Lecture XI

Such is the truth. But what does modern Bible exegesis make of these episodes? It has realised that Christ Jesus cannot have said to Peter at one minute: ‘You alone have recognized that a God is standing before you!’ and have called him ‘Satan’ the next. So some critics conclude that the word ‘Satan’ must have been interpolated at a later time and is therefore a falsification.—The fact of the matter is that the meaning attributed to this by modern philological research makes current opinion on the subject quite worthless. Only on the basis of a fundamental understanding of the Bible is it possible for any authentic statement to be made about the origins of the texts in question.