[B-Greek] articles on PEIRASMOS

Jeffrey B. Gibson jgibson000 at comcast.net
Wed Aug 20 17:24:52 EDT 2003


Jonathan Robie wrote:

>Jeffrey Gibson wrote:
>
>  
>
>>At least with respect to the Matthean passage,  Danker assumes 
>>what needs to be proven and simply repeats without examining 
>>what older lexicons noted, working from a questionable 
>>understanding of what the Matthean passage is all about, was the 
>>meaning of the verb.
>>    
>>
>
>Possibly. I do not know what mental processes he went through to reach his conclusions. On a couple of occasions, I have been able to ask him about specific words, and I have been amazed at the detailed explanations he can come up with and the reasons behind them, all off the top of his head. At the end of the mental processes I'm currently going through, I will be able to say whether I agree with him on this word or not.
>
>  
>
>>But several things need to be noted. First, the experience of 
>>PEIRASMOS that Jesus undergoes is divinely ordained. Second,
>>the "adversary",  the one who carries out the PEIRASMOS, is
>>here a divine instrument and does not carry out his work as an
>>independent agent or one hostile to the purposes of God.
>>Third, and most importantly, the PEIRASMOS that Jesus
>>undergoes in Matt. 4:1-11 is intended by Matthew, as the
>>welter of allusions to and quotations and images drawn from
>>Deuteronomy 6-8 and the tradition it rehearses show, to be
>>seen as a recapitulation of the PEIRASMOS experience to which
>>God subjected Israel in the Wilderness.  And this was hardly
>>a "temptation".
>>    
>>
>
>It is certainly plausible that the intended meaning here is "tested". It is not implausible that the intended meaning is "tempted", but a person who has that view would also have a different framework surrounding the interpretation of the Matthew passage. Your own interpretation seems to draw heavily on a particular understanding of Mark's intent
>
I take it you mean Matthew's, not Mark's.

> and its relationship to Deuteronomy, and I do not think this is the only plausible interpretation of the passage.
>
Hmm. Let's see: driven/led,  wilderness, 40, hunger, bread, son of God, 
quotations summarizing what each episode in the experience involves all 
taken from Deut 6-8., not to mention the larger context into which 
Matthew places the experiences and teaching of Jesus which emphasizes 
how Jesus is the opposite of "this generation" a cipher for the 
wilderness generation.  Only plausible?

>
>In the passage itself, Jesus is both "tested" and "tempted".
>
If so, then you are obliged to claim that Matthew, who shows affinities 
with the teaching in James, is in contradiction with James, because, 
what ever we make of the recapitulation theory, we cannot deny that  
Matthew explicitly states that Jesus' wilderness PEIRASMOS is divinely 
ordained (it is the Spirit of God who sets up the PEIRASMOS and  compels 
Jesus to confront the adversary) , is in fulfillment of a divine purpose 
(note the purpose clause in 4:1), and is carried out by a divine agent.

Where I think the we are led astray here is in thinking that at least 
within this story the DIABOLOS is evil incarnate and is not, as in  Job, 
one who is divinely commissioned to put the faithful to the test. What 
you might want to do in evaluating this idea is to compare Matthew's 
story with Sanhedrin 89b -- a midrash on Gen. 22 which structurally and 
thematically bears more than a little resemblance to Matt. 4: 1-11 -- in 
which the Satan is the one who carries out the testing which God 
directed against Abraham and wherein the Satan acts not to get Abraham 
to do something but to discover how faithful he is.

Yours ,

Jeffrey

-- 
Jeffrey B. Gibson
Chicago, Illinois
e-mail jgibson000 at comcast.net




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