In my December 2 post "Was baptism an ordeal," I mention Jesus' "David Blaine-like 40-day fast" just after his baptism.
A few days later, on December 5, I followed a Synlogos link to the Didactic Mind post "It's not a mystery at all," which linked to a video by one David Wood called "Muslim Scholar Warns about 'Avalanche' of Apostasy." For some reason, I clicked on the link, didn't watch the video, but did scroll down in the comments a bit, and found this: "I appreciate how David is casually open about the fact he is a psychopath and his history but has been healed and exalted through Christ!"
That piqued my interest enough to go to David Wood's main YouTube page and watch the featured video "Why I Am a Christian."
It is, as advertised, a psychopath's story of coming to Christ. Wood casually and unemotionally tells the story of how he attempted to murder his own father with a ball-peen hammer just for the hell of it, and of how he eventually became a Christian after realizing that his narcissism was philosophically incompatible with nihilism (because if nothing mattered at all, then neither did he himself). I take it all with a grain of salt (it is, after all, a tale told by a psychopath), but it's a compelling story.
Before his conversion, Wood had a Christian cellmate who used to fast, and Wood always tried to one-up him by fasting just a bit longer. Finally his cellmate goes for a 40-day water-only fast (because Jesus fasted for that long), and Wood decides to do 42 days. It is at this point that the prison authorities intervene, thinking he is attempting suicide by self-starvation, put him in solitary confinement, and force-feed him.
So the sync fairies are drawing my attention to the idea of a 40-day fast, and how it tests the limits of what the human body can endure. (Wood says something like, "Here I was trying to be like Jesus, and they thought I was trying to commit suicide!")
The general rule is that a person can live for three minutes without air, three days without water, and three weeks without food. Fasts longer than that are certainly possible -- David Blaine famously survived for 44 days on nothing but water -- but they clearly belong to the category "death-defying stunt."
⁂
When Moses was receiving the Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai, "he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water" (Ex. 34:28; see also Deut. 9:9). After seeing the Golden Calf and breaking the stone tables, he did it again: "I fell down before the Lord, as at the first, forty days and forty nights: I did neither eat bread, nor drink water, because of all your sins" (Deut. 9:18). It is not clear whether he ate or drank anything between the first 40 days and the second, so it may well have been a continuous 80-day fast. Either way, Moses' surviving this fast or fasts was strictly miraculous; not even David Blaine can go 40 days without water.
Long after Moses, Elijah would duplicate this feat: An angel having provided "a cake baken on the coals, and a cruse of water" (1 Kgs. 19:6), Elijah "did eat and drink, and went in the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights unto Horeb the mount of God" (19:8).
As for Jesus, all three synoptic Gospels mention a 40-day period of temptation in the wilderness just after his baptism, but only Matthew and Luke tell us that Jesus fasted. Matthew says, "And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred" (Matt. 4:2). Luke says, "And in those days he did eat nothing: and when they were ended, he afterward hungered" (Luke 4:2). Both accounts focus on food and hunger and say nothing about water, so it is possible that Jesus' fast was (just barely) humanly possible, a water-only fast like David Blaine's. Given the obvious parallels to Moses and Elijah, though, it seems more likely that it was a total fast, without even water, and that Jesus' surviving the ordeal was miraculous.
That Jesus should have done something miraculous is scarcely surprising, but the 40-day fast is made puzzling by the immediate context of his temptation in the wilderness. Here is one of the ways in which the devil tempted him.
Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, and saith unto him, "If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, 'He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.'"
Jesus said unto him, "It is written again, 'Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God'" (Matt 4:5-7; cf. Luke 4:9-12).
The essence of this temptation seems to be to do something which would, in the ordinary course of nature, be suicidal, trusting God to intervene with a miracle and save you. And while God may well be willing to intervene with miracles to save your life, it would be a sin to "test" God by deliberately and artificially creating a life-threatening situation from which to be saved.
But isn't that just what Jesus did by choosing to go out in the desert and eat (and possibly drink) nothing for 40 days? Isn't that every bit as suicidal as jumping off the top of the Temple, and doesn't it "tempt God" in the same way? Why was the 40-day fast more acceptable to God than the proposed Temple jump?
One difference, I suppose, is that the Temple is in a public place. If Jesus had jumped off the Temple and been saved by angels, this would have been a public demonstration, "proving" to the people that he was the Son of God. Jesus was generally very careful not to give this kind of public demonstration, working miracles in private and often specifically instructing people not to spread the word. This may be why he chose to conduct his 40-day fast out in the wilderness; he would later tell those that fast to make an effort to "appear not unto men to fast" (Matt. 6:18), which would scarcely have been possible in the case of an extreme fast such as this one. No amount of "anointing thy head and washing thy face" (Matt. 6:17) could have covered up the fact that he was on the point of dying of starvation.
One other possibility is that Jesus never fasted for 40 days at all. Mark, on which Matthew and Luke are dependent, says only that he was tempted in the wilderness for 40 days and says nothing about a fast. We learn elsewhere in the Gospels that Jesus and his disciples were specifically noted for not fasting (Mark 2:18, Matt. 9:14). When compared with John the Baptist, who did fast, Jesus came across as "a man gluttonous, and a winebibber" (Matt. 11:19, Luke 7:34). Aside from the temptation story, the only other indication in the Gospels that Jesus ever fasted is when he casts out a devil which his disciples could not cast out and then explains that "this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting" (Matt. 17:21).
