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Last modified on November 1, 2002,
9:50 am PST.
Jesus'
Sleeping Servants Parable
Speaking in parables in Chapter 13
about the coming tribulation and the departure and eventual return of the son
of God, Mark has Jesus tell his disciples the story about servants who must not
fail to serve well their master, and who must not be caught sleeping because
their master could return at any time, at any hour. Here is the parable:
"Be
on guard! Be alert! You do not know when that time will come. It's like a man going away: He leaves his
house and puts his servants in charge...and tells the one at the door to keep
watch... because you do not know when the owner of the house will come
back...If he comes suddenly, do not let him find you sleeping.
(Mark 13:32-37)
Mark's Sleeping Disciples Parable
Jesus' parable was intended by
Mark to be kept in mind by Mark's audience as he tells his own parable,
one which is the parallel of sleeping-servants parable. As I will show,
Mark's parable in intended to teach his audience that they must remain
spiritually awake while they wait for Jesus' return. In this parallel parable, Mark makes Jesus
the "master," and the disciples are the "servants," and in
this story the "servants" do exactly what Jesus' parable above taught
them not to do:
He took Peter, James and John
along with him...he said to them. "Stay here and keep watch."...Then
he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. "Simon," he
said to Peter, "are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour?
Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is
willing, but the body is weak." Once more he went away...When he came
back, he again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy....Returning
the third time, he said to them, "Are you still sleeping and resting?
Enough! The hour has come. Look, the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of
sinners. Rise! Let us go! Here comes my betrayer!" (Mark 14:32-41) [And
then Jesus is arrested, and his disciples flee.]
In Mark's
sleeping disciples parable above, the disciples are cautioned by Jesus that
while they might intend to serve him well ("the spirit is willing"), their
need for rest ("the body is weak") might tempt (peirasmos)
them to close their heavy eyes and fall asleep. Some commentators read peirasmos as a "test, " or
"trial," but either way Mark 14:38 means the same thing: Jesus is warning the disciples about the
contest between the will of the body to close its eyes, and the will of the
mind to remain awake. Thus, with either
meaning of the word peirasmos, Jesus is telling the disciples to pray
that they do not fail the body's test and close their eyes--in other words,
succumb to the temptation (or, fail the body's test) and close their eyes.
In the sleeping disciples parable,
Mark has the disciples do exactly what Jesus in his sleeping-servants parable
admonished against: Servants must not
sleep while the master is away, and be caught sleeping when he returns. Thus, just as Mark had Jesus tell a parable
that would serve as a warning to his audience, the disciples, Mark then tells
his own parable, which is also apparently intended to serve as a warning
to his audience--the people of Jerusalem.
The implied warning from Mark
seems to be this: You saw how the foolish servants (disciples) fell asleep,
even after just having listened to Jesus' sleeping servants parable, and the
result was that their master (Jesus) was lost to the arresting crowd. If you, likewise, are so foolish as to fail
to be watchful, and close your eyes to the truth while Jesus is away [already
forty years now], the kingdom of heaven will be lost to you, too. This, for the most part, is the message Mark
wanted to convey with the sleeping servants and sleeping disciples pericopes.
Another
Interpretation
Jeffrey Gibson, in a preprint of
his conference paper, "Mark
14:38 as a Key to the Markan Audience," 2 submitted to his Kata Markon 3
discussion forum, attaches to Mark's sleeping disciples passage a hidden
meaning that its author did not intend.
A few excerpts from his paper are reproduced below:
"At Mk. 14:38 Mark presents Jesus commanding Peter,
James and John to petition God to be kept from 'entering into' a phenomenon
denoted by the term [peirasmos]...What, in Mark's eyes, is the object of
this petition? What is it that according to Mark these three disciples are to
pray for?...I seek to argue here [that] Mark presents Jesus as urging the
disciples to ask for in praying...to avoid their perpetrating a
"testing of faithfulness..."
"Now if, according to Mark, securing divine aid to
avoid putting God to the test is the theme of Jesus' own Gethsemane prayer, it
is reasonable to conclude that it is also the theme of the prayer that Jesus
urges Peter, James, and John to pray."
Thus, Gibson is asserting that
Jesus is not asking the disciples to pray that they're not tempted to
close their eyes while he is away, but to pray that they don't tempt, or test,
God's faithfulness.
Rebutting Gibson's Interpretation
Below are four main objections I
have to Gibson's argument that Mark was having Jesus ask the disciples to pray
that they not tempt or test God's faithfulness.
