of 'universal' and 'orthodox' with a lower-case 'o' is used in the sense of 'mainstream, established'. These terms are to be distinguished from the upper-case Catholic and Orthodox which refer respectively to specific ecclesiastical movements/institutions (although the Catholic and Orthodox Churches clearly apply these terms to themselves because they consider themselves to be catholic and orthodox).
• 3 At a stretch one might claim that some anti-Trinitarian stirrings occurred in the 1400s, e.g. in the writings of Lorenzo Valla, but there does not seem to be evidence from the 15th century of anything that could be called a non-Trinitarian Christian community.
• 4 Deane, Jennifer Kolpacoff (2011). A History of Medieval Heresy and Inquisition. Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield, p. 106.
• 5 Numerous claims in Eyre's books were criticized by another Christadelphian writer, Ruth McHaffie, in a book called Finding Founders and Facing Facts, which I haven't read and which is unfortunately out of print. Christadelphian apologist Jonathan Burke describes the book as 'exhaustively researched' and states that it demonstrates 'misreading or misrepresentation of a number of [Eyre's] sources, but observes that McHaffie still agreed with Eyre that 'certain Christadelphian beliefs were represented in various historical Christian groups' (Burke, Jonathan (2013). Living on the Edge: Challenges to Faith. Lively Stones Publishing, p. 1 n. 3.) 'Certain Christadelphian beliefs' 'represented in various historical Christian groups' obviously falls far short of the historical claim made in this objection.
• 6 Unless, that is, it is willing to concede that Nicene Trinitarian Christianity did constitute the household of faith for many centuries, and to call Nicene Trinitarian Christianity its legitimate historical-ecclesiastical parent. In this case two additional questions present themselves: how did a church nourished by Christ hold a grievous doctrinal error as its central creed for many centuries, and how could a 'child movement' repudiate the core doctrines of its legitimate parent?
• 7 In addition to citing warning passages like Acts 20:29-31 and 2 Tim. 4:3-4, Christadelphians offer a radical interpretation of apocalyptic passages concerning the eschatological 'Antichrist' figure, arguing that such passages predict the political success of 'apostate' Christianity under Constantine and the subsequent rise of the papacy. Space does not allow a discussion of such passages here, but suffice it to say that this reading of biblical apocalyptic has no standing in biblical scholarship, conservative or liberal. I have previously critiqued one particularly egregious error that contributes to this theory, namely the identification of the 'male child' of Rev. 12:5 as a usurping Constantine (in context, the male child clearly denotes Christ). The Constantine interpretation of Rev. 12:5 is so obviously wrong that it raises serious doubts about the competence of its proponents as expositors of Scripture.

An hypothetical dialogue between Jesus and his disciples about the devil

Introduction

Almost three years ago I wrote an article entitled The Enemy is the Devil: The parables of Jesus and Christadelphian satanology. This article offers a detailed critique of the Christadelphian doctrine of the devil based on three parables of Jesus: the parable of the strong man (Matt. 12:29; Mark 3:27; Luke 11:21-22), the parable of the sower (Matt. 13:3-9, 18-23; Mark 4:2-9, 13-20; Luke 8:4-8, 11-15) and the parable of the tares (Matt. 13:24-30, 36-43). I am disappointed that to date, I'm not aware of any Christadelphian having responded to this article, despite some robust interaction on some of my other writings on the subject of the devil.

If I were to rewrite the article today, I would make a few changes in light of my further studies on the subject of 'New Testament Satanology' since it was written. For instance, I would give Jesus himself more credit for the distinctively Christian idea of Satan, rather than suggesting it was an idea 'adopted' from Second Temple Judaism with only minor refinements. I maintain, however, that the term הַשָּׂטָן in Job 1-2 and Zech. 3:1-2 and its translation ὁ διάβολος in the Septuagint form the definitive background for New Testament Satanology, mediated through development in beliefs about cosmic evil in Second Temple Judaism.

What I would like to do in this post is to illustrate anew the basic argument of the article by means of an hypothetical dialogue between Jesus and his disciples based loosely on the parable of the tares in Matthew 13. It is not intended to be flippant or to make fun of Christadelphian ideas about the devil but rather to convey what I believe are prohibitive hermeneutical difficulties that arise when one presupposes a Christadelphian understanding of the devil while reading these parables. Hence, the dialogue is a rhetorical construct illustrating a reductio ad absurdum argument.

The Dialogue

Jesus: Here's another parable for you. The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, 'Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?' He said to them, 'An enemy has done this.' So the servants said to him, 'Then do you want us to go and gather them?' But he said, 'No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.'

Disciples: Explain to us the meaning of this parable.

Jesus: Well, you see, it's an allegory. Each aspect of the parable is a metaphor for something in real life.

Disciples: We understand, Lord. Now if you can just explain to us what each metaphor represents, we'll be all set.

Jesus: No problem. The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world, and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels.

Disciples: Okay Master, that all makes sense. There's just one thing we aren't clear about. You said the enemy is a metaphor for 'the devil'. But what is 'the devil'?

Jesus: Why, it's a figure of speech; a metaphor!1

Disciples: Rabbi, let us see if we have this straight. In this parable, the sower, the field, the good seed, the weeds, the harvest and the reapers are all metaphors for concrete realities, but the enemy is a metaphor for another metaphor?

Jesus: It's a subtle concept, I know. Perhaps I can explain it another way. The devil is a symbol for sin.2

Disciples: Okay, let's just check if we have all this symbolism correct. The good sower symbolizes the Son of Man.

Jesus: That's right.

Disciples: The field symbolizes the world.

Jesus: Correct.

Disciples: The good seed symbolizes the sons of the kingdom, and the weeds symbolize the sons of the evil one.

Jesus: Absolutely.

Disciples: The harvest symbolizes the end of the age, and the reapers symbolize angels.

Jesus: Just so.

Disciples: And the enemy symbolizes... another symbol?

Jesus: I can see you are still struggling with this concept. Let me try one more time to express it to you. The devil is an elaborate parable.3

Disciples: Lord, are you saying that in this parable, each element symbolizes a concrete cosmological reality, with the exception of 'the enemy', which symbolizes another parable?

Jesus: I know it sounds confusing, but just keep thinking about it and it will start making sense.

A few minutes pass with the disciples deep in thought.

Disciples: Master, forgive our impudence - we're just thinking aloud here. Since all other elements of the parable symbolize concrete realities, and since the other characters working in the field (good sower and reapers) symbolize good supernatural beings ('the Son of Man' and 'the angels'), would it be reasonable to interpret the evil sower as symbolizing an evil supernatural being called 'the devil'?

Jesus: No! Your reasoning is not nearly subtle enough. In a future lesson I will clear this up using a picture of the final judgment which features the victorious coming of the Son of Man with his angels and the downfall of the devil and his angels (cf. Matt. 25:31-46).

Disciples: That sounds straightforward enough. We have a group of good angels led by a personal cosmic ruler (the Son of Man). Presumably, then, the second group consists of bad angels led by a personal cosmic ruler (the devil)?

Jesus: Again, no! You are correct that the first group are good angels led by a personal cosmic ruler. However, the second group are not actually angels but human 'messengers', and they are led not by a personal cosmic ruler but by a metaphor.

Disciples: So, Master, to sum up the general principle of interpretation: if we hear you talking about what sounds like cosmic dualism - good and evil supernatural beings opposing each other - we are to interpret the good supernatural beings literally but the evil supernatural beings figuratively?

Jesus: Correct. The fundamental presupposition is that evil supernatural beings do not exist, so you have a mandate to steer clear of any interpretation of my words that might suggest otherwise.

