Some Christadelphians argue that the temptation narratives in Matt 4:1-11 and Luke 4:1-13 (cf. Mark 1:12-13) is not to be taken at face value, as there is no way that Christ could see, on any mountain, "all the kingdoms of the world" (Matt 4:8). They then argue, based on this, that the "Satan" in such texts is not an external, supernatural tempter, but instead, is an external personification of Jesus' debate with his inward, sinful desires (cf. Duncan Heaster, The Real Devil). For a clear refutation of such an interpretation, see Thomas J. Farrar, The Devil in the Wilderness: Evaluating Christadelphian Exegesis of the temptation narratives, pp. 9-12.
However, even taking the narrative as 100%
literal, without any apocalypticism and the like, it still does not prove the
Christadelphian understanding. Matt 4:8, in the Greek, reads that the devil took
Jesus to the mountain and showed him "πάσας τὰς βασιλείας τοῦ κόσμου"
("all the kingdoms of the kosmos/world"). The parallel in Luke
4:5 says that Jesus saw "πάσας τὰς βασιλείας τῆς οἰκουμένης"
("all the kingdoms of the οἰκουμένη [BDAG: the inhabited world]). Note
that neither Matthew or Luke explicitly mentions the Earth (γη) specifically.
Interestingly, “flat earthers” have used
this narrative to support their cosmology. One critic of this cosmology offered
the following interpretation which also refutes the naïve Christadelphian approach
to the temptation narrative, too:
Since κοσμος can
refer either to the Earth, the earthly system (Jn 17:12; Rm 1:8) or the whole
creation, including the universe, (Ac 17:24; Eph 1:4; Rm 1:20) Jesus could be
viewing something as large as the whole starry universe or to something as
small as the world of Jewry surrounding Jerusalem and its environs. Since Luke uses
οικουμενης (a
combination of οικος= house, dwelling; and μενω = abide)
it refers specifically to the inhabited portion of whatever location is in
view. (Lk 2:1; Ac 11:28)
As
such, Luke’s meaning is “all the kingdoms inhabited in his line of sight at that
point in time,” (Thus interpreting εν στιγμη χρονου as "at that point in
time" instead of "in a moment of time.") and thus not the whole
Earth, and thus neither the flat Earth or the curved Earth model are
contradicted. The region Jesus sees, of course, would be as far as Jesus could
see towards the four compass points. If the mountain were 10,000 feet high and
a mountain in the next kingdom were also 10,000 feet high, Jesus could only see
about 225 miles, without the aid of refraction, before the curvature of the
Earth would begin to obscure the mountain. (Robert A. Sungenis, Flat
Earth/Flat Wrong: An Historical, Biblical and Scientific Analysis [State
Line, Pa.: Catholic Apologetics International Publishing, Inc., 2018], 152)