1. A Prayer to Avoid Testing God Breaks
Continuity
One reason to cast aside Gibson's thesis is that Jesus' request for
prayer is sandwiched inside references to the disciples' physical inability to
remain awake. The first interpretation
of the prayer request fits perfectly into the context, while the second stands
in sharp contrast with its surroundings, and clearly does not belong. This point is illustrated in the following
outline:
Physical endurance: Jesus finds the disciples asleep:
"Could you not stay awake?"
Jesus asks disciples to pray
a. that they not
succumb to body's need for sleep ?
or
b. that they
don't test God's faithfulness ?
Physical endurance: Jesus explains, "the body is
weak."
Physical endurance: Disciples were
again found sleeping because "their eyelids were heavy."
Before the prayer request, there
is a reference to the body's physical limitations (the disciples were unable to
stay awake), and just after the request Jesus reminds the disciples that the
"body is weak," and when Jesus returns to find them again asleep, he
makes another reference to the physical when he refers to "heavy
eyelids." It seems obvious that
this passage deals with the physical limits of the body before, during, and
after the prayer request, and that is why one must choose (a), not (b).
Any other meaning for the prayer
request besides a prayer for physical strength breaks the natural continuity of
the passage, and goes completely against common sense. Why would Jesus completely and so abruptly
change the subject from physical endurance to ask the disciples to pray that
they not test God, and then immediately return to the topic of physical
endurance? It doesn't make sense.
2. Why Didn't Jesus Ask Them to Pray Before He
Found Them Asleep?
Now, common sense presents another
problem with Gibson's interpretation:
If Jesus wanted his disciples to pray that they don't test God, rather
than pray for strength not to fall asleep, then why did Jesus wait to ask them
to do this until after he found them sleeping? Common sense tells us that the trigger for the prayer request was
the fact that the disciples were found sleeping, so we should assume that the
prayer would have to do with the fact that the disciples could not keep their
eyes open. There is no room to believe
that after admonishing them for being asleep, Jesus wanted them to pray that
they do not test God.
Perhaps if Jesus had overhead the
disciples discussing how they might test God's faithfulness, then it would have
been appropriate for Jesus to ask them to pray that they never do this again,
but that is not what happened. Jesus
found them asleep, even after he had warned them in the parable that this was
something they should not do while waiting for the master (Jesus) to return,
and that is why he asked them to pray that they not to that again.
Jesus request for prayer is part
of Mark's larger request to his audience that they not fall asleep spiritually
while waiting for Jesus' return. Few things in the Bible seem clearer than
this, but Gibson does not agree.
3. Jesus' Prayer Was Not About Testing God
Gibson, in the second excerpt
above from his paper, offers Jesus' private lamenting prayer at Gethsemane as
support for his thesis. If it's true,
Gibson says, that Jesus was asking in his prayer for help avoiding testing God,
then why shouldn't we conclude that was what he wanted his disciples to do,
too? Well, in my opinion, it is not
true that Jesus lamenting prayer was a call for divine aid to avoid having to
test God. I explained why I believe
this in a post to the Kata Markon discussion forum on October 15, 2002. That post is found in Appendix A. A relevant excerpt is below:
Just as David expresses the hope
following his betrayal that he will prevail, but recognizes it's the Lord's
decision to make ("whatever seems good to [God]"), then so
does Jesus express the hope following
his betrayal that his agony will be relieved, but accepts that it is "not
my will, but yours [whatever God wants]."
All that Mark is doing here is
what he has done throughout his gospel stories: He is trying to show the reader that many of the heroic events in
the lives of the divine figures of the Old Testament are being reenacted in the
life of Jesus.
Thus, Mark was having Jesus
emulate David's agony and private prayer in order that Mark's audience would
imagine that David and his life was the divine prefigurement of Jesus and his
life, and that Jesus was therefore the messiah. The gospels are full of stories which make Jesus seem as if he is
the fulfillment of of divine prophecy or prefigurement.5
4. Mark Could Not Have Had Psalm in Mind
Immediately
following Jesus' request that the disciples pray that they not test
God--according to Gibson, Jesus then reminds his disciples that "the body
is weak." What does a "weak
body" have to do with testing God's faithfulness? It just doesn't make sense. If the phrase, "the body is weak,"
does not clearly refer to the physical problem of sleepy disciples keeping
their eyes open, and thus being tempted to close them, then what else could it
mean?
