The 'Transfiguration'?

The Transfiguration According to Sacred Scripture.
Matthew 17:1-9, Mark 9:2-8, Luke 9:28-36

Short version ... according to sacred scripture and sacred tradition .... Jesus went with his apostles James, John and Peter up Mount Tabor to pray. Moses and Elijah appear and converse with Christ. All three are in their glorified states ... brightly shining and pretty much above the human condition. This puts Christ above the prophets that the Jews held in highest regard at that time. A voice from Heaven ... God the Father ... booms down and says 'This is My Beloved Son'. So now we have Christ above the prophets and actually divine. Peter, James and John are told not to tell anyone about this event until after Jesus rises from the grave.

Okay. Let's take a good look at this. At least, as best we can considering it is 2,000 years after the story was told.

The spiritual me says - Okay. This is possible. Christ is divine. He came from Heaven and came to teach us so it's very possible that his aura or soul or whatever you want to call it, came shining through enough that the apostles could see. It is possible that the apostles were advanced enough at that point to be able to see it and to hear a locution from God.

The sceptical me - A few points -

First .. the Moses thing. He wasn't really that nice of a guy. According to scripture he did God's work but he also threw in a few things that are highly suspect. For example, supposedly God said 'do not kill', but then supposedly God tells Moses to go out and mass murder men, women, children and beasts .. but that it's okay for his soldiers to keep the teenage virgin girls as sex toys -

Numbers 31:7,17-18
31:17 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.
31:18 But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.

And then there are the whole 10 Commandments being written by God thing. 9/10 of them come from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. If Moses said they were directly written by the hand of God ... that's almost certainly not true.

Mass murder and lies.

So does the fact that Christ is there talking to Moses mean that God is really, really forgiving of Moses and his sexual exploits and indulgences? Or does it mean that the whole thing about Moses being there was made up in order to make Christ look good to the Jews?

Elijah being there. Okay. He's cool and all. Deep spiritual story with him that I appreciate. A little spiritual pride on his part perhaps. But was he really there or was that made up because he was tied in with the Jewish beliefs of a messiah coming and that Elijah would be part of it??

Perhaps this really happened as the story goes. Perhaps the prophecies really were fulfilled by Christ and around Christ. Or were they backfilled later to build up the story? Was the Transfiguration backfilled to build up the new church that was started? Was it a conspiracy on the part of Peter, James and John to tell the story in order to build their church?

I don't have a problem with most of the transfiguration. I think lots of folks, when they get to a certain point spiritually, can see auras or souls shining or whatever. A lot of folks can hear locutions if they have quieted their souls. I do believe Christ is divine and that He really walked the earth. But I really have a problem with the thought of Moses being there ... considering all he did. (unless God is REALLY REALLY forgiving - which could be) That kinda puts a damper on the rest of the story being accurate. At least as far as I'm concerned.

Any thoughts?

Soft-Core Porn version of Moses: I can't help but imagine a wild eyed Charlton Heston killing a whole family then dragging one of the young girls off by the hair to have his way with her.

This is why Little Alex in A Clockwork Orange was so into reading the Bible while he was in jail.

Pretty good stuff! Would be banned if it was made into a movie for sure!

...to forgive is divine...

It doesn't suit well with your argument to compare customs and practices that are thousands of years apart.

As to why Elijah and Moses were chosen I believe it has more to do with their passing from this world. Elijah according to Scripture was taken by a chariot of fire into Heaven and did not die. Additionally nobody actually witnessed Moses death or burial, he just kind of went into the wilderness and supposedly God took him. I say supposedly because there were no witnesses recorded. The only one missing was Enoch! Many believe he will return to Earth again in the end times, perhaps as one of the Two Witnesses.

There are other likely people that Jesus could have communed with out of the Jewish tradition, but Moses is notable, in that he did something akin to what Jesus was here to do -- lead his people to salvation, both in the sense of taking them out of Egypt, and bringing them the law, by which they could live in accordance with God.

In a literal sense, we see the bookending of the law -- its introduction, via Moses, and its fulfillment, via Jesus. Kind of logical, even beyond the sense of Moses' "approval" of this change in the law, implied by his appearance.

The thing that always cracks me up about that story is Peter's offer to build tents for the three of them -- pretty much just what I'd do... immersed in an amazing experience that I didn't quite comprehend, I'd be sure to say something lame, and I can visualize Jesus' facepalm in response :-)

reply to post by FlyersFan


I'm sure this may amuse you, but they may have kept them to be servants and not sex objects. Maybe the Jewish women wanted a little time away from the kids or the dished cleaned.
If you go back and read Numbers 25, you see that twenty four thousand people had just died for mixing with the the Moabites and the Midianites were considered equally odius. Whoredom, lead to idol worship and that was a capitol offense with God.

reply to post by zachi

I dunno. When soldiers are told that they can keep pre-teen virgin girls for themselves ....
If they were just looking for servants, wouldn't the older 'having already had sex with men' do just as well?


