The Transfiguration of Jesus: A Detailed Exploration of the Multiple Old Testament Layers
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- Jesus as the Psalm 2 Royal Son of God
- The New Testament authors make both subtle and direct claims to Jesus’ divinity, almost exclusively by referencing Israel’s Scriptures. In Psalm 2, one of the most quoted passages from the Hebrew Bible, Yahweh responds to the conspiring, violent nations by installing a king (whom he calls his Son) in Israel. Jesus and the apostles frequently use Psalm 2 language to describe Jesus’ divine identity and unique relationship to God the Father. In this episode, Jon and Tim explore these references in Jesus’ baptism, transfiguration, and resurrection, while also considering how the Son of God shares his royal identity with his followers.
- Psalm 2 in Jesus’ Transfiguration 23:46 – 40:24
- Why Jesus Was Transfigured on Mount Hermon
- For anyone who attempt to read my edited transcript, I apologize. A relative to whom I sent the first link informed me that it didn’t work. I checked and confirmed, and have since corrected problem. The new, current link now works.
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Before asking the question which first motivated me to initiate this thread, I think it is worth noticing just how well attested the Transfiguration is within the New Testament.
It is narrated in all three Synoptic Gospels: Matthew 17:1–9, Mark 9:2–10, and Luke 9:28–36. All three identify Peter, James, and John as witnesses; all three describe Jesus’ transformed appearance; all three identify the two figures with him as Moses and Elijah; and all three report the voice from the cloud.
Nor does the event disappear after the Gospel narratives. 2 Peter 1:16–18 explicitly appeals to it as eyewitness testimony: “we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty,” and “we ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain.” Whatever questions we may have about the authorship or dating of 2 Peter, the text itself unmistakably treats the Transfiguration as an event witnessed by Peter and the other disciples.
So within the New Testament, the Transfiguration is not an obscure incident resting on a single passing reference. It is narrated in three Gospels and explicitly recalled elsewhere as an eyewitnessed event. The New Testament certainly gives the Resurrection much greater theological importance, but it does not appear to place the Transfiguration in some lesser category of reality.
Which brings me back to the question that first motivated this thread. Whatever we ultimately conclude about the precise nature of their existence, are either Moses or Elijah portrayed at the Transfiguration as dead and unconscious—or “asleep”?
It seems to me that the answer is clearly no. They appear as identifiable persons, they are conscious, and they converse with Jesus. Luke is particularly explicit: Moses and Elijah “appeared in glory” and were speaking with Jesus about his exodos, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem (Luke 9:30–31).
That does not yet tell us what kind of existence Moses and Elijah had, nor does it establish that they possessed resurrected bodies. But whatever else the Transfiguration may tell us about them, the New Testament does not portray either man on the mountain as unconscious or asleep.
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- At And behold! Two Men (1) Moses and Elijah in the transfiguration story in Luke
- And behold! Two Men (2) and
- And behold! Two Men (3) Jared Hay has blogged three times, that I know of, about “the Transfiguration”, and his subsequent paper can be found at
- ‘And suddenly, two men. . .’: Moses and Elijah in Lukan Perspective
- Jared Hay says he is a minister of Priestfield Church in Edinburgh (Church of Scotland).
- Brief outline of Hay’s argument
- Jared Hay’s three blog posts and subsequent article develop essentially one argument centered on Luke’s distinctive treatment of Moses and Elijah.
- Luke gives Moses and Elijah considerably more attention than Mark or Matthew. They are not merely named: Luke says that they appear “in glory,” converse with Jesus about the exodus he is about to accomplish at Jerusalem, stand with him, and then begin to depart. Hay therefore thinks their presence deserves more explanation than the familiar shorthand that they simply represent “the Law and the Prophets.”
- Hay asks two questions that are particularly relevant to this thread:
- How did the disciples know that the two figures were Moses and Elijah, and
- “in what state of being did they appear?”
