Jesus vs. Rome: The Temptation of Power and Complicity

Part 2 of The Temptations and the Rise of Authoritarianism in America

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(Read this series from its beginning here.)

The Temptations as Veiled Critique

The veiled critique of the second temptation is a bit more obvious. What Rome promised each of its client rulers was authority and power over their region. They literally could have said to each of their clients, “I will give you authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. If you worship me, it will all be yours.” If rulers of the regions that Rome conquered embraced the Roman religion of Caesar worship and swore fidelity to the Roman Empire, then authority and splendor would be theirs. As critique to the way the Temple State with its golden Roman Eagle and the priests and rulers had become complicit with Rome, Jesus in the story quotes Deuteronomy again, this time in chapter 6:

Worship the LORD your God, serve him only and take your oaths in his name. Do not follow other gods, the gods of the peoples around you. (Deuteronomy 6:13-14)

In Luke’s third temptation (the second temptation in Matthew’s gospel) as critique, Jesus is taken up to the highest point of the Temple. Jerusalem and the Temple should not be interpreted here in merely religious terms. Think of Jerusalem as the capital of the region of Judea and the temple as the capital building. The temple was the standing symbol of the Jewish Temple state and the center out of which the Jewish Temple state-operated.  What Rome promised the priests, scribes, Sanhedrin, and wealthy elites of Rome was protection “lest they dash their feet upon the stone” of Rome and lose their local power and wealth. This protection was conditional upon them using the Temple State to incorporate Roman allegiance into their systems of politics, economics, and religion. (The priesthood, remember, was taken over by Roman authority, and Caesar selected the priests.). It wastes the temple’s complicity with Rome that both Jesus and John the Baptist critiqued: it transformed the Temple and Temple State into a channel for local Roman oppression of the economically marginalized. 

In response, Jesus quotes this final time from Deuteronomy (chapter 6):

Worship the LORD your God, serve him only and take your oaths in his name. Do not follow other gods, the gods of the peoples around you; for the LORD your God, who is among you, is a jealous God and his anger will burn against you, and he will destroy you from the face of the land. Do not put the LORD your God to the test as you did at Massah. (Deuteronomy 6:13-16)

What is this testing at Massah and how does it relate to us, right now? We’ll look at that in Part 3.

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