Footnotes

• 1 'The "devil" is in fact a figure of speech, a metaphor. It is a symbol of sin in its various forms, whether in individuals or in human organisations, all of which tend to work against the will of God.' (Christadelphian Bible Mission Correspondence Course, Lesson 9: Bible Teaching about the Devil, p. 2.)
• 2 'The devil is a symbol for sin like Uncle Sam is a symbol for the United States. God made sin look like an evil and powerful being in order to show how powerful it is. There is no fallen angel devil.' (Dawn Christadelphian Bible Course, Part 1, Lesson 30.)
• 3 'The subject of Satan and demons – or the devil and his angels – must be thought of as one elaborate, sustained New Testament parable.' (Watkins, Peter (1971/2011) The Devil - The Great Deceiver. Birmingham: The Christadelphian, p. 34.)

A further reply to Jonathan Burke on the devil in the Gospel temptation stories

1. Idiosyncrasies and Scholarly Consensus
2. History of Religions
3. Genre and Form
4. Matthew's Mountain
5. Alleged Rabbinic Parallels
6. Conclusion

In this article I respond to Jonathan Burke's article in an ongoing online dialogue over the interpretation of ὁ διάβολος in the temptation stories (TS) in Matthew 4, Luke 4 and Mark 1. My original exegetical works, which interacted with Christadelphian interpretations of the TS, can be found here and here; a summary of the findings of both of these studies is here. Burke critiqued my studies here (part of a larger series responding to various other articles of mine). I responded to Burke's critique with a series of four blog posts (1, 2, 3, 4), and Burke's latest article (actually over a year old by now) is what I am addressing now.1

In the interest of conciseness and time management, I will not be referring to academic literature to support every claim - particularly claims for which I have done so in previous installments in this series. Any reader who shares Burke's conviction that I have a 'complete lack of familiarity with the relevant scholarship' is encouraged to consult the bibliography and supplementary online materials pertaining to my two co-authored studies on New Testament Satanology recently published in the Journal for the Study of the New Testament.2 Instead of replying point-by-point I will make observations on some of the key issues that have been raised. I will also try to follow my self-imposed rules of engagement for online theological discussions, including avoidance of a discussion about the discussion. I would ask Burke to do the same if he opts to carry the discussion further.

1. Idiosyncrasies and Scholarly Consensus

First, I want to comment on the issue of 'idiosyncratic' interpretations. Burke brought this term into the discussion, labelling my interpretation of the TS as idiosyncratic. Well, my interpretation of one small aspect of one of the TS may be idiosyncratic (namely, how Jesus was able to see all the kingdoms of the world from atop a very high mountain in Matthew's version). However, the main point of contention (the meaning of ὁ διάβολος/ὁ σατανᾶς in the TS) does not rest on the validity of my interpretation of this detail. This is obvious since, despite not sharing my 'idiosyncratic' interpretation of the mountaintop experience, the vast majority of scholars share my view on the meaning of ὁ διάβολος.

Thus, when it comes to weighing the scholarly support for Burke's position and mine, the most important point is that Burke's interpretation of the term ὁ διάβολος itself (namely, that it refers to a personification of the yetzer hara, the evil inclination in human nature, and not to a personal being) has very little support in either the academy or the church. Burke admits this: he says that 'the declared aim of my article is to challenge the existing consensus that the temptation account is mythological'. He also admits, 'my view that Jesus was tempted by his own desires is marginal within scholarship', but avers that it is 'certainly not idiosyncratic', citing two scholars in support of this interpretation. One is Kesich, who in a work on early church history devotes all of three sentences to the TS.3 While Kesich says that the TS have been 'translated into figurative language', he does not state that the devil in the TS is a figurative way of referring to Jesus' own desires.4 The other is Lachs, who agrees more closely with Burke's interpretation but still not exactly.5 It is worth noting the language with which Lachs introduces this interpretation, which indicates a speculative suggestion rather than a firm claim: 'the confrontation with Satan could be seen as Jesus’ struggle with himself and overcoming the yezer hara'. Moreover, the only scholarly review of Lachs' Rabbinic Commentary on the New Testament of which I am aware pans his work for its 'sloppy editing', 'errors of fact and interpretation', 'outdated scholarship' and 'uncritical methodology'.6

Leaving aside these three sources of questionable academic weight,7 one finds virtually no support for the ὁ διάβολος = yetzer hara interpretation of the TS in relevant monographs and exegetical journal articles on the TS or technical commentaries on the Synoptic Gospels. Thus, 'marginal' is an apt adjective to use for the status of Burke's interpretation (this seems to be one of the few areas of agreement between Burke and myself on the TS). Since Burke is challenging a near-unanimous scholarly consensus, my recommendation would be that he submit his exegesis of the TS to a peer-reviewed biblical studies journal so that it can be tried in the court of scholarly opinion, rather than limiting himself to blog posts. Furthermore, Burke needs to provide detailed commentary on the Matthaean and Lucan TS to explain what every clause would mean under his interpretation of ὁ διάβολος and show why this interpretation has, overall, more explanatory power than the standard view down to the level of syntax. To my knowledge, despite writing extensively on the TS he has yet to do this.

2. History of Religions

One of Burke's three arguments against the scholarly consensus that ὁ διάβολος in the TS refers to a cosmic foe is a history of religions argument:

the most common terms used in pre-Christian Second Temple literature for a supernatural evil being, are not used in the Synoptics. In fact most of them are not used in the New Testament at all (Beliar is used once). In contrast, the terms used in the Synoptic temptation accounts have almost no pre-Christian witness in Second Temple literature as a reference to a specific supernatural evil being.

More specifically, Burke claims:

In Second Temple Period literature the term ‘satan’ (whether in Hebrew or Greek), is predominantly used as a common noun rather than a personal name, the term ‘the devil’ (ὁ diaboloV), is rarely if ever used to refer to a supernatural evil being, and the terms ‘the tempter’ (ὁ peirazwn), and ‘the evil one’ (ὁ ponēroV), have no pre-Christian witness with such a meaning. The term satan, whether in Greek (satanaV), or Hebrew (śāṭān), is used rarely in pre-Christian literature and never as a proper name.

I have so far not responded in detail to these religion-historical claims, partly because I intend to make a study of the origins of early Christian Satanology against the background of Second Temple Judaism the topic of my Honours dissertation over the next year. So I hope in due course to address these issues in detail. For now, I will limit myself to five observations.

1) The term ὁ δίαβολος is used in Job 1-2 LXX and Zech. 3:1-2 LXX. In both cases, ὁ δίαβολος refers to a cosmic being, and in the first case, ὁ δίαβολος has a testing function: he solicits God to bring calamity into Job's life because he believes this will induce Job to sin ('stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face' - Job 1:11; cf. 2:5).8 If I have understood Burke correctly, he regards these texts as irrelevant to the interpretation of the TS because ὁ δίαβολος may be an obedient servant of God rather than an enemy of God (as is widely believed for הַשָּׂטָן in Job and Zechariah MT). However, this feature does not derail the significance of the parallel, because the notion of Satan as God's servant (and prosecutor) continues even in the New Testament. After surveying the evidence, Page concludes:

The Bible portrays Satan as an implacable enemy of God, whose designs on humanity are malicious; however, it does not represent Satan as God’s equal or as one who acts independently of divine control. In the prologue of Job, the oldest text that speaks of a celestial Satan figure, he is clearly pictured as one who is subordinate to God and who operates only within the parameters that God sets for him. Although there is incontrovertible evidence of change and development in the concept of Satan in the biblical literature, this basic notion that Satan is under divine control appears repeatedly. This motif may stand in a certain degree of tension with the conception of Satan as a hostile force, but it is a persistent theme in the biblical record. Satan is an enemy of God, but he is also a servant of God.9

Moreover, we have pre-Christian evidence for the devil as an unambiguously evil being. There is a Jewish pseudepigraphon referred to by some as the Assumption of Moses, by others as the Testament of Moses, and by still others as the Moses fragment because of its uncertain identification with either of these two lost works. It is extant only in a Latin translation from Greek, which was probably the original language.10 It 'dates from the early years of the first century C.E.';11 Grierson estimates the terminus ad quem (latest possible date) at 30 C.E.12 The text contains the following apocalyptic prediction:

