The Origin of Satan (18 page)

From this final denunciation of the Pharisees, Matthew turns

immediately to the story of Jesus’ crucifixion. Closely following

Mark’s account, Matthew describes the involvement of the chief

priest, scribes, and elders, but does not mention the Pharisees

again until after Jesus’ death.

But Matthew does add episodes that highlight the greater

guilt of Jesus’ Jewish enemies. Only Matthew says that even

Judas Iscariot bitterly regretted betraying Jesus, “and throwing

down the pieces of silver in the Temple, he departed, and went

and hanged himself” (27:3-5). Matthew adds, too, the story of

Pilate’s wife:

While Pilate was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent

word to him, “Have nothing to do with that righteous man, for

I have suffered much over him today in a dream” (27:19).

As in Mark, here Pilate offers to release Jesus, and protests to

the crowds shouting for Jesus’ crucifixion, “Why, what evil has

he

MATTHEW’S CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE PHARISEES / 87

done?” But Matthew also supplies a pragmatic reason for Pilate's

acquiescence to the crowd: Pilate “saw that he was gaining

nothing, but rather that a riot was starting” (27:24). At that

point, Matthew claims, in a most unlikely scene, Pilate

performed a ritual that derives from Jewish law, described in the

book of Deuteronomy. He washed his hands to indicate his

innocence of bloodshed, and said, “I am innocent of this man’s

blood; see to it yourselves” (27:24). At that moment, according

to Matthew alone, the Jewish leaders as well as “the whole

nation” acknowledged collective responsibility and invoked

what turned out to be a curse upon themselves and their

progeny: “His blood be upon us and upon our children!” (27:25).

Matthew also adds the story that following the crucifixion,

“the chief priests and Pharisees” solicited Pilate to secure Jesus’

tomb with a guard, lest his followers steal his body to fake a

resurrection. To account for the common rumor that Jesus’

disciples had stolen his body, Matthew says that the Jewish

authorities bribed the Roman soldiers to start this rumor. “So,”

Matthew-concludes, “they took the money and did as they were

told; and this story has been spread among the Jews to this day”

(28:15).

As the gospel moves toward its conclusion, Matthew

dissociates Jesus’ followers from those he calls “the Jews,” and

tries to account for the hostility and disbelief that he and his

fellow Christians apparently encounter from the Jewish

majority. Matthew takes this to mean that the majority, who

reject the gospel, have forfeited their legacy. The former insiders

have now become outsiders. According to Matthew, Jesus tells

an ominous parable: A great king invited his people to attend his

son’s wedding. (Here Matthew evokes a prophetic metaphor to

imply that the wedding symbolizes the intended union between

the Lord himself and Israel, his bride; see Jeremiah 2:1-3:20;

Isaiah 50:1; Hosea 1:2-3:5.) But when those who are invited

refuse to attend, and even beat, abuse, and kill the king’s

messengers, Jesus says, the king declares that “the invited guests

were not worthy,” and proceeds to invite others in their place.

Then, Matthew’s Jesus continues, “the king was angry, and sent

his troops and destroyed those murderers, and burned their city”

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(22:7). Thus Matthew goes so far as to suggest that God himself

brought on the Roman massacre and destruction of Jerusalem in

70 C.E. to punish the Jews for rejecting “his son.”

Most scholars agree that although Matthew’s own group

probably included both Jewish and Gentile believers, its

members were finding more receptive audiences among Gentiles

than among Jews. Thus Matthew ends with a scene in which the

resurrected Jesus, having received “all authority on heaven and

on earth,” orders his followers to “go and make disciples of all

nations” (28:19). Matthew, himself rooted in the Jewish

community, looks at it with enormous ambivalence—

ambivalence that will influence Christian communities for

centuries, even millennia. Matthew’s contemporary and fellow

Christian Luke, who also adapts Mark and revises it, takes a

different line. This Gentile convert relegates Israel's greatness to

the past, and confidently claims its present legacy for his own—

predominantly Gentile—community. In both Luke and John, as

we see next, Jesus himself identifies his Jewish opponents with

Satan.

IV

LUKE AND JOHN CLAIM

ISRAEL'S LEGACY:

THE SPLIT WIDENS

Luke, the only Gentile author among the gospel writers,

speaks for those Gentile converts to Christianitv who consider

themselves the true heirs of Israel. Luke goes beyond Matthew

in radically revising Mark’s account of Jesus’ life. Matthew had

said that the Jewish majority had lost their claim on God’s

covenant by refusing to acknowledge his Messiah; consequendy,

God had offered his covenant to the Gentiles in their place. Luke

goes further, however, and agrees with Paul that God had always

intended to offer salvation to everyone. Luke’s vision of

universal salvation invited Greeks, Asians, Africans, Syrians,

and Egyptians to identify themselves, as confidendy as any

Essene, as members of the “true Israel.” Christians everywhere

still rely on Luke’s message every day in their prayers, hymns,

and liturgies. Luke also goes further than Mark and Matthew in

making explicit what Mark and Matthew imply—the connection

between Jesus’ Jewish enemies and the “evil one,” the devil. In

Luke, Jesus himself, at the moment of his arrest, suggests that

the arresting party7 of “chief priests and scribes and elders” is

allied with the evil one, whom Jesus here calls “the power of

darkness.”