- He argues that Luke portrays them as embodied persons: they talk, stand with Jesus, and move to depart. Hay consequently describes them as existing in a state of “post-mortem glorified embodiment.”
- Hay connects the Transfiguration with the Resurrection. Luke 9:30 introduces Moses and Elijah with καὶ ἰδοὺ ἄνδρες δύο ("and suddenly/behold, two men.”) Strikingly, essentially the same expression occurs for the two figures at the empty tomb in Luke 24:4 and again at the Ascension in Acts 1:10. Hay regards this as a deliberate Lukan literary pattern.
- His most unusual proposal is that all three appearances are Moses and Elijah. Thus the unnamed “two men” at the empty tomb and at the Ascension are, in Hay’s view, the same Moses and Elijah whom Luke explicitly identified at the Transfiguration. He argues that Luke’s original hearers, dependent heavily upon memory and oral cues, would recognize the repeated phrase and its accompanying imagery.
- Hay does not think calling the later figures “angels” disposes of his proposal. He points out that Luke himself calls them “men,” while the description of them as angels in Luke 24:23 occurs in reported speech. He also argues that Luke’s use of angelos (“angel/messenger”) is more flexible than is sometimes assumed. This is probably the most debatable part of Hay’s thesis.
- The larger theological connections are glory, Exodus, witness and succession. At the Transfiguration Moses and Elijah discuss Jesus’ coming exodus; at the Resurrection that exodus through death has been accomplished; and at the Ascension Jesus departs into the heavenly realm while commissioning his followers. Hay sees Moses and Elijah—both figures associated with succession—as appropriate witnesses at these turning points.
Hay’s central conclusion is therefore considerably more specific than simply “Moses represents the Law and Elijah the Prophets.” He sees Moses and Elijah as heavenly, glorified persons who function as continuing witnesses to Jesus’ identity, exodus, resurrection and mission throughout Luke-Acts. In the published article he argues that the repeated “two men” formula creates a deliberate continuity of dramatis personae across the Transfiguration, Resurrection and Ascension.
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- At this time, I think Hay’s contention that Moses and Elijah appeared at the transfiguration, at the tomb after the resurrection, and at the ascension is “too ambitious”.
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- I have deliberately not pursued the question of exactly what happened to Elijah when he was taken up in the whirlwind. Later Jewish sources develop the nature of Elijah’s transformation in considerable detail, and Daniel Lam devotes substantial attention to them. But that raises a different question: what sort of being did Elijah become after his departure? For present purposes, I don’t think we need to answer it. The biblical text gives us the essential contrast: unlike Moses, Elijah has no narrated death or burial, and subsequent Jewish tradition expects him to appear again. Exactly what happened to Elijah in between is an interesting problem, but one I would prefer to leave open here.
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Did Moses and Elijah, the historical individuals, physically arrive? Or were they given visions of them? Did they have to be told who those strange men were after the fact? I would have assumed these beings who suddenly appeared were angels myself, before hopping to Moses and Elijah.
- Initially, and until about an hour ago, I’d have said the said the same thing. But now, I’m not as certain. Now I wonder if, after all the angel stories I’ve heard and read in the past 70+ years, I may just be imagining that I’d assume, again: if I were there at the event, that the two “males” with Jesus were angels. But would I really, if I were an adult male Jew with Jesus on that mountain?
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All we can really do is imagine what we might imagine, but given that angels typically appear to people in the Bible as (presumably adult) men I think that would be where my mind went. It might depend on how it was presented.
Agreed. And that is partly why I find the identification problem interesting. Luke initially describes them simply as “two men” (ἄνδρες δύο), and only then tells his readers that they “were Moses and Elijah” (Luke 9:30). But Peter somehow knows that too. He proposes three shelters—one for Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.
None of the three Gospels tells us how Peter knew. Since Moses and Elijah were already talking with Jesus before Peter spoke, my best guess is that their identities became apparent in the course of that conversation—perhaps because Jesus addressed or identified them. But that is an inference. The texts leave the means of recognition unexplained.
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