Gibson's
explanation of the connection between the weak body and testing God is based on
something he thinks he sees in Psalm 78:
In Psalm 78:37-41 the words pneuma (spirit), sarx
(flesh), asthenes (weakness),and
perasmon (tempt) appear, and these four words also appear in Mark's
sleeping disciples parable. Gibson
infers from this connection that Mark must have expected his readers to be
reminded of this Psalm when they thought about his sleeping disciples story. Thus, according to Gibson, since that Psalm
is about testing God, he concludes that Mark 14:38 is about testing God, too,
otherwise, why would Mark have wanted them to think about the Psalm?
Aside
from the fact that Gibson's argument is circular, there is a very good reason
to disbelieve that Mark had Psalm 78 in mind when he wrote his sleeping
disciples story. In the verses below,
the author is noting that the Lord does not bother to kill the faithless
because they are mortal, so they will die anyway.
Yet he...did not destroy them...he
restrained his anger [for] He
remembered that they were but flesh (sarx), a passing breeze that does
not return. (Psalm 78:38-39)
The Psalm reference to sarx
is about transience and mortality.
Thus, if we are to accept Gibson's claim that Mark wanted his audience
to think of this verse when they read Mark 14:38, then we will have to believe
that Jesus' prayer request was followed by a reminder to his disciples that
they were not immortal:
"Pray that you don't test
God. Remember, you are not immortal."
?
What kind of sense does that make?
Does it not make much more sense to believe that Mark merely was having Jesus
explain to his disciples that they needed God's help to gain the strength
needed to remain awake, because the body (sarx) was weak in a physical
sense, and not because their body would not last forever?
Conclusions
We should claim no more than that Mark
was having Jesus tell his disciples to pray that they not succumb to the
temptation to close their eyes, lest they be sleeping when the son of God
returns--in this instance, returning from praying to God. Mark explains parabolically to his audience
that they face the same danger as faced by the disciples: Perhaps they might lose patience while
waiting for Jesus' return and let their eyes be closed in a spiritual sense,
too, just like the foolish disciples, and thereby lose sight of God and his
kingdom.
In Mark 14:38, Mark has Jesus say
that the disciples' willpower is not enough to keep their eyes open, ("the
spirit is willing"), but the
fact that their bodies are weak means
they might succumb to the temptation (peirasmos) to close their eyes,
and that this is a parabolic teaching to Mark's audience that they must not
fall asleep spiritually while waiting for Jesus to return.
Gibson's suggestion that Jesus
wanted his disciples to pray that they not test God's faithfulness just doesn't
fit into the context of the pericope. Furthermore, if Mark really wanted
his readers to understand that Jesus didn't want his disciples to test God,
then he would have written this passage in a way which would readily be
understood by his readers. Why would
Mark write in a manner so indirect--if we can believe Gibson--that we would
have to wait two thousand years for his "true" intentions be made
clear to us?
I would think that if Mark wanted
us to know that he was having Jesus warn his disciples against putting God to
the test, he easily could have had Jesus speak plainly about testing God. There's ample evidence that gospel-writers
of that age knew how to do this.
Consider, for example, Luke's Peter in Acts 15:10, who said, "Now
therefore why tempt ye God (nun oun tis peirazo theos)...?" Luke knew how to speak directly about
tempting God. Why would Mark not also
know how? If Mark really did wish for
his audience to know that Jesus wanted his disciples to pray that they not
tempt God, rather than pray not to let their eyes be closed, would he not have
known that generations of readers would not be able to figure that out from
what he wrote?
A Kata Markon forum member
responded in some detail to questions regarding the translation of Mark 14:38
and the meaning of peirasmos.
(See Appendix C.)
1. Jeffrey B. Gibson,
D.Phil. (Oxon.), DePaul University; Lecturer in Humanities at Wright College/
Roosevelt University/Columbia College, and Lecturer in New Testament Institute
for Pastoral Studies at Loyola University, Chicago. Curriculum vitae:
2. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/crosstalk2/files/MK1438F.htm
Note #1 added Monday, October 21,
2002, 9:00 am California time: Gibson's
paper seems no longer to be available.
Note #2 added Monday, October 21, 2002, 9:45 am California time: Gibson reports to Kata Markon, "
I added some material to it. It is now at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/crosstalk2/files/MK1438F%28
newHTM%29.htm."
