The Jewish Roots of the Transfiguration - The BAS Library
Login
Home > Magazines > Bible Review > June 1998

The Jewish Roots of the Transfiguration

By Herbert W. Basser

The Transfiguration—the moment when Jesus is mystically transformed by divine power in the company of Moses and Elijah—offers a uniquely Christian message. At this moment Jesus’ divinity is revealed to his disciples. Yet the roots of this complex story, so critical to Christian theology, are deeply embedded in Jewish tradition. The story of the Transfiguration is recounted in three slightly different versions in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, which are known as the Synoptic Gospels.1 The differences between the accounts, however, are such as to rule out direct copying; the evangelists must have worked from different sources, […]

Please join the BAS Library or become an All Access member of BAS to gain full access to this article and so much more.

Join the BAS Library!

Already a library member? Log in here.

Institution user? Log in with your IP address or Username

Footnotes

1.

See Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, “What Really Happened at the Transfiguration?” BR 03:03.

2.

The Hebrew mashiach, translated “messiah,” literally means “anointed one.”

Endnotes

1.

The term synoptic, from the Greek for “seeing together,” refers to the fact that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke share so much material that when they are printed in three parallel columns, their correspondences can be “seen together” at a glance.

2.

Although the rabbis recorded their ideas in writing after the first century, it can sometimes be shown that these ideas were in circulation hundreds of years earlier. In the case of the Transfiguration we deal with here, as in many other gospel traditions, it can be shown that rabbinic literature preserves material that New Testament writers later used.

3.

The best discussion of the rabbinic passages dealing with Elijah and the Messiah remains that of Louis Ginzberg, An Unknown Jewish Sect (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1976), chap. 6 (reprint). On page 212, he lists 14 places where Elijah will come to resolve halakhic doubts. On page 242, he discusses the sources in which Elijah and the Messiah are mentioned together.

4.

It should be noted that the Messiah is only referred to in the allusion to Isaiah 42:1.

5.

Midrash Shohar Tov, which is the midrash on Psalms. See the midrash to Psalm 43.

6.

Psikta Rabbati 37.1.

7.

Psikta de Rav Kahana 22.

8.

BT, Rosh Hashanah 17b.

9.

Psikta Rabbati 36.4.

10.

BT, Sanhedrin 99a.