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Part XXXIV Matthew
The Transfiguration of Jesus,
Part III
A Dedication-Hanukkah Story
How many of you have ever connected the story of Jesus’ transfiguration with the Jewish celebration of Dedication/Hanukkah? We may well have imagined it as almost anything but that. Some New Testament scholars have suggested that the transfiguration story was a “misplaced” resurrection narrative. They cite as evidence for this conclusion that the story of the transfiguration is set in Galilee where the story of Easter was born. It also reveals Jesus in unearthly, translucent, perhaps resurrection apparel. Could that be a possibility? I don’t think so. Could it be a literal story, something that actually happened? Are we reading a memory of an event that Jesus might have shared with his inner core of Peter, James and John? Were these three not said to have been present when the transfiguration occurred? No, that is not a likely explanation either. This story is filled with mythological content. People living in the world of time and space do not climb mountains to be transfigured. They do not talk with characters who have been dead for 1200 and 800 years respectively. They do not decide to memorialize this moment by building three tabernacles to mark the spot, only to be rebuked by the voice of God, speaking through a cloud to inform them that they do not yet understand. All of the symbols in this story are images drawn from the first century Jewish world view, deeply shaped by the Jewish scriptures and unclouded by the work of Copernicus and Galileo or by Isaac Newton’s view of natural law that governs the universe.
No, the story of the transfiguration of Jesus is not history. Matthew surely knew this. It was rather an interpretive story designed to portray Jesus inside a series of well known Jewish symbols. Let me unpack these symbols as first century Jews would have understood them.
In the observance of the midwinter festival called Dedication/Hanukkah, light is the first symbol we encounter as the Jews celebrated in that festival the return of the light of true worship to the Temple by the victorious army of Judas Maccabeus. This symbol of light, however, reminded the Jewish worshipers of the other traditions in their history when the light of God was said to have bathed the Temple with God’s presence. Working backward in history, as I did in the column last week, we moved to the erection of the post-exilic Temple around the year 510 BCE, when it was said that the light of God once more came to dwell among God’s people. Next I looked at the time when the first Temple was built by King Solomon around the year 940 BCE. When it was dedicated God’s light was said to have encompassed the Temple. Finally I looked at the time when the Jews talked about how the light of God accompanied their nation as its people wandered in the wilderness under Moses after escaping Egypt on their journey toward what they believed was their “promised land.” There the light of God was said to have been attached to their moving Tabernacle as a “pillar of cloud” by day and “a pillar of fire” by night. Both the cloud and the fire were understood as signs that the God who lived above the sky also dwelled in the midst of the people. The Temple as the dwelling place of God was therefore the place where God and human life came together. So, we come now to the question of what was being said to the Jewish readers of Matthew’s gospel when the story of Jesus’ transfiguration was being told.
The first thing that becomes obvious is that when Matthew wrote there was no longer a Temple in Jerusalem. It had been destroyed by the Roman army when they rolled through the city of Jerusalem in the year 70 CE, climaxing the Jewish-Roman War. The Temple’s destruction did not end of the war, which would come at a place called Masada in 73 CE, but Jerusalem’s destruction did end any hope of Jewish success and rendered any further resistance to be futile and ineffective. So when Matthew wrote the story of the Transfiguration, some 15 years after the fall of Jerusalem, there was no Temple upon which the light of God could fall, no Temple to which the light of God could be restored. Matthew, following the example of Mark, was thus portraying Jesus in this transfiguration story as the “New Temple;” the new meeting place between God and human life. It was a radical claim. That is why in this narrative, the light of God comes so powerfully onto Jesus that his face, reminiscent of what had happened to Moses thousands of years earlier, glowed with a translucent, heavenly light. It also reminded the Jews of Joshua, the high priest, whose raiment was transformed before the people as a sign of God’s presence. Jewish readers would recognize all of these symbols in Matthew’s treatment of this material. They knew that this content came right out of the Jewish Scriptures. It was only later, after about the year 150 CE or so, when the Christian Church had become primarily Gentile that the worshipers, largely ignorant of both the Jewish scriptures and the Jewish worship traditions, began to assume that this was a literal story of supernatural power that really happened in time and space. The kind of biblical literalism that plagues the Christian church today is always born in Gentile ignorance of things Jewish.
The Jewish followers of Jesus also knew that this was not the only place in the New Testament where the body of Jesus was likened to the Temple and thus was to be thought of as a fit place for the light of God to dwell. In the first epistle to the Corinthians, Paul called the followers of Jesus “God’s Temple,” which meant that he was asserting that God’s spirit dwelt in the people of the Christian community. As holy people they must not allow anyone to destroy the Temple of God which was the body of the believers. In II Corinthians, Paul once again asserted that Christians are and must be the Temple of God, the place where God dwells.
The reference becomes very clear in the gospel of John, written near the end of the first century. There is, I am now convinced, nothing about the Fourth Gospel that should be read literally. I do not believe that Jesus said any of the words attributed to him in John’s gospel nor do I believe that Jesus did any of the deeds credited to him in that gospel.. Having said that, I also want to state that I believe the Fourth Gospel captures the essence of the meaning of Jesus more profoundly than any other piece of literature that has ever been written. It is, however, not a literal story, but an interpretive story.