Note #3 added Thursday, October
24, 2002: Gibson reports that he has
converted his paper to PDF. It is now
at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/crosstalk2/files/MK1438F%2528forPDF%2529.pdf
3. http://www.ibiblio.org/GMark/
4. Gibson's use of Psalm 78 to
support his "testing God" thesis:
Third, that the disciples are on the
verge of "testing God" is the specific import of the saying that Mark
has Jesus utter immediately after Jesus urges them to "keep awake",
"watch", and pray MH ELQHTE EIS PEIRASMON, namely, the saying that
the "the Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" (TO MEN PNEUMA
PROQUMONH DE SARC ASQENHS, Mk. 14:39). It should be noted that in its
conjunction of the terms "flesh" (SARC), "spirit" (PNEUMA)
and "testing" (PEIRASMOS) not only with each other but with the theme
of the "weakness" (ASQENHS) of those purportedly dedicated to God,
the saying is an allusion to Ps. 78 (LXX) -- especially vv. 39-41 where the
same terms appear (in reverse order) in conjunction with the theme of the
weakness and the disobedience of nominal Israel. Now this Psalm not only recites the dark
events during and after Israel's wilderness wanderings when Israel doubted the
efficacy of God's ways to deliver them from "the foe" (cf. vv. 17-31
[compare Exod. 16-17]; 26-32 [compare Num. 11:31-35]; 56-66). It defines
itself, and was intent [sic] to be used as, as a warning to "coming
generations" within Israel not to repeat the mistakes of their ancestors
who "did not keep in mind [God's] power or the day when he redeemed them
from the foe"(v. 42) and thereby "put God to the test" (cf. vv. 18;
41; 56). Given this, the question arises: Why would Mark have Jesus allude to
this Psalm unless those to whom the allusion is addressed are in need of
hearing what the Psalm has to say?
5. A full discussion of these manufactured "fulfillments"
is found in articles on the web site, "A Skeptical View of Christianity and the
Bible."
Appendix A
This email exchange below is in large part identical to the post I sent to Kata
Markon on October 15, 2002, with some changes.
JEFFREY GIBSON
"…how else should Jesus'
anguished words ending with '[but] not my will but yours', be interpreted
except as a prayer for divine aid to avoid putting God to the test?"
JOE ALWARD
I don't see the need to make this
passage that complicated, or meaningful.
I think you may be attaching an undeserved sophistication to the Markan
author, as well as a depth of meaning to the passage that is not there, in my
opinion. I don't see why this pericope
has to have anything whatever to do with testing God. I believe the simpler explanation for "not my will but
yours" is that the author was just having Jesus imitate David's lament.
As I have suggested more than once
in this forum, there is ample evidence that some of the stories about Jesus in
the Markan gospel are an examples of the type of aemulatio (emulation)
that Dennis MacDonald described so well in his book, The Homeric Epics and
the Gospel of Mark, (Yale University Press, 2000). While MacDonald suggests that Mark had Jesus
emulate Odysseus, I see a much clearer connection to the Old Testament
heroes, Elisha, Elijah, Moses, David, and Yahweh. For example, Mark seems to have adapted the fishes and loaves
story from Elisha's multiplication of the loaves, but made Jesus better. He likewise had Jesus intend to pass by the
boat, in emulation of the Lord's passing by Moses. There are other examples, but the one which is relevant to your
Gethsemane analysis is David's lament after having been betrayed by his counselor:
Then the king said…"If I find
favor in the LORD's eyes, he will bring me back and let me see...his dwelling
place again. But if he says, `I am not pleased with you,' then I am ready; let
him do to me whatever seems good to him." (2 Samuel 15:25-26)
Just as David expresses the hope
following his betrayal that he will prevail, but recognizes it's the Lord's
decision to make ("whatever seems good to [God]"), then so
does Jesus express the hope following his
betrayal that his agony will be relieved, but accepts that it is "not
my will, but yours [whatever God wants]."
All that Mark is doing here is
what he had done throughout his gospel stories: He is trying to show the reader that many of the heroic events in
the lives of the divine figures of the Old Testament are being reenacted in the
life of Jesus. Mark created these
fictional stories--or, at least they were created in the oral tradition from
which Mark derived the tales--in order to give the impression that this
"Jesus" person must be the son of God. How else could one explain why all of these divine-like things
happen to him?
Thus, in my opinion, Jesus'
lamenting prayer has nothing whatever to do with a request for divine aid to
avoid putting God to the test, as Gibson has asserted. Instead, it is just one more item in a long
list of items in the life of Jesus manufactured by Mark to convince his
audience that Jesus was the son of God.
Readers who are interested in seeing the evidence to back up my claims
will find it in the articles on the web site shown below.
