The Origin of Satan (17 page)

primarily as a polemic between Jesus and the Pharisees, in which

the two antagonistic parties are not equally matched. The

Pharisees are widely respected and honored, accepted by the

people as religious authorities; Jesus’ followers are a suspect

minority, maligned and persecuted.

In Mark, Jesus contests wordlessly against Satan in the

wilderness. But Matthew borrows sayings from the Q source and

shows Satan appearing three times to “test” Jesus, as Pharisees

and

MATTHEW’S CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE PHARISEES / 81

other opponents will test him. Here the Q source turns Satan

into a caricature of a scribe, a debater skilled in verbal challenge

and adept in quoting the Scriptures for diabolic purposes, who

repeatedly questions Jesus’ divine authority (“If you are the son

of God . . .”). Having twice failed to induce Jesus to perform a

miracle to prove his divine power and authority, Satan finally

offers him “all the kingdoms of this world and their glory,”

which Satan claims as his own. Thus Matthew, following Mark’s

lead, implies that political success and power (such as the

Pharisees enjoy under Roman patronage) may evince a pact with

the devil—and not, as many of Matthew’s contemporaries would

have assumed, marks of divine favor.

Matthew next assails the Pharisees on the question that

concerns them most, the interpretation of Torah. To correct the

impression that Jesus simply ignored traditional Jewish concern

with righteous obedience to Torah—an impression any reader

could get from Mark—Matthew makes Jesus embody all that is

best and truest in Jewish tradition. Mark begins his gospel with

descriptions of healings and exorcisms, but Matthew begins by

showing Jesus proclaiming a new interpretation of divine law.

Like Moses, who ascended Mount Sinai to receive and

promulgate God’s law, Jesus goes up on a mountain, where he

proclaims what we know as the Sermon on the Mount. Taking

aim at the Pharisees and those impressed by their interpretation

of Torah, Matthew insists that Jesus does not reject the Torah.

Instead, Matthew says, Jesus proclaims its essential meaning:

“Do not think that I came to abolish the law and the prophets; I

came not to abolish but to fulfill them” (5:17).

Jesus then warns that “unless your righteousness exceeds that

of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the

Kingdom of heaven” (5:20). Thus Matthew defends Jesus against

charges of laxity in Sabbath and kosher observance by insisting

that he practices a
greater
righteousness, not a lesser one.

According to Matthew 5 and 6, Jesus demands an enormous

increase
in religious scrupulosity: the traditional Torah is not

half strict enough

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for him! Where Moses’ law prohibits murder, Jesus’ “new

Torah” prohibits anger, insults, and name calling; where Moses’

law prohibits adultery, Jesus’ prohibits lust. Much of the Mosaic

law was couched in negative terms (“You shall not. . .”). Jesus

reinterprets it positively:

“Whatever you would have people do to you, do the same to

them; for this is the law and the prophets” (7:12).

Simultaneously Matthew insists that Jesus’ critics, “the

scribes and the Pharisees,” use mere hypocritical “observance” as

a cover for violating what Jesus here proclaims to be the Torah’s

central commands of love for God and neighbor (6:1-18).

As we have seen, Matthew diverges from Mark in making the

Pharisees Jesus’ primary antagonists.23 For Mark it was the

Jerusalem scribes who were angered by Jesus’ powerful effect on

the crowd and charged him with demon possession; but

Matthew changes the story to say that the Pharisees accused

Jesus of “casting out demons by the prince of demons” (12:24).

While Mark says that the Pharisees and the Herodians first

plotted to kill Jesus, Matthew says that only the Pharisees “went

and took counsel, how to destroy him” (12:14). Matthew even

has the Pharisees repeat the charge that Jesus is “possessed by

Beelzebub” (12:24); Jesus adamantly denies the charge and

warns: “If it is by the spirit of God that I cast out demons, then

the kingdom of God has come upon you” (12:28). Matthew’s

Jesus declares that this supernatural conflict has now split God’s

people into two separate—and opposing—communities:

“Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not

gather with me scatters” (12:30).

Distressed that the people of Israel are “harassed and helpless,

like sheep without a shepherd,” lacking true leadership, Jesus

now designates the twelve, and gives them “authority over

unclean spirits, to cast them out” (10:1). Warning them that the

people “will deliver you up to sanhedrins, and beat you in their

synagogues” (10:17), Jesus tells them to anticipate murderous

hatred within their own households (10:21), as well as from

MATTHEW’S CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE PHARISEES / 83

“everyone” (10:22); for, as he says, “if they have called the

master of the house Beelzebub, how much more will they

malign those members of his household?” (10:25). As the

narrative proceeds, the antagonism between Jesus and his

enemies becomes— as in the literature of the Essene sectarians—

a contest between those whom Matthew's Jesus calls “sons of the

kingdom” and the “sons of the evil one” (13:38). Jesus repeats

John the Baptist's denunciation of the Pharisees: “You brood of

vipers! How can you say good things, when you are evil?”

(12:34). Then Jesus predicts that foreigners shall “arise at the

judgment of this generation and condemn it” (12:41). Finally, he

implicitly accuses those who oppose him of being possessed by

demons, telling the parable of a man who, having been exorcised,

experiences a new invasion of “seven other spirits more evil”

than the first, “so that the last state of that man becomes worse

than the first. So shall it be also with this evil generation”

(12:45).