And then his (i.e. God's) kingdom will appear in his entire creation. And then the devil will come to an end, and sadness will be carried away together with him. (Testament of Moses 10.1)13

The Latin word translated 'devil' here is zabulus, which is an 'orthographic variant' of diabolus,14 the Latin transliteration of διάβολος. Because Latin lacks the definite article, we cannot be certain whether the Greek read ὁ διάβολος or just διάβολος. However, it seems clear that an individual being is in view, and that he is evil since he will come to an end.15 It is also worth noting that the ending of this document, which is lost but presumably contained an account of Moses' death, is widely regarded by scholars as the source of the allusion in Jude 9 to a quarrel between Michael and the devil over Moses' body.16

2) For similar reasons, הַשָּׂטָן in Job 1-2 and Zech. 3:1-2 is relevant to the interpretation of ὁ σατανᾶς in Mark 1:13 and Matt. 4:10. There are numerous other occurrences of the term 'satan' in Second Temple literature that support a cosmic referent in the TS. I will leave discussion of these for a later date once I've completed my dissertation, but for now I would draw attention to one obvious instance: Paul's assertion in 2 Cor. 11:14 that 'even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light'. Even apart from Paul's identity as a Christian, this is a relevant reference to ὁ σατανᾶς in a Second Temple Jewish text which predates the Gospels by only a few years (Mark) or decades (Matthew), and clearly places Satan in a cosmic, rather than anthropological, context. Earlier in the same epistle, Paul uses the term 'Beliar' (2 Cor. 6:15), which Burke recognizes (as Belial) among the 'established Second Temple terms for supernatural Satan figures' (my emphasis). Moreover, this text ticks all the boxes for the definition of cosmological dualism that Burke uses: 'the world is divided into two opposing forces of good and evil, darkness and light'. 2 Cor. 6:15 explicitly draws an antithesis between 'righteousness and lawlessness', 'darkness and light', and 'Christ' (supernatural, personal leader of the forces of light) and 'Beliar'.17 Burke does not mention any New Testament texts (even those that pre-date the Gospels) in his survey of the background to the Satanological terminology in the Synoptic Gospels.

Is 'satan' a proper name in Second Temple Jewish literature outside the New Testament? Burke says no:

The term satan, whether in Greek (satanaV), or Hebrew (śāṭān), is used rarely in pre-Christian literature and never as a proper name. Consequently, Laato notes that ‘we lack an established tradition whereby the name of the personal Evil or the leader of demons is Satan’.

The link-word 'Consequently' leaves the reader with the impression that Laato agrees with the judgment that 'satan' is never used in pre-Christian literature as a proper name. In fact, he suggests in the same article that שָׂטָן may have transitioned to a proper name ‘already in the Old Testament’, that ‘there is no obstacle to regarding Satan in 1 Chronicles 21 as a proper name’, and that the word could, linguistically speaking, function as a proper name in Job 1-2 and Zechariah 3 despite the presence of the definite article.18

In fact, however, the question of whether 'satan' functions as a proper name in the Old Testament, Second Temple Jewish literature or the New Testament is not of decisive importance. Stokes, for instance, does not see evidence of early use of 'Satan' as a proper name. Nevertheless, he sees clear evidence for the emergence of an individualized Satan figure:

Two passages in the Hebrew Scriptures speak of a superhuman figure not simply as a satan, but as the Satan (Zech 3; Job 1-2). The definite article on the noun (הַשָּׂטָן) suggests the notion of a particular figure who holds the office of "Attacker/Executioner" in the divine court... The Hebrew Scriptures contain several different kinds of satans. They speak of humans in the capacity of attackers or executioners as satans. They speak of heavenly satans, serving the Deity as executioners of the wicked. They also speak of a particular satan, the Satan, who serves God as attacker or executioner of the wicked and, in the case of Job, as attacker of a righteous person. While it was this individual, the Satan, who especially piqued the imaginations of earlier interpreters and who would become the best known of the satans, early Jewish literature would continue to speak of other satans as well.19

After surveying Second Temple literature, he concludes:

In the Hebrew Scriptures and early Jewish writings, "satan" refers generically to an attacker or executioner. And many kinds of attackers/executioners could be called a satan. Some are human; others are superhuman. Some of them are something akin to evil spirits or demons. One of them is the Satan.20

Against this background, it does not really matter whether we consider ὁ σατανᾶς in the New Testament to be a 'personal name' or a 'definite title'.21 What matters is that it is not a common noun but the designation of a particular superhuman individual, which could be rendered in English either with 'Satan' (if understood as a personal name) or 'the Satan' (if understood as a definite title).

3) In his history-of-religions survey of Satanological terminology in the Synoptic Gospels, Burke restricts his attention to 'pre-Christian literature'. This is a serious methodological shortcoming for two reasons. (1) Christian literature that pre-dates the Synoptic Gospels (especially the Pauline epistles) is arguably the most relevant background data of all (see above). (2) Ancient texts which are likely to post-date the Synoptic Gospels are not irrelevant, especially if the temporal proximity is close. Although they obviously do not carry the same weight as sources that pre-date the Synoptic Gospels, they still help to fill in the religion-historical milieu in which the Synoptic evangelists wrote. Burke can hardly dispute this since he introduces much later rabbinic texts as the closest literary parallels to his interpretation of the devil in the TS.

4) In discussing the background to the term 'the evil one' Burke has inadequately represented his key source. Burke cites Black's discussion of Matt. 6:13b to support his claim that 'the evil one' (ὁ πονηρὸς) 'has no Second Temple pre-Christian witness as a reference to a supernatural evil being'. He summarizes Black's point thus:

Summarizing the lexicographical evidence, Black notes ‘this term or designation for Satan is, outside the New Testament and dependent patristic writings, nowhere attested in classical, Hellenistic, or Jewish Greek sources’, which he gives as the reason against reading it as ‘the evil one’ even in Matthew.

However, while Black was summarizing previous scholars' conclusions about the background to the term ὁ πονηρὸς, Black himself proceeds to dispute this summary, discussing two Jewish texts, one of which is a pre-Christian Second Temple text that, in his view, uses the term 'the evil one' (in Hebrew) for Satan. These texts are 4Q Amram^b, 4Q280, 286 (287) and Targum of Isa. 11.4. Black's own conclusion is as follows:

these two sets of texts...are the only passages in Jewish literature where the designations רשיעא/הרשע are used for Satan or a manifestation of Satan. The designation, however seems almost an inevitable one for the Prince of Darkness, so that it may well have been in more frequent use in Judaism than its extremely rare occurrence suggests? Was it perhaps dropped by the Synagogue when it was adopted by the early Church, in its almost literal Greek equivalent ὁ πονηρὸς? Such a term would no doubt commend itself widely as a general concept, immediately intelligible in the Hellenistic world, whereas the Hebrew/Aramaic terminology for Satan must have sounded strange and foreign in Greek ears.22

Hence, Black not only presents evidence (including a pre-Christian Second Temple text) for the use of 'the evil one' for a supernatural being, but also does not think that the paucity of evidence is particularly problematic. We are dealing with a low standard of research when one cites a source to support an argument from silence without reporting that the same source counters both the silence and the argument! Unfortunately, Burke repeats the same omission in his recent peer-reviewed publication when arguing that ὁ πονηρὸς does not refer to a supernatural evil being in Didache 8.2.23 Perhaps Burke would claim in his defense that he was interested only in the Greek term ὁ πονηρὸς and not its Hebrew equivalent; but this would be inexplicable since in the very same paragraph he shows concern for usage of 'satan' 'whether in Hebrew or Greek'.

