The Testing of God's Son: (Matt. 4:1-11 & PAR), An Analysis of an Early Christian Midrash

According to all three versions of the synoptic tradition, Jesus of Nazareth , immediately prior to his public ministry in Galilee, was baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan and then tempted by the devil in the wilderness. The Markan version covers the latter incident in three simple sentences.A more extended treatment is to be found in Matthew and Luke. Scholars have long discussed the relationship between the short narrative of Mark and the longer version of Matthew and Luke. There seem to be three main possibilities: 1) There is one tradition only. The question then is : is the short version the original and the longer a scribal elaboration, or is the long one the original and the shorter an abbreviation? 2) There are two different traditions. Mark relates in summary form an exuberant popular story, Matthew and Luke reproduce another narrative from scribal circles. 4) The longer version is a conflation of the two traditions, the brief mythological statement found in Mark has been combined with an already existing dialogue of a scribal character: alternatively, a scribal temptation story from Q has been enriched by Matthew and Luke with elements from a shorter popular story in Mark. The Matthew version will be the basis of our study and we will devote only one chapter to the accounts of Mark and Luke; most scholars regard the Mathean as nearer to the original than the Lukan and to their arguments we will add a further one. We will show that it is in the Matthean version that we can still see how the temptation narrative was born and indeed, still perceive the cord joining the new-born babe to the mother. Our investigation will confirm the priority of the Matthean version in all essentials.

Birger Gerhardsson is Professor of Exegetical Theology at Lund University, Sweden, and is the author of Memory and Manuscript and The Reliability of the Gospel Tradition.