Warren Carter (in Horsley, ed., In the Shadow of Empire ) writes, “Not only is the imperial world violent and exploitative, under rulers opposed to and condemned by God, but the Empire is also under the power of the devil and caught up in the continuing struggle between the devil and God.”
His proof is that in Matthew’s account of the temptation, Satan claims that “all empires [ basileias ] of the world” belong to him. His evidence for this translation of basileia is that the word “commonly refers to the great empires such as those of Babylon, Alexander the Great, and Rome (Dan. 2:37-45; 1 Macc. 1:16; Josephus, War 5.409).”
True, and interesting.
Empires might be in view in the temptation, and Satan may well be offering Jesus, the “Son of Man,” the kingdoms that He stands to inherit (Daniel 7). But the word basileia has a wider use, referring not only to empires but to kingdoms in general (see the LXX of Genesis 14:1; Numbers 24:7; Deuteronomy 3:4, 10; Joshua 13:12, 21, 27, 30-31). Possibly, these references might be take as quasi-imperial – Sihon and Og ruled “kingdoms” because they had conquered weaker kings around them. Basileus is used for Nebuchadnezzar, but also for each of the kings in Genesis 14, who, if they were conquerors at all were conquerors on a much smaller scale.
Carter’s problem, though, is more a matter of time. Carter’s comments are fairly strongly tied to the context: He is talking about the “Roman Empire” not about “Empire.” But, even if Carter is on the right track about Matthew 4, that still raises the question, Did Satan always possess all the empires of the earth? And will he always do so?
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