| 106. The Natural Explanation of the Narrative in Various Forms. | ||||
IT has been, sought to escape from the difficulties of the opinion wi-+ich regards the transfiguration of Jesus as not only a miraculous, but also an external event, by confining the entire incident to the internal experience of the parties concerned. In adopting this position the miraculous is not at once relinquished; it is only transferred to the internal workings of the human mind, as being thus more simple and conceivable. Accordingly it is supposed, that by divine influence the spiritual nature of the three apostles, and probably also of Jesus himself, was exalted to a state of ecstacy, in which they either actually entered into intercourse with the higher world, or were able to shadow forth its forms to themselves in the most vivid manner; that is, the event is regarded as a vision, But the chief support of this interpretation, namely, that Matthew himself, by the expression opofia, vision (v. 9), describes the event as merely subjective and visionary, gives way so soon as it is remembered, tht neither is there any thing in the signification of the word o(rama which determines it to refer to what is merely mental, nor is it exclusively so applied even in the phraseology of the New Testament, for we also find it, as in Acts vii. 31., used to denote something perceived externally. As regards the fact itself, it is improbable, and at least without scriptural precedent, that several persons, as, here, three or four, should have had the same very complex vision;to which it may be added, that on this view of the subject also, the whole difficult question recurs concerning the utility of such a miraculous dispensation. | ||||
To avoid the above difficulty, others, still confining the event to the internal experience of the parties, regard it as, the product of {P.605} a natural activity of soul, and thus explain the whole as a dream. During or after a prayer offered by Jesus, or by themselves, in which mention was made of Moses and Elijah, and their advent as Messianic forerunners desired, the three disciples, according to this interpretation, slept, and (the two names mentioned by Jesus yet sounding in their ears,) dreamed that Moses and Elijah were present, and that Jesus conversed with them: an illusion which continued during the first confused moments after their awaking. As the former explanation rests on the o(rama of Matthew, so it is alleged in support of this, that Luke describes the disciples as heavy with sleep, and only towards the end of the scene as fully awake, grhgorountej (v. 32). The hold which the third evangelist here presents to the natural explanation, hag been made a reason for assigning to his narrative an important superiority over that of the two other evangelists; recent critics pronouncing that by this and otherparticulars, which bring the event nearer to natural possibility, the account in Luke evinces itself to be the original, while that of Matthew, by its omission of those particulars, is proved to be the traditionary one, since with the eagerness for the miraculous which characterized that age, no one would fabricate particulars calculated to diminish the miracle, as is the case with the sleepiness of the disciples. This mode of conclusion we also should be obliged to adopt, if in reality the above features could only be understood in the spirit of the natural interpretation. But we have only to recollect how in another scene, wherein the sufferings, which according to Luke were announced at the transfiguration, began to be accomplished, and wherein, according to the same evangelist, Jesus likewise held communication with a heavenly apparition, namely, in Gethsemane, the disciples, in all the synoptic Gospels, again appear asleep (Matt. xxvi. 40 parall.). | ||||
If it be admitted that the merely external, formal resemblance of the two scenes, might cause a narrator to convey the trait of the slumber into the story of the transfiguration, there is a yet stronger probability that the internal import of the trait might appear to him appropriate to this occasion also, for the sleeping of the disciples at the very moment when their master was going through his most critical experience, exhibits their infinite distance from him, their inability to attain his exalted level; the prophet, the recipient of a revelation, is among ordinary men like a watcher among the sleeping: hence it followed of course, that as in the deepest suffering, so here also in the highest glorification of Jesus, the disciples should be represented as heavy with sleep. Thus this particular, so far from furnishing aid to the natural explanation, is rather intended by, a contrast to heighten the miracle which took place in Jesus. We are, therefore, no longer | ||||
{P.606} warranted in regarding the narrative in Luke as the original one, and in building an explanation of the event on his statement; on the contrary, we consider that addition, in connection with the one, already mentioned (v. 31), a sign that his account is a traditionary and embellished one, and must rather adhere to that of the two other evangelists. | ||||
Not only, however, does the interpretation which sees in the transfiguration only a natural dream of the apostles, fail as to its main support, but it has besides a multitude of internal difficulties. It presupposes only the three disciples to have been dreaming, leaving Jesus awake, and thus not included in the illusion. But the whole tenor of the Gospel narrative implies that Jesus as well as the disciples saw the appearance; and what is still more decisive, had the whole been a mere dream of the disciples, he could not afterwards have said to them: Tell the vision to no man, since by these words he must have confirmed in them the belief that they had witnessed something special and miraculous. Supposing however that Jesus had no share in the dream, it still remains altogether unexampled, that three persons should in a natural manner have had the same dream at the same time. This the friends of the above interpretation have perceived, and hence have supposed that the ardent Peter, who indeed is the only speaker, alone had the dream, but that the narrators, by a synecdoche, attributed to all the disciples what in fact happened only to one. But from the circumstance that Peter here, as well as elsewhere, is the spokesman, it does not follow that he alone had the vision, and the contrary can by no figure of speech be removed from the clear words of the evangelists. | ||||