In the second chapter of John at the very beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, John says that he went up to Jerusalem and drove the money changers from the Temple, re-claiming the Temple for God. In John’s story this is not the event that led to the crucifixion, as it was in each of the other gospels. When Jesus had thus disrupted the Temple commerce, the Temple authorities demanded to know by what authority he had done this. Jesus answered enigmatically, “Destroy the Temple and in three days I will raise it up.” The literal minded Temple authorities were amazed at his statement and responded, “It has taken us forty-six years to build the Temple and will you raise it up in three days?” The author of the gospel then speaks to the readers and says, “But he (Jesus) spoke of the Temple of his own body.”
Jesus had become for his followers the New Temple, the new place where God and human life came together. Matthew anticipated this Johannine identification by saying in his story of the transfiguration that once more in Jesus, the light of God has come to the Temple. That is why this story was attached to the festival of Dedication/Hanukkah. That is why in this story his flesh and his garments glowed with the translucent whiteness of God’s presence. Matthew, following Mark’s lead as he so often did, had provided for this Jewish celebration the perfect Jesus story. All through his gospel Matthew had done this as he related Jesus to the Jewish celebration of Shavuot, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkoth. Now he has done it for Dedication/Hanukkah.
Since the Jewish Matthew believed that Jesus was the New Temple, the new meeting place between God and human life, he has transformed Dedication, but he has not put an end to the worship tradition of the Jews. That is why he brings Moses and Elijah into this Dedication story. Recall that Matthew said in chapter 14 that the task of a good scribe was to bring out of his treasure “what is new and what is old.” He has done that in this gospel again and again. Matthew’s star in the East was new, but the magi did not find the infant Jesus until they consulted the Hebrew Scriptures, which were old. Only the two together pointed the wise men to Bethlehem. Now the story of the transfigured Jesus as the new meeting place between the human and the divine was a new insight, but Moses and the law and Elijah and the prophets, also had to be brought into this Jesus revelation and they were.
Matthew proposed that Jesus must take the place of the Temple that had been destroyed and so he let the light of God descend on him and shine through him and then the law and the prophets would be seen in a new dimension. It was a powerful theme designed to bring Jesus into the essence of Dedication/Hanukkah. It was not literal history.
Only one holy season of the Jewish year now remained for Matthew to cover with his Jesus story. That was the season of the Passover. Matthew would make that the climax of his story by using it as the setting for the story of the crucifixion. What was the first season of the Jewish liturgical calendar would become the last season in Matthew’s Jesus narrative. So Matthew’s gospel would not begin at the same time that the Jewish liturgical year began. Indeed, the Christian calendar would always begin five Sabbaths into the Jewish year. Because there was this lag, Gentile Christians were never able to see the liturgical year of the Jews as the organizing principle that it was of the synoptic gospels.
With Dedication/Hanukkah now over, Matthew will begin his relentless journey to Calvary. We shall follow him week by week.
~John Shelby Spong
Read the essay online here.
Question & Answer
Ken McRae from Toronto, Ontario, asks:
Question:
Having read all of your books, I feel at ease now with the discomfort I have felt during many church services over many years. With the Bible stories revealed as myths with underlying truths, how can one be sure that Jesus Christ himself was not a myth? At the moment, I feel a discomfort in even asking that question. On the other hand, apparently Pope Leo (1513-1521) is quoted as saying “It has served us well this myth of Christ.”
Answer:
Dear Ken,
Of course mythology was wrapped around Jesus. Stories like miraculous births and cosmic ascensions are regular themes in mythological literature. I also doubt that Jesus ever performed miracles. A close analysis of the miracle stories of the New Testament shows a remarkable identification with miracles attributed to Moses and Elijah in the Old Testament or with the “signs’ that would accompany the messianic age as described in Isaiah 35. I do not believe that the resurrection had anything to do with the physical resuscitation of a deceased body, but I do believe that an experience that transcended all known human limits was real. Mythology is frequently the only language we have to use in order to make sense out of a transcendent experience. Having said that, I still see no reason to doubt the historicity of the figure of Jesus of Nazareth or the conclusion that seems to have come from many sources that a deep and transforming God experience was met in him.
The Pauline writings, especially Galatians, written about 52 CE, relate Paul’s memory of the experience he had with the leaders of the Christian faith within a decade after the crucifixion. Paul specifically mentions conferring with Peter and James, the Lord’s brother. Mythology does not normally develop in so short a time span as a decade. Mythology also does not have the hero born in an insignificant, dirty little town like Nazareth. Nor does it kill the hero before installing him into the heart of the new faith tradition. These references also ring with historicity and authenticity. No, I think you can count on the fact that Jesus was not a mythological figure but a person of history, while at the same time recognize that it was also compellingly true that mythology was wrapped around him before the gospels were written between the years 70-100 or 40-70 years after the crucifixion. Biblical scholars probe that mythology for clues to his reality, but most are quite sure that he was real!
John Shelby Spong
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