Transfiguration: Why Moses and Elijah?



Transfiguration (Carracci, 1594)  

About a week before the Transfiguration, Jesus was talking with his disciples.  He asked them, “Who do the crowds say I am?”   One of their answers was “Elijah,” and another was “one of the prophets of old.”

How interesting then, that only eight days later, Jesus was up there on the mountain communing with Elijah and Moses.  No coincidence there.  Whether by divine or human intention (or a combination thereof), the Bible is filled with these types of synchronicities.

So there Jesus was, talking with these “two men,” Moses and Elijah, “who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.”  How is it that these two men, who had left the world centuries before, were able to return “in glory” while speaking with certainty about future events?  Perhaps more importantly, out of all the great biblical leaders, why were they the ones to appear

with Jesus?

Conjecture ranges from “Moses represented the Law, and Elijah represented the Prophets, and Jesus fulfills both” to “neither Moses nor Elijah ever actually died, so it was easiest for them to appear” to “this foreshadows their future witnessing in Revelation 11:3-13” to “they weren’t really present, the disciples were just experiencing a supernatural vision.”

Another mystery is how the disciples immediately knew that these two men of glory were Moses and Elijah (rather than Abraham and David, for example).  Answers range from “divine intuition” to “don’t have a clue.”  For those who like their answers served raw, here’s an engaging response from enduringword.com:  How did the disciples know that it was Elijah and Moses?  It seems that they just knew.  This shows us that we will know each other when we get to heaven.  After all, do you think we’ll be more dumb in heaven than we are on earth?

Don’t answer that.

Unless, of course, you can…

Resources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfiguration_of_Jesus

http://www.enduringword.com/commentaries/4109.htm

http://evidenceoftruth.org/moses_and_elijah_and_the_transfi.htm

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke%209:18-9:36&version=ESV

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation+11%3A3-13&version=NIV

Copyright March 6, 2011 by Linda Van Slyke   All Rights Reserved