Thursday, February 9, 2017

The Temptation in the Wilderness and New Adam Christology

In the Synoptic Gospels (Matt 4:1-11; Mark 1:12-13; Luke 4:1-13), we read of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness by Satan, as well as His fasting for forty days. With respect to Christ’s fasting for forty days, such is evidence that the Synoptic Gospels portrayed Jesus as the Second Adam, as Paul did explicitly in his epistles (e.g., 1 Cor 15:44). Note the following from the pseudepigrapha:

Adam said to Eve: "You cannot do as much as I, but do as much so that you might be saved. For I will do forty days of fasting. You, however, arise and go to the Tigris River and take a stone and stand upon it in the water up to your neck in the depth of the river. Let not a word go forth from your mouth since we are unworthy to ask of the Lord for our lips are unclean from the illicit and forbidden tree. Stand in the water of the river for thirtyseven days. I however, will do forty days in the water of the Jordan. Perhaps the Lord will have mercy on us." (Life of Adam and Eve, 6:1-2)

Furthermore, in the book of Jubilees, Adam is brought into the garden forty days after he was created:

On the forty-sixth day of the creation of the world, on the fourth day of the seventh week, Pachon fourteenth, May ninth, the sun being in Taurus and the moon in Scorpio, according to diameter, in the rising of Pleiades, God led Adam into Paradise on the fortieth day since his creation. On the eighth day of the making of the world, on the forty-fourth day of the making of Adam, on the Lord's Day, Pachon eighteenth, May thirteenth, after three days since his entrance into Paradise, the sun being in Taurus and the moon in Capricorn, God commanded Adam to avoid eating from the Tree of Knowledge. On the ninety-third day of creation, on the second day of the fourteenth week, during the summer season, the sun and moon being in Cancer, on the twenty-fifth day of the month of June, Epeiph first, Eve, helper of Adam, was led by God into Paradise, on the eightieth day since her creation. (Jubilees 3:9)


For more, see the recent book by Brandon D. Crowe, The Last Adam: A Theology of the Obedient Life of Jesus in the Gospels (Baker Academic, 2017). While I disagree with the author trying to prop up Reformed soteriology here, the volume does show that the Gospels consciously presents Jesus as the New Adam. Another recent contribution to the Christology of the Gospels (albeit, the Synoptics) is that of J.R. Daniel Kirk, A Man Attested by God: The Human Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels (Eerdmans, 2016), showing that Matthew, Mark, and Luke portray Jesus as the idealised man.