Later, Jesus explains privately to his followers that the

generation he addresses—except for the elect—
already
has been

judged and condemned; his opponents’ refusal to receive his

preaching, he says, reveals Satan’s power over them. In the

parable of the sower, Jesus identifies the “evil one” as the enemy

who has “snatched away” the seeds he has planted and so

prevented his preaching from bearing fruit among his own

people (13:19). Immediately thereafter Jesus tells the parable of

the weeds, explicitly identifying his opponents as the offspring

of Satan: “the weeds are the sons of the evil one, and the enemy

who sowed them is the devil” (13:38-39).

Jesus, finally recognized by his disciples as Messiah, tells

them that now, by the authority of God’s spirit, he is

establishing his
own
assembly, which shall triumph over all the

forces of evil, as if to say that God has replaced Israel with a new

community. Many-scholars agree with George Nickelsburg that

Matthew’s Jesus claims in chapter 16 that what previously was

the “congregation of Israel” has become “his church.”24

Jesus’ conflict with the Pharisees reaches a climax in Matthew

23. Throughout this chapter, Matthew takes sayings attributed

to Jesus and turns them into stories of conflict that pit Jesus

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against those he denounces seven times as “scribes and Pharisees,

hypocrites,” and even “children of hell” (23:15). Matthew has

Jesus call down divine wrath upon “this generation” (23:36),

“that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed on

earth, from the blood of the innocent Abel to that of

Zechariah, son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the

sanctuary and the altar” (23:35).

Many scholars have noted and commented on the bitter

hostility expressed in this chapter.25 Biblical scholar Luke

Johnson shows that philosophic groups in antiquity often

attacked their rivals in strong terms.26 But philosophers did not

engage, as Matthew does here, in
demonic
vilification of their

opponents. Within the ancient world, so far as I know, it is only

Essenes and Christians who actually escalate conflict with their

opponents to the level of cosmic war.

Matthew’s Jesus acknowledges that the Pharisees say much

that is valid (“Practice and observe whatever they tell you, but

do not do what they do”), but he charges that they are more

concerned with maintaining their authority than anything else.

Moreover, he says, they neglect essential moral concerns,

preoccupying themselves with legal haggling:

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you tithe

mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier

matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith; these you

ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind

guides, straining out a gnat, and swallowing a camel!” (23:23-

24)

Scholars know that many Jewish teachers at the time of

Jesus—teachers like Hillel and Shammai, Jesus’ contemporaries

—engaged in moral interpretation of the law. One famous story

tells how Hillel answered a student who asked him to teach the

whole of the Torah while standing on one foot. Hillel replied,

“Whatever you do not want others to do to you, do not do to

them. That is the whole of the Torah.” Yet even a liberal like

Hillel

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would have opposed a movement that claimed to reinterpret the

Torah morally but put aside the ritual precepts that define

Jewish identity. Many Jews of the first century saw such

tendencies in the Christian movement. Many Pharisees,

concerned to keep Israel holy and separate through Torah

observance, may well have regarded Jesus’ followers as

threatening Israel’s integrity—even its existence.

Matthew wants to say, as we have seen, that Jesus never

deviated from total loyalty to the Torah, but Matthew means by

this that Jesus fulfilled the deeper meaning of the law, which,

Matthew insists, has nothing essential to do with ethnic identity.

In Matthew, Jesus twice summarizes “the law and the prophets,”

both times in ways that depend solely on moral action. First,

what Hillel stated negatively, Jesus states positively: “Whatever

you want people to do to you, do the same to them; on this

depends the whole of the law and the prophets” (7:12). Second,

he summarizes the Torah in the dual command, “Love the Lord

your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and your neighbor

as yourself” (22:37). Finally Matthew’s Jesus offers a parable

depicting the coming of God’s judgment. On that day, Jesus says,

the divine king will gather
all the nations
, inviting some to enter

into God’s eternal kingdom, and consigning others to what Jesus

calls “the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”

What is the criterion of divine judgment? According to

Matthew, Jesus says that the king will say to those on his right

hand,

“ ‘Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared

for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and

you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; I was a

stranger and you welcomed me; I was sick and you visited me;

I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will

answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see thee a stranger and

welcome thee or naked and clothe thee? And when did we see

thee sick or in prison and visit thee?’ And the king will answer

them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of my

brethren, you did it to me.’ Then he will say to those at his left

hand, ‘Depart from me, you cursed ones, into

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the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was

hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave

me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me,

naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you

did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when did

we see thee hungry or thirsty or a stranger or sick or in prison,

and did not minister to thee?’ Then he will answer them,

‘Truly I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these,

you did it not to me.’ And they will go away into eternal

punishment, but the righteous into eternal life” (25:34-46),

Inclusion in God’s kingdom depends, then, not on

membership in Israel but on justice combined with generosity

and compassion. Ethnicity as a criterion has vanished. Gentiles as

well as Jews could embrace this reinterpretation of divine law—

and in Matthew’s community many did.

According to Matthew, Jesus and the movement he began

articulate the true meaning of God's law. Jesus denounces the

Pharisees not only as false interpreters but deadly opponents to

truth—those who “kill and crucify” God’s prophets (23:34).