I am aware of your views on
"parallelmania," and agree that the practice of seeking parallels can
be carried too far, but in this case I think the parallels between David's
lament and Jesus' agony at Gethsemane are too strong to dismiss. If you wish to see a stronger case for
Mark's emulation of David in this case, you will find it in the article, "David and
Jesus."
Appendix B
The following is a post I sent to
the Kata Markon forum on October 21, 2002:
I present in this post a condensed
version of my argument against Gibson's interpretation of Mark 14:38. Readers will find the complete argument at http://sol.sci.uop.edu/~jfalward/Sleeping_Disciples.htm
In Mark 13:32-37, Jesus tells the
story of the type of failure servants must not be guilty of: closing their eyes while the master is
away. There is not the slightest hint
in this parable that Mark wanted the readers to think of the servants' failure
in terms of their testing God. No one
will deny that the second parable at Mark 32-42 was meant by Mark to read in
light of the first parable, so since there is zero reference to testing God,
how could Mark ever have expected his readers to impute that meaning to Mark
14:38, as Gibson thinks they should have?
Did he expect his audience to undertake the comprehensive rumination,
and extensive and deep probing of the Greek, while reading between the lines,
that Jeffrey Gibson has done? Of course
not. Mark would have wanted them to see
and accept the direct, surface meaning of the words he had Jesus speak. Why make it hard on his audience?
The message in the sleeping
servants parable is very simple: Keep
awake while the master is away. Since
this parable is obviously the antecedent to the parable Mark tells of the
sleeping disciples, the absence of any reference to testing God is strong
evidence against Gibson's interpretation.
The message in Mark's sleeping
disciples parable in Chapter 14 is exactly the same as the message in the
sleeping servants parable in Chapter 13, and just as simple, just as direct.
In constructing his parable, Mark
was mindful that Jesus was already about seventy years late in keeping his
promise to return with the angels and the trumpets in the heavens. People were starting to wonder whether Jesus
was ever coming back, and were losing their faith. Naturally, Mark would have wanted to warn them not let their eyes
be closed to the message of God, and to be patient and continue to wait for
Jesus' return, and not be tempted to abandon their faith (close their
eyes).
To present this warning to his audience,
Mark told them a story about the disciples doing exactly the thing that Jesus
warned against in his sleeping servants parable: closing their eyes while Jesus was away, because the temptation
to do so was so great. The message
would not be lost on the audience: they
should keep their eyes open, waiting for Jesus to return, even though they may
be tempted to abandon him. This interpretation is so simple, so sensible, so
direct, that it is very hard to understand how anyone could think that it is more
complicated than this, no matter what they think they see in the underlying
Greek.
What I believe Gibson and others
have done is to construct a very convoluted
"how-it-can-be-much-more-complicated-than-people-think" scenario
based largely on a possible interpretation of a single Greek word. They see things that have not been seen even
by the greatest scholars of our time, and was beyond the understanding of all
of those translators that Sid Martin mentioned. To accept their "testing
God" interpretation, one is forced to abandon the far more natural and
sensible one, and to ignore completely the fact that the antecedent parable has
nothing whatever to do with testing.
Basically, these folks are blinding themselves to the obvious simplicity
of Mark's message, seeing things with their hearts--not their minds--in the
manner of the "Bible code" people, who need the Bible to contain
messages hidden to everyone but them.
Now, we know what Larry Swain
thinks about this simpler interpretation; he rejects it, evidently, as does
Gibson. Now, Gibson's other supporter
on this issue in this forum (the only other one I know about), Mark Goodacre,
has yet to present his views, at least not since I first offered my observations
to the forum, so let me ask Mark this:
Do you believe with Gibson that 14:38 is NOT a request by Jesus that his
disciples pray that they do not fall asleep--essentially pray that they do not
lose the contest being body and mind?
Do you instead believe with Gibson that 14:38 is a request by Jesus that
they pray that they do not test God? If
the latter, what do you do with Jesus' reference to the body being weak, and
how do you explain the fact that the antecedent parallel seems to have nothing
to do with testing God, and only to do with staying awake--showing
patience--while the master is away?
......................................................................................................................................................