The first temptation in the wilderness was for the hungry Jesus to turn stones into bread. Combining this with the fact that he was in the wilderness for 40 days, and that both Moses and Elijah had fasted for 40 days, Matthew and Luke may have jumped to the conclusion that Jesus had done the same.
4 comments:
@Wm - From the Fourth Gospel understanding of Jesus, it seems unlikely that the Forty Days (plus or minus fasting) actually happened; since it was not the kind of thing the IV Gospel Jesus would do - it would serve no useful purpose, but instead would tend to confuse and distract from the core message of resurrection.
Which indeed it has-done and does.
I think this is a big problem for the 'legendary Jesus' depicted in the Synoptics - that whole structure of the miraculous life which is most evident in Matthew and Luke.
In principle, there is nothing necessarily wrong with such a figure - and of course the Synoptic Jesus has been dominant through the whole history of Christian Churches.
But Now - when church Christianity has so spectacularly failed as to switch sides and become anti-Christ - it seems very clear that the core message of Christianity has been drowned and lost by the vast and complex superstructure applied by the Synoptics, Epistles and Revelation - and by usurpation of authority by churches.
The Synoptic (or Matthew/Luke) distortion may well have been a net-Good through much of the history of Christianity - since it made Christianity a communal, cohesive, large-scale religion with worldly power - but to continue to accord any church primary spiritual authority Now is lethal to salvation.
And I think much the same applies to the Synoptic Jesus. He has 'ruled' for nearly 2000 years; but now it is surely time that the real, Fourth Gospel, Jesus came to the fore?
Not so long ago, I once did a 40 day water-only fast (for health reasons not religious reasons), and "death-defying stunt" as you call it is highly exaggerated! In the first 3 days I was hungry but then I was not even hungry during the first 4 weeks. However, I did load up on vitamins and mineral supplements before I started, and also did almost no physical activity during my fast.
@Bruce
I'm generally skeptical of Synoptic (especially Matthew) stories that seem to have been constructed to fulfill OT prophecies or to duplicate or one-up the deeds of OT prophets, so Jesus' fasting for 40 days (like Moses and Elijah) is suspect. It's even more suspect when one realizes how conveniently it answers answers what was apparently a common criticism of Jesus. He was criticized for not being from Bethlehem, so Matthew and Luke give us two completely different stories about how Jesus of Nazareth actually was from Bethlehem. He was criticized for not fasting like a proper "holy man," so Matthew and Luke tell us that he was actually a super-faster like Moses and Elijah, only he did it in secret before beginning his public ministry.
Although I doubt some of the details, I suspect the "temptation in the wilderness" story does come from something Jesus told his disciples, perhaps as a parable rather than an account of a literal experience of his. I don't think the temptations are very plausible if taken literally -- why would any of them be seriously tempting to someone like Jesus? -- but may have been used (either by Jesus or by his disciples) to express something symbolically.
@Illuminatus
What health benefits were you trying for, and were you successful? People have died of hunger strikes considerably shorter than 40 days, so I think it is a death-defying stunt whether you feel hungry or not.
It's known that a human requires an intake of about 0.8 g of protein per kg of bodyweight per day to maintain protein equilibrium, and because muscle is 70% water, this suggests that a person would lose only about 2.7 g of muscle mass per kg of bodyweight per day of fasting. But this assumes a person has enough fat reserves. When the fat reserves are completely depleted then protein catabolism increases enormously. So when a person is already underweight, then I suppose that even a short water-only fast would quickly be lethal. But as long as one has enough fat, even very prolonged fasts are extremely safe (warning: expletives). On the internet, 40-day water-only fasts appear to be popular among many ordinary people, so it's hardly a world record type of event. Most people probably primarily do it for weight loss.
In my case, it was not for weight loss, but because I had severe and chronic IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome: severe intestinal bloating, and constipation alternating with diarrhea), caused by SIBO (small-intestinal bacterial overgrowth). I had tried countless different kinds of treatments. One type of treatment is various kinds of dietary restrictions a.k.a. "elimination diets", which help with food allergies/intolerances. Another kind of treatment for IBS/SIBO, which is considered to be one of the most effective, is an "elemental diet". This is a medical diet product which is already fully "predigested" into elemental nutrients, such as amino acids or peptides, vitamins, and minerals. Because of this an elemental diet does not require human digestion and can be rapidly absorbed in the duodenum, and does not reach the rest of the small intestine. As a result, an elemental diet literally "starves to death" the excess intestinal bacteria. I also tried treatment with such an elemental diet, but in my case even an elemental diet did not work at all. So as a last resort and out of desperation, I tried the ultimate elimination diet and ultimate elemental diet, which was to eat nothing at all.
Unfortunately, even the 40-day water-only fast did not cure me. Even after 40 days my intestines were still bloated, I could hardly understand it. However, it was helpful in the sense that it and was a very educational, because it narrowed down the cause of my problems. For example, I learned that the problem is certainly not caused by food allergies/intolerances. I also learned that the problem was caused not primarily in my small intestine, but primarily in my large intestine: I have disturbed/absent motility of my colon, and also have "ileo-cecal reflux": during the fast, the contents of my large intestine was not being excreted at all, but instead was sloshing backwards into my small intestine and causing autoimmune symptoms. The root cause is due to peripheral neuropathy in my colon and ileo-cecal valve, which was caused by a prolonged and painful Clostridium Difficile overgrowth in my colon, combined with multiple confirmed nutritional deficiencies including B12. So since then I focused on treating myself daily with non-osmotic colonic laxatives (senna, an very effective herbal colonic prokinetic), and for the long term I am trying to cure my peripheral neuropathy with ultra-high dose supplements.
Post a Comment