Note 85 — Chapter II · BAPTISM AND TEMPTATION OF JESUS.
George Eliot translation
If the most eminent men of piety in Hebrew antiquity were thus tempted, in the earlier view, by God, in the later one, by Satan, what was more natural than to suppose that the Messiah, the Head of all the righteous, the representative and champion of God’s people, would be the primary object of the assaults of Satan?85 And we find this actually recorded as a rabbinical opinion,86 in the material mode of representation of the later Judaism, under the form of a bodily appearance and a personal dialogue.