Is Jesus’ temptation the reliving of Adam and Eve’s experience in Eden? (Jesus is then cast as the Second Adam, only this time perfectly obedient, and thereby the pioneer of a new Adamic line.) Or, which is more probable, is Jesus’ temptation by Satan the reliving of Israel’s wilderness testings? (Jesus is then recast as the second Moses leading his people to a new Promised Land.) In either case, Matthew casts the story of Jesus’ temptations as an updated version, a wiki-story, of an older story—either the Eden story or the wilderness story.
