Dark Mirrors: Azazel and Satanael in Early Jewish Demonology by Andrei A. Orlov

Author:Andrei A. Orlov
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Published: 2012-03-29T09:28:00+00:00

Several features of Matthew's account might suggest that it contains more explicit references to apocalyptic traditions than Mark and Luke. As I already mentioned, Mark and Luke, who take the forty-day period as encompassing the whole process of temptation, seem to reemploy here the traditional allusion to the forty years of testing the Israelites in the wilderness. Yet Matthew's emphasis on an initiatory forty-day fasting which follows the appearance of Satan might suggest that the fast serves here as a tool for inducing of visionary experience. It is noteworthy that the canonical stories of the two most famous visionaries of the Hebrew Bible, Moses and Elijah, contain passages referring specifically to periods of forty days. Exod 24:18 tells of Moses's abiding forty days and forty nights at the top of Mount Sinai.' 1 Kings 19:8 refers to the story of Elijah sustained by angels for forty days' during his journey to Mount Horeb.' It is noteworthy that in both accounts, as in Matthew, the motif of the forty-day fast coincides with the theme of an encounter on a mountain, signifying a visionary experience on high.

If we are correct about the transformational value of fasting in Matthew's account, it should be noted that the fast serves there as the tool for inducing the vision of Satan, but not of God. It is possible that this depiction has a polemical flavor as the author of the temptation narrative attempts to deconstruct the traditional apocalyptic settings.

Enigmatic Psychopomp

What is even more striking is that in the temptation narrative, Satan serves as a psychopomp of Jesus, depicted as transporting a protagonist of the story to high, possibly even highest, places. In apocalyptic literature angels or archangels often serve as the psychopomps of visionaries. Thus, for example, in 2 Enoch the seventh antediluvian patriarch is taken to heaven by two angels. In the same apocalyptic account Melchizedek is transported on the wings of Gabriel to the Paradise of Eden. In the temptation narrative Satan seems to be fulfilling these familiar functions of a transporting angel. It is important that in both cases Satan is transporting Jesus not to hell, but to the "high places"-the first time to the top of the Temple in the Holy City and the second time to the very high mountain. Some scholars believe that the mountain here represents the place of the divine abode as in some other apocalyptic texts. Satan's apocalyptic roles are puzzling. Does the unusual duty of Satan as the transporter to the upper places represent a polemical twist? Does the author here attempt to deconstruct the familiar apocalyptic motifs by depicting Satan as Jesus' angelic transporter?

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