Moreover, Burke's background survey inexplicably excludes the fairly widespread use of ὁ πονηρὸς for Satan in other early Christian texts, some of which may predate Matthew (Eph. 6:16; 2 Thess. 3:3; John 17:15; 1 John 2:13-14; 3:12; 5:18-19; Barnabas 2.10; 21.3; cf. 4.13). While Burke would no doubt dispute that 'the evil one' refers to a supernatural being in any of the New Testament texts, he concedes elsewhere that this is the case in the Epistle of Barnabas. Hence, despite the extremely rare use of 'the evil one' for a supernatural being in Second Temple literature, it is historically certain that this term was in Christian use as a designation for a supernatural Satan within a few decades of the destruction of the temple. The question is when, not whether, the designation entered the Christian vocabulary; and the burden of proof lies with Burke to show that Pseudo-Barnabas understands the term differently than the various NT writers.

5) I previously (following Kelly) identified four parallels to the TS which consisted of a righteous man being tempted by a supernatural being: Abraham being tempted by an unclean bird identified as Azazel in the Apocalypse of Abraham, Mastema's request to tempt Abraham in Jubilees, stories about the Angel of Death and Moses, and Beliar's three nets in the Damascus Document. Burke did not regard this evidence as a problem for his interpretation because:

Firstly, the tempter or challenger in each case is not a supernatural opponent of God, but an obedient servant, whether Azazel, Mastema, the Angel of Death or Beliar. Secondly, in none of these cases is a righteous man tempted by a supernatural being called Satan.

In all these texts, as in the standard interpretation of the TS, we have a supernatural tempter tempting a righteous man. This is a striking parallel, and it is not clear why Burke dismisses it on the grounds that these tempters have a better relationship with God than the devil in the TS (which is itself debatable.24) A possibly different moral disposition of the supernatural tempter does not imply that 'There are no Old Testament or Second Temple parallels to the temptation accounts'! Again, it is not clear how the parallel is invalidated simply because the supernatural tempter has a different name in each of these stories. Burke himself refers to Mastema, Belial and Azazel as 'supernatural Satan figures'.

3. Genre and Form

Burke accuses me of an internally inconsistent 'hermeneutic of convenience' in that I object to classifying the TS as haggadic midrash and yet appeal to midrashic parallels. Rather, my argument runs as follows:

(1) It is debatable whether the TS can be classified form-critically as haggadic midrash.
(2) Even if we classify the TS form-critically as haggadic midrash, it is debatable how helpful this category is for understanding the TS in their canonical form.
(3) Even if we classify the TS form-critically as haggadic midrash, this supports rather than undermines mythological interpretation of the tempter, since the closest midrashic parallels involve supernatural tempters.

Hence, my argument was that regardless of the position we take on the 'haggadic midrash' issue, we do not have grounds for rejecting a mythological interpretation of ὁ διάβολος. (Hence why a 'haggadic midrash' view of the TS has considerable support but the ὁ διάβολος = yetzer hara view does not.)

I reiterate that Burke does not adequately distinguish between the form of the TS tradition and the final literary products of Matthew and Luke. Even if the temptation dialogue in Q originated as an invented midrash based loosely on trials Jesus faced (a view I reject), it is obviously neither Matthew nor Luke who composed it. Hence, Burke needs to show not merely that the TS was understood as midrash rather than historical narrative at some pre-canonical stage of development; he needs to show that Matthew and Luke so understood it.25 This requires close attention to how Matthew and Luke incorporate the tradition into their wider narrative. This is where narrative criticism comes in - a methodology that Burke has heretofore ignored, despite his protest to the contrary.26 This is also why the syntactic features that I stressed in my original study remain decisive: they show that the events and dialogue are narrated in a way typical of the Gospels' stories. Although the differences between Matthew's and Luke's TS show that at least one of them has redacted rather freely, neither evangelist gives any indication of a shift in genre. It should also be noted that even if the pre-canonical TS underwent dramatic theological expansion, we can be quite certain that the term ὁ διάβολος is not dramatic theological expansion but was part of the story before this expansion occurred, since the synonymous term ὁ σατανᾶς is present in Mark's version of the TS, which is independent of Q and lacks its (alleged) 'dramatic expansion'.

I reiterate that Burke has not adequately interacted with the notion of myth as a literary genre or category in Gospel interpretation. His discussion of myth is limited to his claim that the Synoptic Gospels do not reflect cosmological dualism and that the Synoptic Satan/devil is not a cosmological figure. He describes the following as a 'line of evidence' against reading the TS mythologically:

Ethical dualism and psychological dualism are dominant in the Synoptics, rather than the cosmological dualism which would be expected if a supernatural evil being was present in the temptation accounts.

This, however, is simply an assertion of his conclusion; it is not evidence. And if we turn to Burke's article on dualism in the Synoptics where we might expect to find this point argued in detail, we simply find a definition of three kinds of dualism, and no evidence or argumentation that ethical and psychological dualism is dominant in the Synoptics while cosmological dualism is absent. One would certainly expect to find an extensive discussion of texts such as the Beelzebul Controversy, the parable of the strong man, the parable of the wheat and the weeds, Matt. 25:31, 41 and Luke 10:18-19 as part of any claim that cosmological dualism is lacking in the Synoptic Gospels.

4. Matthew's Mountain

The issue of the 'very high mountain' in Matt. 4:8 has long been the cornerstone of Christadelphian interpretation of the TS.27 There is no mountain on earth from which one can see all the kingdoms of the world, and this point is used to rule out a literal reading of the entire TS, justifying a figurative interpretation even of ὁ διάβολος. However, Matthew's mountain is not nearly the exegetical trump card that Christadelphians make it out to be.

Moreover, it is not true, as Burke claims, that I acknowledge 'that the description of the satan [sic] taking Jesus to a mountain high enough to see all the kingdoms of the world is impossible to read literally, and (resort) to describing this experience as a supernatural experience'. Rather, I argue that the description is possible to take literally precisely because it is a supernatural experience. My own suggestion is that Jesus was transported to the top of a literal mountain where he had a mystical experience. Burke describes this interpretation, with some justification, as idiosyncratic. However, for the purposes of this discussion, I do not need to prove conclusively that it is correct. Indeed, I do not even need it to be correct. To neutralize the 'mountain problem rules out historical narrative' argument, I only need to show that there are plausible ways to understand the mountain within an 'historical narrative' reading of the TS. And several such ways can be found in the scholarly literature. Accordingly I would make the following observations.

1) Classifying a pericope as historical narrative does not commit the exegete to a woodenly literal interpretation of every last detail. For instance, I do not, by virtue of my approach to the TS, feel compelled to infer from Matt. 4:4 that Matthew thought God to have a literal mouth (though he may have done). That said, I see no reason to doubt that Matthew had a literal mountain in mind (whether a known mountain in Israel, a cosmic mountain or a heavenly mountain).

2) Since Matthew and Luke differ on the mountain detail, it is uncertain whether the mountain was in Q and dropped by Luke, or whether the mountain was introduced by Matthew. Seemingly, the majority of scholars favour the first option,28 but there is also considerable support for the second.29 Let us consider the implications of both possibilities.

a. What if the mountain was present in Q, and omitted by Luke? This suggests that the mountain was part of the story very early. The words 'very' and/or 'high' may be redactional in Matthew even if 'mountain' is not.30 If the TS is regarded as authentic history, then one possibility is that the devil took Jesus to the top of an actual mountain in Israel. This finds support in the identification of Mount Tabor as the mountain of temptation in the Gospel of the Hebrews.31 (The identification of a specific, literal mountain suggests that the author of the Gospel of the Hebrews understood the account literally.) How could Jesus have seen 'all the kingdoms of the world' from the top of Mount Tabor or another mountain in Israel? He couldn't have, naturally - just as Moses couldn't have naturally seen all the places that Deut. 34:1-4 says he saw from the top of Mount Nebo. So, as noted previously, the TS, like Deuteronomy, implies some kind of supernatural, mystical experience atop the mountain. This is not a particularly radical suggestion given that Matthew records a supernatural, mystical experience in his only other reference to a high mountain (Matt. 17:1ff).