Luke, like Matthew, refutes common allegations against

Jesus—that he was illegitimate and lacked the dynastic

credentials to be Israel’s Messiah. Like Matthew, Luke begins his

story before Jesus’ conception, to show that God’s spirit enacted

this miraculous event. According to Luke, it was the spirit, or its

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agents, the angels, who initiated the marvelous events

surrounding Jesus’ birth and infancy.

But Luke, unlike Matthew, reports no animosity on the part of

Herod or the people of Jerusalem toward the infant Jesus. As in

Mark, however, the moment Jesus appears as a grown man,

baptized and “full of the holy spirit,” the devil immediately

challenges him. The devil is thrice defeated, and Luke says that

“the devil departed from him
until an opportune time
[
achri

kairou
]” (emphasis added). Frustrated in his initial attempt to

overpower Jesus, the devil finds his opportunity only at the end

of the story, when the chief priests and scribes “sought to kill

Jesus.” At that point, Luke says, “Satan entered into Judas Iscar-

iot,” who “went and conferred with the chief priest how he

might betray him; and they were glad, and agreed to give him

money.” From that time, Luke says, Judas “sought an

opportunity [
eukairan
] to betray him.”

After his first engagement with Jesus, Satan did not withdraw

from the contest but bided his time; throughout Jesus’ public

career the devil worked underground—or, more accurately, on

the ground—through human agents. Immediately after his

solitary contest with Satan in the desert, Jesus’ first episode of

public teaching begins with a favorable reception from the crowd

but suddenly turns into a scene of brutal, nearly lethal, violence.

Luke says that Jesus, after his baptism, enters the synagogue as

usual in his hometown of Nazareth and reads for the

congregation a prophetic passage from Isaiah. Then he

announces, “ ‘Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your

hearing.’ And they all spoke well of him, and marveled at the

gracious words that came from his mouth” (4:21-22). Jesus now

predicts that his townspeople will reject him, and declares that

God intends to bring salvation to the Gentiles, even at the cost of

bypassing Israel, saying:

“There were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah . . . and

Elijah was sent to none of them, but only to Zarephath, in the

land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. There were many

lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha and none of

them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian” (4:25-27).

LUKE AND JOHN CLAIM ISRAEL’S LEGACY / 91

Hearing this, Luke continues,

all those in the synagogue were filled with rage, and they rose

up to throw him out of the city, and led him to the edge of the

hill on which the city was built, in order to throw him down

headlong (4:28-29).

But Jesus quickly departs, and so escapes this first attempt on

his life.

Now the “the scribes and the Pharisees” begin to plot against

Jesus, eyeing him suspiciously, looking for an opportunity “to

make an accusation against him” (6:7). When they see him heal

on the Sabbath, they “were filled with fury and discussed with

one another what they might do to Jesus” (6:11).

But Luke’s Pharisees, unlike Matthew’s, are not unanimously

hostile to Jesus.1 Some express interest in him and invite him to

dinner, some even warn him of danger, but others willingly play

Satan’s role, plotting to kill him. Luke sometimes calls the

Pharisees “lovers of money” (16:14) and self-righteous (18:9-

14), qualities he castigates in others as well; and he shows the

special empathy between Jesus and those who are despised—the

destitute, the sick, women, and Samaritans. Jesus’ followers

include many tax collectors and prostitutes; Luke believes that

these too are God’s people. From the opening scenes in the

Temple involving Jesus’ infancy and adolescence to the gospel’s

close, which describes how the disciples “went to Jerusalem, and

were continually in the Temple praising God,” the followers of

Jesus are deeply loyal to the Temple—perhaps the only genuine

Israelites left in Jerusalem. Luke certainly intends to show that

they are closer to God than the Pharisees or any other Jewish

religious leaders.

Spiritual warfare between God and Satan—which is reflected

in conflict between Jesus and his followers and the Jewish

leaders—intensifies throughout the gospel.2 As people divide

against him, Jesus says,

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth, no,

rather division; from now on in one house there shall be five

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divided, three against two and two against three; they will be

divided, father against son and son against father, mother

against daughter and daughter against her mother” (12:51-55).

As the chief priests and their allies harden their opposition,

certain Pharisees warn Jesus, in an episode unique to Luke, about

the Jewish king: “Herod wants to kill you.” Jesus’ reply suggests

that what angers Herod is that Jesus has challenged Satan, the

power that rules this world: “Go and tell that fox, ‘Today and

tomorrow I cast out demons and heal, and the third day I finish

my course’ ” (13:32). After Jesus sends out seventy apostles to

heal and proclaim the message of the kingdom, they return

“with joy,” astonished and triumphant, saying, “Lord, even the

demons are subject to us in your name.” Jesus exults, foreseeing

Satan’s impending defeat:

“I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven: Behold, I have

given you power to tread on snakes and scorpions, and upon

every power of the enemy” (10:18-19).

Immediately before Satan enters into Judas and initiates the

betrayal, Jesus warns, in parable, that he himself will return as

king to see his enemies annihilated. As soon as he begins his

final journey to Jerusalem, where he will enter the city publicly

acclaimed as king by his disciples but will be rejected by the

majority’ of Jerusalemites, Jesus tells the story of “a certain

nobleman” who travels to a distant land “in order to claim his