But the explanation in question still more plainly betrays its inadequacy. Not only does it require, as already noticed, that the audible utterance of the names of Moses and Elijah on the part of Jesus, should be blended with the dream of the disciples; but it also calls in the aid of a storm, which by its flashes of lightning is supposed to have given rise in them to the idea of supernatural splendour, by its peals of thunder, to that of conversation and heavenly voices, and to have held them in this delusion even for some time after they awaked. But, according to Luke, it was on the waking of the disciples that they saw the two men standing by Jesus: this does not look like a mere illusion protracted from a dream into walking moments; hence Kuin l introduces the further supposition, that, while the disciples slept, there came to Jesus two unknown men, whom they, in awaking, connected with their dream, and mistook for Moses and Elijah. By giving this turn to the circumstances, all those occurrences which on the interpretation based on the supposition of a dream, should be regarded as mere mental conceptions, are again made external realities: for the idea of supernatural brilliancy is supposed to have been produced by a flash of lightning, the idea of voices, by thunder, and lastly, the idea of two persons in company with Jesus, by the actual presence of two unknown individuals. All this the disciples could properly perceive only when they were awake; and hence the supposition of a dream falls to the ground as superfluous. | ||||
Therefore, since this interpretation, by still retaining a thread of connection between the alleged character of the event and a mental condition, has the peculiar difficulty of making three partake in the same dream, it is better entirely to break this thread, and restore all to the external world: so that we now have a natural external occurrence before us, as in the first instance we had a supernatural one. Something objective presented itself to the disciples; thus it is explained how it could be perceived by several at once: they deceived themselves when awake as to what they saw; this was natural, because they were all born within the same circle of ideas, were in the same frame of mind, and in the same situation. According to this opinion, the essential fact in the scene on the mountain, is a secret interview which Jesus had preconcerted, and with a view to which he took with him the three most confidential of his disciples. | ||||
Who the two men were with whom Jesus held this interview, Paulus does not venure to determine; Kuin l conjectures that they were secret adherents of the same kind as Nicodemus; according to Venturini, they were Essenes, secret allies of Jesus. Before these were arrived, Jesus prayed, and the disciples, not being invited to join, slept; for the sleep noticed by Luke, though it were dreamless, is gladly retained in this interpretation, since a delusion appears more probable in the case of persons just awaking. On hearing strange voices talking with Jesus, they awake, see Jesus, who probably stood on a higher point of the mountain than they, enveloped in unwonted brilliancy, proceeding from the first rays of morning, which, perhaps reflected from a sheet of snow, fell on Jesus, but were mistaken by them in the surprise of the moment for a supernatural illumination; they perceive the two men, whom, for some unknown reasons, the drowsy Peter, and after him the rest, take for Moses and Elijah; their astonishment increases when they see the two unknown individuals disappear in a bright moring cloud, which descends as they are in the act of departing, and hear one of them pronounce out of the cloud the words: o(utoj e)stin etc., which they under these circumstances unavoidably regard as a voice from heaven. This explanation, which even Schleiermacher is inclined to favour, is supposed, like the former, to find a special support in Luke, because in this evangelist the assertion that the two men are Moses and Elijah, is much less confidently expressed than in Matthew and Mark, and more -as a mere notion of the drowsy Peter. For while the two first evangelists directly say: "there {P.608} appeared to them Moses and Elias," Luke more warily, as it seems, speaks of "two men, who were Moses and Elias," the first designation being held to contain the objective fact, the second its subjective interpretation. But this interpretation is obviously approved by the narrator, from his choice of the word oitinej hsan instead of edocan einai. That he first speaks of two men, and afterwards gives them their names, cannot have been to leave another interpretation open to the reader, but only to imitate the mysteriousness of the extraordinary scene, by the indefiniteness of his first expression. While this explanation has thus as little support in the Gospel narratives as those previously considered, it has at the same time no fewer difficulties in itself. The disciples must have been so far acquainted with the appearance of the morning beams on the mountains of their native land, as to be able to distinguish them from a heavenly glory; how they cae to have the idea that the two unknown individuals were Moses and Elijah, is not easy to explain on any of the former views, but least of all on this why Jesus, when Peter, by his proposal about the building of the three tabernacles, gave him to understand the delusion of the disciples, did not remove it, is incomprehensible, and this difficulty has induced Paulus to resort to the supposition, that Jesus did not hear the address of Peter the whole conjecture about secret allies of Jesus has justly lost all repute; and lastly, the one of those allies who spoke the words to the disciples out of the cloud, must have permitted himself to use an unworthy mystification. | ||||