Appendix C
Sid Martin, an attorney from
Tulsa, Oklahoma, who has a "longstanding interest in Christian origins and
the Gospel of Mark," responded to Gibson's challenge to me to explain why
I believe that "tempt," or "temptation" is an appropriate
translation of "peirasmos" in Mark 14:38. Gibson, in two posts on October 19, wrote:
I wonder if you could back up your
claim that PEIRASMOS means "temptation" and not "a test/
trial"? (Kata Markon, October 19, 2002)
To aid Joe in the question I asked
him about showing me evidence that PEIRASMOS ever meant "temptation",
I decided to reproduce the data which needs to be examined if some resolution
of the question is to be attained, i.e., a listing of all the instances of the
use of PEIRASMOS before the middle of the second century CE. (Kata Markon, October 19, 2002)
In response, Martin wrote,
Forgive me for being a little
confused but doesn't "temptation" simply mean "testing" or
"trying" in a moral sense? A person's character is "tested"
or "tried" when one is faced with a choice between what is morally
right and what is personally appealing. One is "tempted" to do what
is easier or more profitable or more sensually satisfying. One passes the
"test" or "trial" when one refuses to give into "temptation,"
i.e., to fail the test by choosing the lesser good or the greater evil. Without
the "temptation" there is no "test" so that in reality they
are the same thing. Just as ore may be assayed to see if it has the chemical
composition of gold, so too a person may be tested by temptation to see if he
has the "right stuff." One can also be tempted in a prudential sense
by choosing immediate gratification over a person's greater interests; breaking
one's diet is a good example.
In the context of Mark 14:38, the sense is clearly that the disciples are to
watch and pray and not give in to the temptation to sleep - the easier, more
satisfying course of conduct - rather than pass the fatigue test and stay
awake. Note God's Word, "Stay awake, and pray that you won't be tempted."
Many a soldier ordered to stand guard late at night has known what it is to say
that the soldier's spirit is willing to do his duty but the long day's march
has made his exhausted flesh too weak to watch. Indeed, Mark is very likely
alluding to this military model. Falling asleep at one's post would, I am sure,
be an instant death sentence in the Roman army.
Perhaps it would be helpful if Jeffrey would share with us his concern that
PEIRASMOS be rendered "trial" or "test" rather than
"temptation" which, to my mind, is at best a distinction without a
difference, especially where the context suggests that the test or trial of one
of moral character, i.e., temptation. Jeffrey rests his case on the LXX nisah
= a "test", a "trial." Brown-Driver-Briggs (based on
Gesenius) has as the third definition "test, try prove, tempt [but not in
modern sense of the word]." Does anyone know what the "modern sense
of the word" is, other than a test of character?
If Joe is mistaken in his translation, it is a mistake that the majority of
translators make. See KJV, RSV, NKJV, NIV, NASB, NLT, ESV, KJ21, ASV, TEV, NCV,
CEV, as well as Young, Phillips, Darby, Webster, Green, Wesley, Weymouth. This
was Jeromes's translation, "in temptationem," and following the
Vulgate, Douay-Rheims and Knox. Cognates of temptation are found in French,
"tentation" (Segond, Jerusalem), Italian, "tentazione"
(CEI, LND, IBS), Spanish, "tentacion" (RVR1960, NVI, RVR1995, DHH,
RVA, LBLA, CST-IBS), and Portugues, "tentacao" (NVI, IBS, PORAA).
Luther chose "Versuchung" as did his revisers (1912, 1975, 1984) and
successors (Elberfelder). The Staatenvertaling, "verzoeking," and the
IBS
"verleiding" are equivalent. Scandanavian versions are all of the
"frestar/frestele" variety (SVL, SV1917, DN1933, DNB1930, Nor-IBS),
while Russian has "iskushyeniye" (Russv, IBS). In all of these
languages, the terms used have the sense of resisting temptation, i.e., passing
a test of moral character.
The use of "test" or "trial" to render PEIRASMOS is
decidedly out of the ordinary, if not idiosyncratic. The only prominent English
translation to do so is NRSV which has "time of trial", although
there is nothing about "time" in the Greek. Such usage may reflect a
desire to simplify the language to the point of being rather overly colloquial,
as in the Basic English "not be put to the test," Contemporary
English "won't be tested," Worldwide English "will not do
wrong," and Biblia en Lenguaje Sencillo's "la prueba." Notable
is the IBS's Hoffnung fuer Alle which has "damit ihr die kommenden Tage
ueberstehen koennt." This reflects a view that the temptation/test/trial
is yet to come, rather than being present in the natural urge to sleep. Such
may foreshadow a future peirasmos, but the main sense is more immediate.
Martin is the author of the articles,
"Withdrawal
to the Dead Sea", and "Mysteries
of the Kingdom."