NOTES for Luk 4:1-15

Today's reading brings us back again to the temptations that Jesus experienced in the wilderness. Unlike Matthew (Matt. 4:1-11), Luke lists these temptations in this order: the proposal to turn stones into bread (vv. 3-4), the proposal of a bargain (recognition of authority in exchange for freedom of action) (vv. 5-8), and the proposal to perform a miracle obvious to everyone (vv. 9-12). It is not hard to notice that this order differs from the one given by Matthew, where the proposal to perform a miracle follows immediately after the proposal to turn stones into bread, and the proposal of a bargain concludes the sequence of temptations.

Why, then, do the evangelists' descriptions differ? And which order should be considered correct? The first question is not hard to answer. Clearly, none of the evangelists could have been a witness to the event they describe, for during the temptation Jesus was alone in the wilderness. Both Matthew and Luke tell about it from someone else's words. Matthew, who belonged to the twelve apostles, had the opportunity to hear from the Teacher Himself what had happened in the wilderness; Luke, evidently, had to use the testimony of those who could communicate directly with Jesus.

But each of the evangelists undoubtedly interpreted what he had heard in his own way, for the Gospels are not stenographic reports, but authored texts that imply, in each case, a quite definite understanding and presentation of everything seen and heard. Evidently this is why many of the evangelists' accounts differ in details and particulars, including the account of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness. As in some other cases, Luke conveys this account differently from Matthew, placing the emphasis in his own way. For him, it appears, the main temptation is not the devil's direct proposal to make a bargain, but the temptation connected with the possibility of taking the path of performing miracles obvious to everyone, the kind that so attract people who want all their problems solved instantly.

Perhaps Luke, writing his Gospel at a time when quite a few different accounts and stories about Christ had already appeared (Luke 1:1), had to draw his readers' special attention to the fact that the essence of Christianity is by no means miracles. Many of the accounts he mentions were probably at times utterly fantastic in character, like the stories that fill some apocryphal texts. They are full of miracles, but miracles precisely of the sort that those around Jesus sometimes demanded from Him and that He never performed.

The apocrypha themselves, of course, did not yet exist, but legends and rumors about incredible events connected with the Savior's earthly life, later set down in them, may well have already been circulating in circles close to Christianity. And Luke has to remind his readers that Jesus came into the world not to demonstrate miracles that strike the imagination of an admiring crowd, but to give the world the Kingdom.