Answer To Juvenile Snark

IT WAS A GIVEN that there would be snark about the post about the Transfiguration last Sunday.   There is whenever you write about Scripture. 

1. The description of Elijah "being taken up to heaven in a whirlwind" in 2 Kings 2 doesn't give you much to go on, it doesn't say that he died, it's true, but if his body could survive a trip to heaven in a fiery chariot pulled by horses of fire it clearly had qualities and properties that human bodies don't have, as those of Moses, Elijah and Jesus don't in the Transfiguration.  I mean, would you get in one? 

It's clear that the body of the living Jesus as seen by John, Peter and James isn't like they saw him just before and after and sudden unworldly changes in appearance and sudden appearances and disappearances were involved.   And it's indisputable that the Scriptures say Moses died as they do that Jesus later died a death like we all will, that his body was dead, that he gave up his ghost.  And that his resurrected body was not like it had been before and could do things that human bodies can't.  Some of his closest followers were said to not have recognized him at first.  Mary Magdalene, the two on the road to Emmaus. 

2. I've never heard or read anyone speculate that maybe the reason for the Transfiguration was to prepare Jesus for his ordeal, to give his human mind and physical body the strength to do what the Bible repeatedly says even he found tremendously hard, which he knew was coming, even to the point that he asked God that if it were possible that he be allowed to not undergo it.  It says in the text that's what Elijah and Moses were talking with Jesus about.   Maybe the three Apostles were witnessing what was, after all, something that was primarily intended for Jesus and which they were only to be witnesses of.   It's clear that Peter was confused when he proposed setting up tents for the three of them. 

Like I said, you don't have to believe it but anyone who does choose to believe it is within their rights to see what they can find in it to support or challenge what they believe.  Much in the way that you can use 2 Kings to challenge me and I can use it to support myself.   That's one of the gifts of the Jewish tradition to the world.  I'd bet that if anyone in an Orthodox study house ever brought up skeptical points about 2 Kings that they'd have gone on for centuries about it.  I'd really love to know what they could have brought to a commentary on the Transfiguration account, I'll bet they'd had lots of Scripture to speculate on what Moses and Elijah would have said to Jesus about what was coming to him.  Maybe they were giving him some sage advice.  Maybe Moses was going to tell him that while dying is hard, death, itself, wasn't so bad as people fear.   We don't know.

No, I'm not embarrassed to talk about these things.  Why would it be embarrassing?  Because someone's going to say I've got cooties?  Say your worst, I don't care.