Note 72 — Chapter II · BAPTISM AND TEMPTATION OF JESUS.

If, then, the history of the temptation is not to be understood as confined to the soul of Jesus, and if we have before shown that it cannot be regarded as supernatural; nothing seems to remain but to view it as a real, yet thoroughly natural, event, and to reduce the tempter to a mere man. After John had drawn attention to Jesus as the Messiah (thinks the author of the Natural History of the Prophet of Nazareth),72 the ruling party in Jerusalem commissioned an artful Pharisee to put Jesus to the test, and to ascertain whether he really possessed miraculous powers, or whether he might not be drawn into the interest of the priesthood, and be induced to give his countenance to an enterprise against the Romans. This conception of the διάβολος is in dignified consistency with that of the ἄγγελοι, who appeared after his departure, to refresh Jesus, as an approaching caravan with provisions, or as soft reviving breezes.73 But this view, as Usteri says, has so long completed its phases in the theological world, that to refute it would be to waste words.