Dark Mirrors: Azazel and Satanael in Early Jewish Demonology

Satan and the Visionary: Apocalyptic Roles of the Adversary in the Temptation Narrative of the Gospel of Matthew

106 Dark Mirrors century CE, might provide additional illuminating insights. Narrating Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, the Gospel of Matthew unveils the following tradition: Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them; and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down (/¡mÚi) and worship me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Begone, Satan! for it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’ ” Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and ministered (bfdg¬ikpi) to him. (Matt 4:8–11) It has been previously noticed that this passage, in which the Devil tempts Jesus by asking him to fall down (/¡mÚi) and worship the demon appears to be alluding also to the Adamic account of the fall of Satan who once refused to venerate the protoplast.84 The ancient enemy of humankind appears to be trying to take revenge for his protological mishap involving the First Adam by asking now for the veneration and worship from the Last Adam—Christ. But Jesus refuses to follow this demonic trap, and after he rejects Satan’s proposal, the motif of angelic worship is then invoked again, this time directly and unambiguously in the text. Matt 4:11 tells its readers that after the temptation was over, angels came to worship Jesus. Here, similar to the possibly contemporaneous tradition found in the Slavonic apocalypse, the motif of angelic worship hints at the new divine status of a human character and helps to understand the anthropological paradigm shift that is leading the restored humankind back into the new, but once before lost, abode of its divine existence85 —the dimension in which a long time ago humanity was exalted above the angels humbly venerated by them. Satan and the Visionary Apocalyptic Roles of the Adversary in the Temptation Narrative of the Gospel of Matthew The first prince and accuser, the commander of jealousy, is evil Samael, accompanied by his retinue. He is called “evil” not because of his nature but because he desires to unite and intimately mingle with an emanation not of his nature. —R. Isaac ben Jacob Ha-Kohen, “Treatise on the Left Emanation” The Temptation Story Scholars believe that the stories of Jesus’ temptation by Satan found in Matthew and Luke emanated from Q.1 Both of them are also informed by the temptation narrative found in the Gospel of Mark.2 The accounts found in Matthew and Luke are different in several aspects. One of the differences is that the Gospel of Luke, similar to the Gospel of Mark, states that Satan’s temptation of Jesus in the wilderness lasted the forty-day period. In contrast to this, Matthew’s account seems to put emphasis on the length of Jesus’ fast by claiming that he fasted forty days and forty nights. The two accounts then also exhibit some differences in the order of the temptations. Scholars believe that the Gospel of Matthew attests the original order of the temptation narrative, while the Gospel of Luke represents the inversion of this original order.3 Although Satan’s request to turn stone(s) into a loaf of bread is situated in the beginning of both accounts, the order of the other two temptations is different. Scholars believe that the fact that the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke both start with the temptation in the wilderness might suggest that both of them were influenced by Mark’s 107 108 Dark Mirrors account.4 The Gospel of Matthew then follows this first temptation with the second one in the Temple, and the third on the mountain. In contrast to the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of Luke, while placing in the middle a temptation from a high place, then concludes with the temptation in the Temple. Several features of Matthew’s account might suggest that it contains more explicit references to apocalyptic traditions than Mark and Luke. As I already mentioned, Mark and Luke, who take the forty-day period as encompassing the whole process of temptation, seem to reemploy here the traditional allusion to the forty years of testing the Israelites in the wilderness. Yet Matthew’s emphasis on an initiatory forty-day fasting which follows the appearance of Satan might suggest that the fast serves...