Mark’s very brief account gives
no details of the temptation (Mk 1:12–13), while Matthew’s and Luke’s stories
are in the form of a longer, three-part conversation not unlike the debates of
the scribes* which utilize proof-texts from Scripture (Mt 4:1–11 par. Lk
4:1–13; cf. the secondary Gos. Heb.
[Origen, Comm. Joh. II:12:87]). (G.
H. Twelftree, “Temptation of Jesus,” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels,
ed. Joel B. Green and Scot McKnight [Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press,
1992], 822)
. . . Jesus encounters Satan
in the wilderness and the two talk together like rabbis, while at the same
time this seemingly human conversation becomes the revolutionary event which
destroys Satan’s power and might. The fact that Satan appears in this form,
that his demands are so human and yet so diabolical, shows the eschatological
period of his rule and his life; he emerges from the disguise of the manifold
variety of his intrigues, and becomes visible as Satan in person, and this very
appearance is also the sign of the nearness of his end. Thus the title ‘the
evil one’ is the key to the recognition of his nature and his eschatological
defeat. On the one hand, the name makes all men and all the world the seat of
his rule, while on the other it does away with this very seat. We may therefore
say quite briefly that the name ‘the evil one’ is the counterpart to that
eschatological revelation as a result of which men can now pray to God as their
Father. (Ernst Lohmeyer, The Lord’s Prayer [trans. John Bowden; London:
Collins, 1965], 224)