I'm thinking Moses wasn't so nice a guy. I'm wondering why he was at the 'transfiguration' in such a place of honor by God. Does that mean God forgave him the unrepentant mass murder Moses did in God's name? Forgave Moses that he gave pre-teen girls as sex slaves to his soldiers - in God's name? That would make God pretty darn forgiving. That he lied in God's name (10 commandments)? That's a pretty merciful God. Either that, or God approved of all those things and elevated Moses up because he did evil .. which God wanted.

Of course, the three apostles who were leaders (james, john, peter) could have pulled from their religious training and picked the two 'biggies' that the Jews would have been in awe over and they could have just claimed that it all happened ... claimed. People do that all the time now. Lots of folks claim falsely that God is leading them to do whatever .. they might actually believe it too.

It's all so darn confusing. And there is no one from 'above' stepping in to straighten out the confusion.

Originally posted by FlyersFan
I'm thinking Moses wasn't so nice a guy. I'm wondering why he was at the 'transfiguration' in such a place of honor by God. Does that mean God forgave him the unrepentant mass murder Moses did in God's name? Forgave Moses that he gave pre-teen girls as sex slaves to his soldiers - in God's name? That would make God pretty darn forgiving. That he lied in God's name (10 commandments)? That's a pretty merciful God. Either that, or God approved of all those things and elevated Moses up because he did evil .. which God wanted.

Well, God is, of course, ultimately merciful. He has to be, or you and I wouldn't have much of a chance.

However, you are making some pretty big assumptions here, referring to these as "pre-teen sex slaves", which is not what the text says -- it's what you're inferring, so you need to ask yourself why you might be inferring it. Can you read the text in another way?

Personally, I take what I know about God, that he loves me and everyone else, and apply it to things such as this -- which brings me to this simple dichotomy: which is more likely, my loving and eternal God having somehow "changed his ways" between the Old Testament and the New? Or there are things in the Old Testament which conflict with my view of God because they are simply wrong -- they never happened, or they are human views of God, or they are something that had nothing to do with God at all, but the people at the time ascribed the action to him?

I'll go with the second one, since it's a lot more sensible, in my mind, to see humans are fallible, than it is to see God as such.

Of course, the three apostles who were leaders (james, john, peter) could have pulled from their religious training and picked the two 'biggies' that the Jews would have been in awe over and they could have just claimed that it all happened ... claimed. People do that all the time now. Lots of folks claim falsely that God is leading them to do whatever .. they might actually believe it too.

Though Peter, James and John seem to have been pretty faithful Jews, it's unlikely that they had a deep religious training beyond the rudimentary education that would be typical of peasants at the time. Paul, of course, was a Jewish scholar, but these three gained their religious competence from the Holy Spirit (contrast Peter before and after Pentecost... kind of a cowardly simp prior, exhibiting a pure and simple faith, but a fragile one, and then a strong defender of the faith from a theological stand afterwards.)

But, as I said, there were others that might have been on the mountain, or depicted as such -- David would be the most obvious that would have significant meaning for the Jewish belief of what a Messiah was supposed to be. Daniel, Ezekial, Adam, Abraham, you could make a case for a lot of different figures.

Which is why I think Moses, with his connection to the law, as I wrote about, seems to be a reasonable person to be there.

It's all so darn confusing. And there is no one from 'above' stepping in to straighten out the confusion.

Well, it's interesting to think about, but in the scope of everything else, is it all that important? There's a lot of other things I wouldn't mind God clarifying before this particular event, lol.

reply to post by jjkenobi


One point you made is in error. Moses did die because we're told satan and Michael argued over the "body" of Moses. If there was a dead body to argue over it means Moses did in fact die.

Originally posted by adjensen
you are making some pretty big assumptions here, referring to these as "pre-teen sex slaves", which is not what the text says --

It says that Moses told the men soldiers it was okay with God if they kept the 'women children' who hadn't yet had sex ... for themselves. What other logical conclusion can a person come to?

Originally posted by FlyersFan

Originally posted by adjensen
you are making some pretty big assumptions here, referring to these as "pre-teen sex slaves", which is not what the text says --

It says that Moses told the men soldiers it was okay with God if they kept the 'women children' who hadn't yet had sex ... for themselves. What other logical conclusion can a person come to?

One can come to plenty of other conclusions -- there is nothing that says that they are "pre-teen", nothing that says they were to be raped, nothing that says they were to be slaves, and, most importantly, no quotes from God saying "go for it, boys. It's okay by me." And, unless you are a fundamentalist or Conservative Jew, there is nothing to say that this accounting in the Bible is even accurate.

As I said, start with your view of God and work into the scripture from there. If something that arises that is out of line with that view, review the facts, review your belief, and you'll find an answer.

reply to post by FlyersFan


The Mountain where the Transfiguration took place wasn't Mount Tabor. The mountain has to be outside the Land of Israel. Mount Tabor is inside Israel. Elijah may have visited Mount Tabor. Moses didn't. G-D forbid Moses to go into Israel. The accounts, though in today's translations they have made a "correction" of how long it took to reach the mountain of the Transfiguration. Matthew says Six Days, Mark says Eight Days.Six days walking from Cesarea Phillipi in the North. As Torah Observant Jews, They rest on the Seventh Day. Then on the Eight Day they walk to the spot where the Transfiguration occured on Mount Nebo. Mount Nebo is where Moses was lifted up and the prophet Elijah was also lifted up.