The second issue, if the mountain was present in Q, is why Luke omitted it. Luke simply has the devil 'take Jesus up'. This is significant because Luke's TS must be interpreted in its own right and not simply harmonized with Matthew's: it is possible that Luke and Matthew understood the TS differently. Thus, whatever the implications of the 'mountain problem', the exegete must still deal with Luke, where this problem is absent. Scholars have made several suggestions as to why Luke may have chosen to omit the mountain. One popular suggestion is that Luke is concerned to emphasise the temporal aspect of the panorama ('at a moment of time') than the spatial aspect ('to a very high  mountain').32 Others think Luke was embarrassed by the idea of Jesus seeing all the kingdoms of the world from a very high mountain because he knew no such mountain existed.33 Hence, his redaction serves to depict this temptation as 'visionary or imaginary',34 or alternatively as a heavenly journey,35 whether of the body36 or (less plausibly in my view) the soul.37 Whatever the case, Luke is explicitly concerned with ensuring his account is believable as historical narrative.38 If the whole episode were a dramatic theological expansion, we would not expect such historiographical concern.

b. What if the mountain was added by Matthew? (As noted above, a separate possibility is that the mountain was present in Q but 'very high' was added by Matthew.) Given the important theological role that mountains play in Matthew's narrative (cf. Matt. 5:1; 17:1; 28:16), this would presumably have been done to add a theological flourish to the story. If so, then if the TS basically recounts authentic historical events, the 'very high mountain' is not part of that authentic history and we can call back the Sherpas from the search for it. The actual historical events might then have included a heavenly journey (as Luke seems to imply), 'whether in the body or out of the body'. There remains the question of how Matthew understood the 'very high mountain' that he added to the story. This has been discussed in a previous article: possibly Matthew and his earliest readers understood it literally à la Donaldson's 'cosmic mountain' motif. They might well have believed that such a mountain existed. That it does not in fact exist means we must read the narrative critically, not figuratively. Alternatively, Matthew may have envisioned the mountain as a heavenly mountain as per Orlov's suggestion.

3) I reiterate that understanding the TS as a mystical experience is consistent with it being a historical narrative. Even if the TS were to be interpreted as an imaginary or dream-like experience, this would not imply that ὁ διάβολος lacked external existence any more than appearances of angels in dreams (Matt. 1:20; 2:13; 2:19) imply that those angels lacked external existence. However, while I am willing to allow for a mystical aspect to the temptations (i.e. a heavenly journey in Luke and a mountaintop visionary experience in Matthew), I think the TS clearly describe a physical bodily experience. 2 Cor. 12:2-4 shows that Second Temple Jews could conceive of mystical experiences as being either physical or non-physical. More importantly, all three temptations entail the involvement of Jesus' body (eating, leaping, prostrating). A temptation to throw oneself off a high building is meaningless if imaginary: it could not really be acted upon (and Jesus would be able to mount a robust defense against any claim that he was morally responsible for an act he performed within a dream). When actually standing at the top of a high building peering over the edge, it is a different matter.

4) I reiterate that, in a first century Jewish or Roman context, 'all the kingdoms of the world' does not mean 'every inch of the earth known since the Copernican revolution to be spherical'. It means all the kingdoms of 'a flat earth limited to the Mediterranean world'.39 We should not infer that, if the TS are historical narrative, Jesus must have gazed upon New Guinea, Cape Horn and the Kamchatka Peninsula. In insisting that 'the Roman Empire and its environs' is 'a poor temptation for a man who was promised rulership of the entire world by God', Burke is imposing a theological reading that is far removed from the first century context. In any case, I readily concede that it is not possible with natural human vision to see the whole Mediterranean world from any mountain in the Mediterranean world. However, Jesus' companion is explicitly capable of transporting him great distances to great elevations, and Luke's ἐν στιγμῇ χρόνου makes the supernatural character of the 'showing' unmistakable. Within such a narrative context, it makes little sense to limit the range of Jesus' eyesight on the mountaintop to what would be naturally possible.

As is evident from the above, there are several plausible ways of explaining Matthew's 'very high mountain' which do not conclude either (a) that he intended the entire TS to be read figuratively, including ὁ διάβολος; or (b) that there must be a stupendous physical mountain somewhere on earth from which the entire globe is visible.

5. Alleged Rabbinic Parallels

Burke introduces new evidence in the form of four rabbinic texts. The first two texts, in Burke's words, 'show the yetzer personified to the point that it is depicted as an independent being, even while being identified as an internal impulse to sin'.

Now in terms of the admissibility of this evidence, it is noteworthy Burke here uses rabbinic texts written centuries after the New Testament, and deems them relevant to the exegesis of the TS, whereas in his history-of-religions survey of Synoptic Satanological terminology, he is only prepared to place significant weight on pre-Christian Second Temple Jewish texts. For instance, concerning the Testament of Job, he judges that 'its very uncertain date precludes its use as a reliable source of contextual data for the New Testament.' However, the latest date in the range usually assigned to the Testament of Job is still earlier than the rabbinic literature cited by Burke, to which he does appeal as a reliable source of contextual data for the New Testament. This is a clear methodological inconsistency. Moreover, Burke certainly overstates things when he concludes based on these texts that a particular literary device 'was well established in Judaism at least as early as the Tannaitic period.' For one of the texts he cites (Sifre Numbers), the final redaction may be dated in the 'mid to late-third century', 'towards the end of the tannaitic period'.40 For the other texts, from the Babylonian Talmud, the final redaction may be dated to 'between the fifth and the seventh centuries'.41 One of them is paralleled in the Palestinian Talmud, the final redaction of which is dated by most scholars to the first half of the fifth century.42 Hence, Burke provides only one text that can be dated toward the end of the Tannaitic period - still about two centuries after the Gospels were written. If Burke wants to claim that the traditions within these rabbinic texts go back much earlier than the date of redaction, he will have to support this with historical-critical analysis, which he has not done. Neusner's famous dictum, 'What we cannot show, we do not know' is relevant at this point.43

Nevertheless, let us proceed with caution to consider the significance of the parallels. My overall assessment is that they are helpful in illustrating the contrast between 'a highly anthropomorphized yetzer ha ra' and the tempter in the Gospel TS. The key distinction is expressed by Burke himself: 'in these texts the yetzer is 'personified to the point that it is depicted as an independent being, even while being identified as an internal impulse to sin'. In both texts cited by Burke, the yetzer hara is explicitly identified as such. Indeed, while Burke states that Rosen-Zvi notes 'that this temptation is not depicted as a mere impulse, but as an independent person arguing cogently with Boaz', the sentences immediately prior to his supporting quotation show that for Rosen-Zvi, the identification of the yetzer hara signals the internal nature of the temptation:

The appearance of the yetzer moves the venue from the interpersonal sphere to the inner arena of the protagonist's desires and proclivities: the sexual drama here is one of thoughts and reflections no less than of actions. The dangers lurking for man are internal, not external.44

By contrast, in the TS the tempter is designated only with personal nouns and is not identified as the yetzer hara. We do not have 'the appearance of the yetzer' to move 'the venue from the interpersonal sphere to the inner arena of the protagonist's desires and proclivities'; the TS remain in the interpersonal sphere.

