MATTHEW 4: THE DEVIL

Preachers often resort to the use of etymology (the original meaning of a word) in explaining a biblical passage, but the problem is that word meanings change with time. We can't always use the original meaning of a word as a sure guide to how it was understood and used at a later date. For example, the English word “enthusiasm” meant to be possessed by a god all the way up to about 1800. On the other hand, sometimes an earlier word meaning may have been in the back of the author's mind as he wrote, and so limited use of etymology may on occasion give us a better understanding of nuances in an author's language. 

Look at Jesus' temptation in the wilderness by the devil (diabolos) in Matthew 4. The original meaning of the Greek word was “false accuser or slanderer,” and it is rightly translated that way in the Pastoral Epistles (1 Timothy 3:11, 2 Timothy 3:3, and Titus 2:3). Therefore some scholars appeal to this original meaning and propose that the word in Matthew 4 refers to Christ's inner human nature that he is struggling with. However, the three passages mentioned in the Pastoral Epistles are the only places in the NT where the word appears in the plural and in each case is used to describe members of a congregation. Then there is one passage (John 6:70) where the word appears in the singular but is missing the definite article “the” in front of it, and so that verse may be correctly translated: “Did I not choose you, the twelve? Yet one of you (Judas) is a devil.” All other 34 appearances of the word are in the singular using the phrase “ho diabolos” (the Devil). From basic grammatical considerations, that means that each of these references probably refers to the same entity. Nine of these occasions appear in the story of Christ's temptation.

Working against the assumption that the word applies here to Christ's inner nature are (1) the various action verbs indicating that it refers to an external force, (2) the difficulty in understanding how Christ's inner nature could first “come” to him and then “depart” from him, (3) the theological problem of “the accuser/slanderer” being used as a definition of Christ's human nature, (4) the strange picture of Christ's inner nature asking Christ to bow down and worship it, and (5) the possible logical inference that all other references to the devil in the NT must also refer to Christ's inner nature.

Finally, at the end of Matthew's account of the Temptation (4:10), Jesus calls the devil "Satan." And Mark's parallel account specifically says (1:13) that Christ was tempted by Satan. Of course, The word Satan appears throughout the Bible from the OT to Revelation as the description of an angelic being who was originally part of God's heavenly court. All that seems to fit the definition of the entity we call the Devil or Satan much better than a definition of Christ's inner nature.

If you are going to use etymologies to try to understand the meaning of a word, you really need a resource like The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (or OT equivalent) which will explain how these word meanings changed with time. A CD-ROM version is also available.