Jesus: A Biography From a Believer. Read Online Free PDF Page B

Satan visible, vocal, and formidable in power. The fact that Jesus recounted the details afterward to his followers shows how anxious he was to impress upon them that evil is not merely objective and material but also subjective and personal; that Satan exists and has to be overcome by strength of will and clearness of distinction between the good and the bad. He transformed his personal temptation into a universal experience.
    For Jesus himself the temptation was to use his divine powers for earthly material purposes: first, to turn stones into bread; then, to preserve his life from mortal dangers; finally, to possess the world. The third temptation (here I am following Matthew’s account) was the most serious because of its universal scope: it applied not only to such as himself, endowed with divine powers, but also to mankind, who, thanks to high intelligence and industry, can acquire vast powers which—superficially at least—appear godlike. Jesus told Matthew’s apostolic source that on this third occasion Satan “taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me” (4:8-9).
    The “high mountain” is significant—the constant image when Jesus is about to perceive important truths—as is the plural reference to “kingdoms.” The temptation concerns not just states and empires but knowledge—kingdoms of the mind, science—the understanding of the universe by physics and mathematics and of the human body by Darwinian evolution, by biology, and by the chromosomal structure, and the explosion of human penetration, in all distinctions, of the secrets of the universe. Here was the most insidious of all temptations: that men obtain huge victories of the intellect by agreeing to worship material success and to renounce the world of the spirit, to put knowledge before goodness and mastery of the elements before their Creator.
    Jesus said that there was only one possible reply to this final temptation: “Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve” (4:10). Pride in knowledge, pride in the human capacity to acquire it—at the expense of ignoring God—is just another form of idolatry. Thus dismissed, Satan departed, leaving Jesus alone, “and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him” (4:11).
    So Jesus returned from the wilderness uncorrupted and, as a man, wiser and more experienced. He was ready to begin. What sort of a man was he? We are not told. His precursor, the Baptist, is described. But not once, in all the four Gospels, are we given any indication of Jesus’s appearance. Nor are we told what he looked like in any of the canonical epistles or any documents of the first century AD. It is not until well into the second century, by which time the chain of oral eyewitness evidence had long been broken, that we get the first iconography, and these attempts are typology rather than actual portraiture. The Jesus who then appears is a beardless figure of ideal character. There are 104 examples in the catacombs, 97 in sarcophagi, 14 in mosaics, 45 in gold glasses, 50 in other artifacts, and 3 in manuscripts. Later he appears as a grown man, bearded but still idealized: and this Jesus, suitably rendered human, is the man who thereafter is painted and sculpted by artists in the Western tradition. But the earliest appearance of the bearded Jesus dates from centuries after his death. In short, there is no reliable evidence of what Jesus looked like.
    On the other hand, we know certain things about his visual personality which struck eyewitnesses and so are recorded in the Gospels. Jesus was very observant. It is notable how many times he is described as “looking,” “looking upon,” “looking round,” “looking up” (the last is mentioned three times). His habit of penetrating