In the second text, the internal nature of the temptation receives further explicit emphasis: 'my evil impulse grew proud within me'. By contrast, in the TS the tempter is never described using internalizing language. Finally, nothing in these rabbinic 'parallels' approaches the self-awareness of the tempter in the TS. In the Boaz midrash, the yetzer only speaks to Boaz about Boaz and not about itself. In the Nazirite tale, the yetzer's words are not recorded but it merely beseeches the Nazirite. By contrast, in the Lucan TS the tempter makes elaborate claims about his prerogatives using a divine passive: 'it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will' (Luke 4:6). In both Matthew and Luke the tempter demands a physical act of worship from Jesus, which is simply impossible if the tempter is internal to him. This would make the very temptation itself - which is no incidental detail but a key part of the story - nonsensical. Burke has never yet offered a satisfactory explanation for these features of the TS.

The other two rabbinic texts cited by Burke are cases where he says the Rabbis 'identified the yetzer in Old Testament passages which were speaking plainly of human beings', showing that they 'had anthropomorphized the yetzer to the extent that it was now natural to depict it as an individual separate from humans'. Again, these rabbinic texts involve explicit assertions made about the yetzer, whereas the Gospel TS do not mention the yetzer. Moreover, in the case of Micah 7:5, Rosen-Zvi notes a specific feature of the Hebrew text that made the yetzer interpretation possible: 'The homilist (in a typically midrashic move) reads רֵע (friend) as רַע (evil)'.45 Without the vowel points (which were added to the text by the Masoretes, probably after this midrash was developed),46 the words 'friend' and 'evil' are identical in Hebrew. The second text into which the rabbis read the yetzer is 2 Sam. 12:4 (incorrectly cited by Rosen-Zvi and Burke as 2 Sam. 2:12). Here, the yetzer is identified with the traveler who came to the rich man in an allegorical parable told by Nathan to David. It is surely the allegorical nature of the passage which prompted this identification. Nathan tells David that he is the rich man in the story. The poor man is obviously Uriah the Hittite and the ewe lamb Bathsheba, but what is the referent of the traveler? One can hardly imagine the rabbinic imagination concluding that it lacks an allegorical referent. Thus, as in Micah 7:5, the biblical text itself supplies the basis for the midrashic elaboration. That the rabbis chose to interpret this human character as the yetzer remains impressive, but as Rosen-Zvi states concerning the whole passage:

Taken together, these three homilies present a yetzer more developed than anything we find in the earlier Tannaitic literature: a sophisticated, dynamic, and demonic enemy.47

Thus, in Rosen-Zvi's judgment, far from demonstrating that such a highly anthropomorphized yetzer 'was well established...at least as early as the Tannaitic period', this text represents a development beyond anything found in the earlier Tannaitic literature. Thus, any attempt to use this text as contextual data for interpreting the Gospel TS is historically suspect.

6. Conclusion

I will conclude by listing features within the TS that support a literal interpretation of ὁ διάβολος / ὁ σατανᾶς as a supernatural personal being.

• Only personal nouns are used for the tempter, and there is no explicit identification as yetzer or explicit internalization of the tempter (as seen in the alleged rabbinic parallels)
• The tempter 'comes' at the beginning of the story, and 'leaves' at the end, just as angels 'come' at the end (in Matthew)
• The tempter demands a physical act of worship from Jesus: 'fall down and worship me' (Matt. 4:9); 'worship before me' (Luke 4:7), which makes sense only if the tempter is an external person
• The tempter demonstrates strong self-awareness independent of Jesus (in Luke): 'To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will.' (Luke 4:6)
• The statement, 'I give it to whom I will' simply does not make sense if it is Jesus' yetzer speaking. To whom, other than Jesus, might Jesus' yetzer possibly envision giving the kingdoms of the world?
• Understood in the context of Roman law, showing Jesus the kingdoms of the world represents a proposed property transaction, which implies the presence of a distinct seller and buyer. This feature of the narrative is inexplicable if the seller and buyer are the same person, since then no transaction would be necessary
• Whatever the tradition-history of the Q TS, both Matthew and Luke weave it seamlessly into their narrative, offering no indication that it should be read less literally than other events in the life of Jesus
• As narrative critics argue, Satan/the devil features as a distinct character in the plot of each of the Synoptic Gospels
• The identification of the tempter as Satan/the devil is common to both independently transmitted versions of the TS, those of Mark and Q. Consequently, the externality of the tempter cannot be attributed to a progressive theological dramatization of the Q TS known from Matthew and Luke
• If the Q TS is identified as haggadic midrash, we should make recourse to the closest religion-historical parallels from this genre, which all feature the testing of a righteous man by a supernatural being (in fact, the contours of this motif are visible already in Job). The testing of a righteous man by his yetzer, depicted as an external person capable of speech, is first attested in the mid to late third century C.E. (according to evidence presented by Burke)
• There are plausible explanations of Matthew's 'very high mountain' within a broadly literal reading of his TS, so this detail is no justification for proposing a figurative reading of the entire pericope. Moreover, the 'mountain' detail is found only in Matthew and so is irrelevant to the interpretation of the Marcan TS. It affects interpretation of the Lucan TS only in terms of the need to explain Luke's omission of the mountain (if it was present in the Q TS).
• New research concerning the devil's use of Psalm 91 (an apotropaic48 psalm) in the TS has helped to 'situate Satan's invocation of the psalm within the larger context of early Jewish demonological tradition'.49

For these reasons, I believe the scholarly and traditional consensus that ὁ διάβολος / ὁ σατανᾶς in the Gospel TS refers to a supernatural being remains well-founded and secure despite the arguments raised in Burke's online writings. And I reiterate my observation that Burke has yet to offer a blow-by-blow commentary on the TS.

