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, reaching back to very early Jesus stories.
The basic story line is the same in Matthew 17:1–8, Mark 9:2–8 and Luke 9:28–36. Jesus chooses three disciples—Peter, James and John—and together they climb a high mountain. There Jesus is transfigured: His face shines like the sun (in Matthew) and his clothes become 032dazzling white (in all three Gospels). Suddenly Moses and Elijah appear and speak to Jesus. Peter proposes that three tents be made, one for Jesus, one for Moses and one for Elijah. As Peter is speaking, a luminous cloud appears over the disciples and out of the cloud comes a voice. Although the words differ slightly, in all three the heavenly voice invests Jesus with authority: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him” (Matthew 17:5); “This is my beloved Son; listen to him” (Mark 9:7); “This is my son, my Chosen; listen to him” (Luke 9:35).a
This crucial episode draws heavily on Jewish tradition, yet adapts it to a uniquely Christian message. For starters, in rabbinic literature, Moses and Elijah often appear in the same passage, and are frequently compared.2 Elijah also appears at times with the Messiah.3 But, so far as I have been able to discover, in only one place in all of rabbinic literature, do Moses, Elijah and the Messiah appear together.4
This rare conjunction occurs in a midrash to Psalm 43.5 A midrash is a rabbinic explanation or elaboration of biblical verses that reveals layers of meaning that are theologically sound but are nowhere stated explicitly in scripture. This particular midrash weaves a hopeful message from the threads of Psalm 43, even though the speaker of the psalm is depressed because God seems to have abandoned him (the text of the psalm and the midrash appears in the sidebars to this article) The speaker asks, “For you are my God, my stronghold. Why have you rejected me?…Send your Light and your Truth; they will lead me; they will bring me to your holy mountain and to your tents” (Psalm 43:2–3). The midrash counters, “Did I not send you redemption (in Egypt), as it is said: ‘Please send Moses, his servant, Aaron whom He chose’ [quoting Psalm 105:26]? Please send us another two as their counterparts.” Quoting Psalm 43:3, the midrash continues, “Send ‘your Light’ and ‘your Truth’; they will lead me.”
The midrash then states that God will send salvation again, just as he did earlier. The midrash quotes the prophets Malachi and Isaiah as proof-texts: “Scripture says, ‘Behold I will send you Elijah the Prophet!’ [Malachi 3:23]. So now one [that is, Elijah] has been named. The second one is ‘Yea my servant, I shall take hold of him, my chosen one [in whom I delight]’ [Isaiah 42:1].” (An ancient Aramaic translation of Targum Isaiah 42:1 identifies the subject of this verse as the Messiah.) The midrashic interpretation of the words of Psalm 43:3 continues: “Send 034‘your Light’ [the Messiah] and ‘your Truth’ [Elijah] they will lead me; they will bring me to your holy mountain and to your tents.”
This is the very pattern of the gospel account in which Elijah comes with Moses to meet Jesus, the Messiah. Note that both the midrash and the Gospels quote Isaiah 42:1: “My servant…my Chosen one, in whom I delight.” Compare Matthew 17:5: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” and Luke 9:35: “This is my son, my Chosen.” Another tip-off is the reference to the holy tents at the end of the midrash quotation. In the Gospels, Peter offers, somewhat inexplicably, to make three booths (or tents): one for Jesus, one for Moses and one for Elijah.
Any doubt as to the background of the Transfiguration scene is dispelled by Psalm 43:3, which states, “They will bring me to your holy mountain and to your tents.” In the gospel accounts of the Transfiguration, Jesus and his disciples climb a high mountain far from civilization, and there Peter offers to construct tents. Similarly, in the psalm midrash, the Messiah is designated the “Light,” and in the Transfiguration scene, Jesus’ face and clothing become luminous.
The immediate trigger for the inclusion of this scene in the gospel tradition may be the final words of Psalm 43: “Yeshuot panai ve’elohai” (literally, “the salvations of my Countenance and my God,” or “my ever-present help, my God”). For early Christians, the term yeshua, or variations thereof, signified Jesus. The Gospels often quote passages from the Hebrew Bible as referring to Jesus when the word yeshua, or a variant thereof, occurs in or near the quoted text. The appearance of yeshuot at the end of Psalm 43 may have encouraged the use of this psalm as a construct for the Transfiguration account in the Gospels. (Note, however, that it is not Psalm 43 itself that inspired this version but the midrash on the psalm, in which Moses and Elijah appear and which contains the messianic reference to Isaiah 42:1.)
