22 Alexander C. Loney dialogue are sparse, consisting of only essential elements of the narrative. Thus already the principle of prominence is displayed in just what events and dialogue have been selected to be recorded, since an episode that occurs for over 40 days, with the intimacy of Jesus alone in the wilderness or in personal dialogue with one other person, and which spans settings high and low, in the wild and in the city of Jerusalem, is relatively con- strained in its expression by the mere 15 verses allotted it. Consequently, every item in the text is presupposed to have a high degree of saliency. Still, as a narrative, it does have an internal structure marked by aspect choice, connectives, particles, and adverbial phrases. Beginning from the top down, we see that perfective forms, both as finite verbs and as participles, dominate this passage. In vv. 1-15, if we ignore the verbs within direct speech, which are recorded as though spoken at the internal present moment of speaking and thus not directly relevant to an analysis of the recording past-time events, there are 15 finite perfective forms, five aorist participles, two finite imperfects, and two imperfective participles. Secondly, we see that the passage has a chiastic structure60. It begins (1) and ends (14) with Jesus turning from one place and moving into another with the Holy Spirit. As discussed in greater length above, these “brackets” of verbs of motion are the leading part of a cadential formula. In the next layer of the episode’s chiastic structure, there are general statements about the devil’s temptation (v. 2: “being tested for forty days by the devil” and v. 13: “having finished every temptation, the devil left him…”). The innermost layer consists of three temptations by the devil, each refuted by Jesus with a reference to a narrow section of the Pentateuch (Deut 6,13 – 8,3), and with the final temptation highlighted against the first two by its introduction with the discontinuous particle δ , where the first two were joined with the more continuous, unmarked particle κα . The dominance of the perfective forms, particularly in vv. 2b-14, indicates that the passage is concerned with the transcription of events as facts. This formal perfective predominance, taken along with the lack of imperfective forms, indicates that Luke had little need to demarcate a background category, either because Luke chose to record few events that would ipso facto be characterized as background or because he willfully chose to record most events, irrespective of their nature, as foreground. Regardless of the grounds for Luke’s application of a dominant foreground level of discourse, this section appears to conform to the principles of 60 Chiasmus or inclusio is a well-documented feature of Lukan style, of which these cadential formulas play a part. On inclusio in Luke, see Goulder, Luke, 92.