Footnotes

• 1 I already addressed it briefly in some comments at the bottom of my last blog post; this is a more detailed response.
• 2 Farrar, Thomas J. & Williams, Guy J. (2016). Diabolical Data: A Critical Inventory of New Testament Satanology. Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 39(1), 40-71; Farrar, Thomas J. & Williams, Guy J. (2016). Talk of the Devil: Unpacking the Language of New Testament Satanology. Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 39(1), 72-96.
• 3 Kesich, Veselin (2007). Formation and Struggles: The Church, AD 33-450 (Vol. 1). Crestwood: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, p. 12.
• 4 The comment that Burke cites specifically concerns the 'historicity of the temptations'. Kesich suggests that 'Jesus himself was most likely the source of his trials in the wilderness, translated into figurative language'. What Kesich means by Jesus being the source of his trials is not that they were strictly internal but that Jesus was the historical source for the TS - since he was the only human being present, only he could have transmitted the story to his disciples (if in fact it is rooted in historical events). Burke infers from 'translated into figurative language' that Kesich interprets ὁ διάβολος as referring to Jesus' own desires, but Kesich himself does not say so.
• 5 When Lachs says that the yetzer hara 'is externalized in the literature by the figure of Satan', it is unclear whether he thinks that Satan is an external figure in the literature or is just an apparently external figure in the literature. In rabbinic literature, Satan is an external figure.
• 6 'To sum up, Lachs's Rabbinic Commentary is marred by sloppy editing, errors of fact and interpretation, and outdated scholarship. It is fatally flawed, however, by its uncritical methodology coupled with a lack of serious reflection on the implications of such a commentary for understanding New Testament literary history.' (Visotzky, Burton L. (1988). Review: Lachs' "Rabbinic Commentary on the New Testament". The Jewish Quarterly Review, 78(3/4), 340-343, here p. 343.)
• 7 The third, as both Burke and I have noted previously, being Phipps, William E. (1993). The Wisdom and Wit of Rabbi Jesus. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, p. 38.
• 8 The verb in both the MT and LXX literally means 'bless', but this should be understood as a euphemism, similar to the famous tannaitic birkat ha-minim ('blessing on heretics'). See Mangan, Celine (2002). Blessing and Cursing in the Prologue of Targum Job. In Paul V.M. Flesher (Ed.), Targum and Scripture: Studies in Aramaic Translations and Interpretation in Memory of Ernest G. Clarke (pp. 225-230). Leiden: Brill, p. 226.
• 9 Page, Sydney H.T. (2007). Satan: God's Servant. Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 50(3), 449-465; here p. 465.
• 10 'It is undisputed that the Latin of the Moses fragment was translated from Greek...as there is no strong evidence for the Moses fragment having existed in a Semitic language, there is no need to look beyond a Greek original for a Hebrew text' (Grierson, Fiona (2008). The Testament of Moses. Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha, 17(4), 265-280; here p. 275.)
• 11 Collins, John J. (2016). The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to Jewish Apocalyptic Literature. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, p. 160.
• 12 Grierson, op. cit., p. 276.
• 13 Translation: Tromp, Johannes (1993). The Assumption of Moses: A Critical Edition with Commentary. Leiden: Brill, p. 19.
• 14 Tromp, op. cit., p. 229. Tromp suggests the text refers to the devil being barred from the heavenly council or, more likely, is a less concrete reference to the demise of satanic forces similar to what we find in other apocalyptic literature of the period.
• 15 Tromp, op. cit., p. 229, notes the similarity to Jesus' statement in Mark 3:26 that Satan 'has an end'.
• 16 See discussion in my article on this subject; also Tromp, op. cit., pp. 271f. Grierson takes a more conservative approach. She thinks either the Assumption of Moses or the Testament of Moses was the source of Jude's allusion, and 'cautiously assert[s] that it was the ToM'. However, because she finds that 'there is not enough evidence in the text itself or in external sources to identify the Moses fragment with either ToM or AoM, she concludes 'that no direct connection can be made between the Moses fragment and Jude 9' (Grierson, op. cit., p. 279).
• 17 Cf. 2 Cor. 4:4, where 'the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God' is contrasted with 'the god of this age' who 'has blinded the minds of the unbelievers'.
• 18 Laato, Antti (2013). The Devil in the Old Testament. In I. Fröhlich & E. Koskenniemi (Eds.), Evil and the Devil (pp. 1-22). London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, pp. 4-5, 20-21.
• 19 Stokes, Ryan E. (2016). What is a Demon, What is an Evil Spirit, and What is a Satan? In J. Dochhorn, S. Rudnig-Zelt & B. Wold (Eds.), Das Böse, der Teufel und Dämonen (pp. 259-272). Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, pp. 268-69.
• 20 Stokes, op. cit., p. 271.
• 21 These are the two possibilities raised concerning ὁ σατανᾶς in the Pauline epistles by Williams, Guy (2009). The Spirit World in the Letters of Paul the Apostle: A Critical Examination of the Role of Spiritual Beings in the Authentic Pauline Epistles. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, p. 88.
• 22 Black, Matthew (1990). The Doxology to the Pater Noster with a Note on Matthew 6.13b. In Davies, P.R. & White, R.T. (Eds.), A Tribute to Geza Vermes: Essays on Jewish and Christian Literature and History. (pp. 327-338). Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, p. 336.
• 23 Burke, Jonathan (2016). Satan and Demons in the Apostolic Fathers: A Minority Report. Svensk Exegetisk Årsbok, 81, 127-168. On p. 137, n. 56, Burke cites Black as support for his claim that the use of ὁ πονηρὸς for a supernatural being 'has no pre-Christian witness'.
• 24 Matt. 4:1 says that Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil, which implies divine complicity in allowing the devil to tempt Jesus.
• 25 For Christian readers, it is the final, canonical form of the TS that is authoritative for constructing theology.
• 26 In his latest article, Burke writes, 'Farrar wrongly claims I ignore narrative criticism'. However, not only does he then neglect to provide any evidence of his previous interaction with narrative criticism; he does not rectify the omission by interacting with any of the narrative critics I had cited.
• 27 See Christadelphian writings cited in my The Devil in the Wilderness, p. 9.
• 28 See the various opinions summarized in Carruth, Shawn & Robinson, James M. (1996). Q 4:1-13, 16: The Temptations of Jesus - Nazara. Reconstructions of Q Through Two Centuries of Gospel Research: Excerpted, Sorted and Evaluated. Leuven: Peeters, pp. 264-272. After surveying previous research, four evaluators (Carruth, Hartin, Chang and Robinson) pass judgment and all four agree that ὄρος was in the Q source. Similarly, 'Most scholars believe that Matthew took εἰς ὄρος ὑψηλὸν from Q; only rarely does one encounter the opposite opinion. The fact that specific settings (desert, temple) are given for the other two temptations, points in the former direction, for it leads one to expect that a setting for the third temptation would be specified as well. Moreover, Luke's version of this temptation shows signs of extensive editorial revision. In particular, the verb ἀνάγω, which appears in Lk. 4.5 in place of the mountain reference, is a characteristically Lukan word, and the omission of a mountain setting along with the addition of ἐν στιγμῇ χρόνου can be seen as the result of Luke's desire to clarify the purely visionary nature of this temptation. Thus both the form of the narrative and certain features characteristic of Luke's redactional style favour the view that the mountain reference was originally part of the Q account.' (Donaldson, Terence (1987). Jesus on the Mountain: A Study in Matthew. London: Bloomsbury, pp. 87-88).