That Elijah would be the harbinger of the messianic—that is, the Davidic—kingdom was well known in Jewish tradition during the Second Temple period. In the talmudic tractate Soferim (Scribes 13:12), a blessing is recited in the synagogue:
Gladden us, O Lord our God, by means of Elijah the Prophet, Your servant, and by means of the dynasty of the House of David, your anointedb (messiah), may he come soon and make our hearts happy.
Likewise, Matthew (17:10) and Mark (9:11) indicate that the scribes had said Elijah would come first. The connection between Elijah and the Messiah is used both in the Transfiguration episode and in the midrash to Psalm 43.
The rabbis, like the gospel writers, also knew of traditions in which the Messiah shone and had luminous garments. One rabbinic text mentions the shining of the person of the Messiah6 and another describes the figure of the Messiah bedecked in radiant garments.7 Further, the face of Moses shone when he descended from the holy mountain after his encounter with God (Exodus 34:29).
The use of these traditions by later rabbis also implies that some Jews—though not the rabbis themselves—valued the supposed mystical import of these encounters. The rabbis’ stark denial of this mystical element serves to confirm its existence for others in the Jewish community. For example, a rabbi in the Talmud, Rabbi Yochanan, explains that when God allowed Moses to behold His presence from a cleft in a rock (Exodus 33:18–23), the purpose was to convey to Moses the way to pray for atonement.8 To Rabbi Yochanan, what was important in Moses’ encounter was not any revealed truth of theology, philosophy or science: Moses could live without that knowledge. Rather, for the rabbi, the means of atonement—of reaching God through God—was of paramount importance. In his view, experience of the Transfiguration was neither the beholding of the divine light at the entrance of 035the divine throne room nor the discovery of the names of the angels. The true entry to the divine realm was through the repentance prescribed by rabbinic tradition in the liturgy. The mystics’ avenue of seeking direct experience of the divine was not the way. For later rabbis, the rituals of repentance were the highest mystical practices and were taught by God’s own example. Encountering the divine on human terms must occur by way of prayer and good deeds, not by the tremendous light that awaits the mystic.
Of course, this means that there must have been a strong trend among some Jews of seeking God through direct mystical experience. The two figures who best represent the human capacity to “see God,” Moses the prophet and Elijah the priest, are made to testify by the rabbis that this is not the way. Nevertheless, they did recognize that the role of Elijah would be central when the messianic age finally arrives: “When the Holy One redeems Israel, three days before the advent of the Messiah, Elijah will come and stand on the mountains of Israel…and his voice will be heard from one end of the world to the other.”9
Rabbinic tradition records that a rabbi once asked the Messiah when he was coming.10 He replied, “Today!” Later, when the Messiah did not come to redeem the world that day, the rabbi complained to Elijah that the Messiah had lied to him. Elijah told him that the Messiah had not lied: He was simply quoting a verse in Scripture: “Today—if thou wilt hearken to my voice” (Psalm 95:7). In other words, repentance is a condition of redemption. Israel had not repented, so the Messiah did not come to redeem her. For the rabbis, inner illumination is a function of proper observance of the Torah together with the quest for knowledge and repentance.
In the Gospels the image of illumination is made to serve a Christian purpose, namely, the establishment of the sonship of Jesus. The pieces that shape the Christian motif have been borrowed from Jewish tradition but are used in the service of Christian theology. It is as though a church had been built from stones that were once part of a synagogue; the final arrangements are not Jewish, but each stone once had a place in a Jewish structure.
As we have seen, the figures of Elijah and Moses continued to hold sway in Jewish tradition. In Christian theology, however, they were superseded by Jesus. And Jesus is not like any figure in rabbinic literature. For example, he does not fast or pray that Israel be forgiven. Divine salvation for Israel is absent from the gospel accounts of the Transfiguration. Thus, the midrash and Gospels do not convey the same story.
Why have Jewish motifs informed so much of the messianic imagery of the New Testament? I think it is because Jesus is a Jew whose authentic Jewish background and whose Jewish followers’ traditions have been taken apart and reformed in the Gospels into a Christian deity. Yet the message of the Gospels is entirely Christian in context and cannot be taken as Jewish in the finished documents that stand before us.
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, […]
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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.