• 29 'The third temptation, according to the redaction of 4:8, occurs on "a very high mountain." Luke's version (4:5) simply reads, "And leading him up..."' (Waetjen, Herman C. (1976). The Origin and Destiny of Humanness: An Interpretation of the Gospel According to Matthew. San Rafel: Crystal Press, p. 76); 'This is probably redactional. There is no parallel in Luke. Matthew will add a mountain in 5.1; 8.1; 15.29; and 28.16; and he likes λίαν. For ὑψηλός (Mt: 2; Mk: 1; Lk: 1) with ὄρος (Mt 16; Mk: 11; Lk: 12) see 17.1 (from Mark; cf. Gen 7.19-20; Deut 12.2; Jth 7.4; Isa 2.14; 14.13; Jer 3.6; Ezek 40.2).' (Davies, W.D. & Allison, Dale C., Jr. (1988). A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on The Gospel according to Saint Matthew (Vol. 1). London: T&T Clark, p. 369); 'To be the object of εἰς, the evangelist adds ὄρος ὑψηλὸν λίαν, "an exceedingly high mountain," i.e., higher yet, since according to Matthew's version Jesus has already been led up (v 1). ὑψηλὸν anticipates the description of the Mount of Transfiguration (17:1), and ὄρος and λίαν belong to Matthew's favorite vocabulary (6,1; 3,1). Above all, the added phrase carries forward the parallel between Jesus and Moses: Jesus views all the kingdoms of the world from a mountain just as Moses viewed not only all the land of Canaan (Deut 34:1-4), but also "the west and north and south and east" (Deut 3:27), from Mount Pisgah, or Nebo.' (Gundry, Robert Horton. (1994). Matthew: A Commentary on His Handbook for a Mixed Church Under Persecution (2nd edn). Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, p. 57.); 'Matthew may have added ὄρος ὑψηλὸν λιάν to his mountain motif. Though the absence in Luke of a location is irregular, perhaps "mountain" is to be understood, or perhaps the journey was not of an earthly, but rather cosmic, even apocalyptic sort. This is an attractive idea, since it would resolve the logistics problem of viewing all the kingdoms from a mountain in the first place. Wherever this "mountain" is, it too is a mythic reference, and woulud be a logical addition by Matthew. Vaage's retention of ὄρος is logical, still allowing ὑψηλὸν λίαν to be a Matthean embellishment. This would give Matthew some credit for mountain-top elaboration, and at the same time preserve (or add) some of the parallelism and balance to the scenes. It doesn't explain Luke's ommission however. I would retain ἀνάγειν and assume the most logical location for such a viewing: the sky, adding an element of an apocalyptic sort, but it seems inevitable. "In a moment of time" is the mythological duration of the panoramic viewing; appropriate if the location is the sky, inappropriate on a mountain.' (Robbins, C. Michael (2007). The Testing of Jesus in Q. New York: Peter  Lang, p. 149); At Matt 4:8 the expression "to a very high mountain" (ὄρος ὑψηλὸν λίαν) may be redactional, since it is not in the corresponding passage at Luke 4:5; on the other hand, Luke may have chosen to omit it. In any case, it seems entirely likely that Matthew intends us to see the mountain at 4:8 as corresponding to the mountain at 28:16' (Bryan, Christopher. (2011). The Resurrection of the Messiah. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 297 n. 51.); 'Matthew has followed his source, which has Jerusalem (= Matthew's "holy city") and the temple in the source of this narrative, sandwiched by desert on the one side, and Matthew's redactional "an exceedingly high mountain," on the other side... Matthew has modified Q's third temptation - "Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world" - by situating it on a mountain.' (Cohen, Akiva. (2016). Matthew and the Mishnah. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, p. 227).
• 30 See discussion in Carruth & Robinson pp. 274-79.
• 31 As noted by Edwards, Origen and Jerome quote from the Gospel of the Hebrews in a way that appears to indicate its identification of Mount Tabor as the mount of temptation (Edwards, James R. (2015). The Gospel According to Luke. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, p. 128 n. 101). For example, 'But if someone accepts the Gospel according to the Hebrews, where the Savior himself says, "My mother, the Holy Spirit, took me just now by one of my hairs and carried me off to the great mountain Thabor"...' (Origen, Commentary on John 2.12.87, in Heine, Ronald E., trans. (1989). Origen, Commentary on the Gospel of John, Books 1-10. Washington: Catholic University of America Press, p. 116).
• 32 '[Luke's] shift from a local to a temporal scene can account for his omission of the mountain in the source (Loisy, Vogels, Creed, Vosté, Morgenthaler, Dupont, Kruse, Fitzmyer, Sevenich-Bax).' (Carruth, in Carruth & Robinson, op. cit., p. 271).
• 33 'That no such mountain exists from which one can view the whole earth provides the key to explaining Luke's omission of this phrase.' (Hartin, in Carruth & Robinson, op. cit., p. 271); 'It is unclear to what extent Luke would have been influenced by pragmatic considerations: Even with a flat earth limited to the Mediterranean world, no mountain is high enough. (The limitation is actually that of eyesight, not of altitude.)' (Robinson, in Carruth & Robinson, op. cit., pp. 271-72).
• 34 'The omission of the setting on "a very high mountain" (see Matt 4:8), and especially the reference to "in an instant" (Gk. lit. "in a moment of time"), implies something visionary or imaginary. It is thus more spiritual than the physical version of the temptation in Matt 4:8-9.' (Edwards, op. cit., p. 128).
• 35 See Robbins, op. cit., p. 149 (quoted above).
• 36 'There may also be a heightened mythological component: "Leading him up" may imply an ascent through the air, e.g. somewhat like what may be meant in Acts 8:39: πνεῦμα κυρίου ἥρτασεν τὸν Φίλιππον. Luke also refers to visible descents from above: ἐθεώρουν τὸν σατανᾶν ὡς ἀστραπὴν ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ πεσόντα (Luke 10:18, a saying only in Luke); καὶ καταβῆναι τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον σωματικῷ εἴδει ὡς περιστερὰν ἐπ’ αὐτόν (Luke 3:22-the bodiliness is only in Luke). Jesus' own final ascension would then be a kind of inclusio (note the recurring prefix ἀνα-): Acts 1:2: ἀνελήμφθη; Luke 24:51: διέσθη ἀπ’ αὐτῶν καὶ ἀναφέρετο εἰς τὸν οὐρανόν, anticipated already in Luke 9:51: ἀνάλημψις.' (Robinson, in Carruth & Robinson, op. cit., pp. 271-72).
• 37 'The temptation story also gives a description of a soul flight, where Jesus is transported from one place to another, from the wilderness to the pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem. Then, in another soul journey, the devil takes Jesus to a high mountain, where he is shown all the kingdoms of the earth.' (Gagné, André. (2016). Narrative Depictions of Altered States of Consciousness in 1 Enoch and the Synoptic Tradition. In Loren T. Stuckenbruck & Gabriele Boccaccini (Eds.), Enoch and the Synoptic Gospels: Reminiscences, Allusions, Intertextuality (pp. 19-30). Atlanta: SBL Press, p. 27).
• 38 'As Fitzmyer says (1980, 507) Luke makes "minor modifications in the story (which) reveal a Lucan concern to present the temptations in a plausible form"' (Hartin, in Carruth & Robinson, op. cit., p. 271); 'How can we explain Luke's redaction?... Luke substitutes a temporal expression ἐν στιγμῇ χρόνου for Q's spatial expression εἰς ὄρος ὑψηλὸν out of a concern for verisimilitude. He realizes that no mountain, however high it might reach, could furnish a vantage point from which to survey all the kingdoms of the world. A similar concern for verisimilitude surfaced in the first temptation where Luke switched to a single stone to avoid having the landscape strewn with loaves of bread. Instead of the spatial image, Luke substitutes a temporal expression which refers to the instantaneous vision that unfolds before Jesus. Luke thus frames the temptation as no ordinary occurrence but rather as a visionary experience.' (Fleddermann, H.T. (2005). Q: A Reconstruction and Commentary. Leuven: Peeters, p. 249.)
• 39 (Robinson, in Carruth & Robinson, op. cit., p. 271).
• 40 Gruschcow, Lisa (2006). Writing the Wayward Wife: Rabbinic Interpretations of Sotah. Leiden: Brill, p. 5.
• 41 Zellentin, Holger M. (2011). Rabbinic Parodies of Jewish and Christian Literature. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, p. 10 n. 33.
• 42 Stemberger, Günter (1996). Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash (2nd edn). Edinburgh: T&T Clark, p. 171: 'Most scholars...would accept a later date for the last named teachers in PT, thereby inferring a date of redaction in the first half of the fifth century.'
• 43 Neusner argues at length that historical criticism must be used in the study of rabbinic literature, just as in the study of the Gospels. The burden of proof is on the one who claims a particular saying is early enough to be relevant to New Testament research. If this cannot be shown, it is not known. See Neusner, Jacob (1994). Rabbinic Literature and the New Testament: What We Cannot Show, We Do Not Know. Eugene: Wipf & Stock, esp. pp. 1-17.
• 44 Rosen-Zvi, Ishay (2009). Refuting the Yetzer: The Evil Inclination and the Limits of Rabbinic Discourse. Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, 17(2), 117-141. Here p. 121.
• 45 Rosen-Zvi, op. cit., p. 131 n. 39.
• 46 'From about A.D. 500 to 800 the Masoretes added vowel points, accents and the Masorahs (to help safeguard the text from error) as well as many scribal corrections.' (Wegner, Paul D. (2006). A Student's Guide to Textual Criticism of the Bible: Its History, Methods and Results. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, p. 77.)
• 47 Rosen-Zvi, Ishay (2009). Sexualising the Evil Inclination: Rabbinic 'Yetzer' and Modern Scholarship. Journal of Jewish Studies, 60(2), 264-281. Here p. 272; emphasis added.
• 48 'Apotropaic' activity refers to 'preventative measures...taken, via petition or incantation, to ensure safety from future demonic harm', in contrast to exorcistic activity which cures people from current demonic affliction (Morris, Michael (2016). Apotropaic Inversion in the Temptation and at Qumran. In J. Dochhorn, S. Rudnig-Zelt & B. Wold (Eds.), Das Böse, der Teufel und Dämonen (pp. 93-100). Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, p. 93.
• 49 Morris, op. cit., p. 93. Morris concludes that the TS portrays 'an aggressive manipulation in which the Devil mocks the apotropaic efficacy of Psalm 91 in order to intimidate Jesus' (p. 99). This, of course, makes little narrative sense if there is no demonic element to the temptation.