Or rather, on the politics of transfiguration. Jesus, Luke writes in 9.28b-31,

took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. ²⁹And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. ³⁰Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. ³¹They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. [NRSV]

Several elements engage the reader to compare the story of the transfiguration to that told about Moses and the people in Exodus 34. But before going to them, here is the end of this Exodus chapter which recounts how Moses went back up the Sinai mountain to get a second set of stone tablets of the law, the imperishable kind written by the divine finger or tachygraphed under divine dictation:

34²⁹Moses came down from Mount Sinai. As he came down from the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant in his hand, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. ³⁰When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, the skin of his face was shining, and they were afraid to come near him. ³¹But Moses called to them; and Aaron and all the leaders of the congregation returned to him, and Moses spoke with them. ³²Afterwards all the Israelites came near, and he gave them in commandment all that the Lord had spoken with him on Mount Sinai. ³³When Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil on his face; ³⁴but whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak with him, he would take the veil off, until he came out; and when he came out, and told the Israelites what he had been commanded, ³⁵the Israelites would see the face of Moses, that the skin of his face was shining; and Moses would put the veil on his face again, until he went in to speak with him. [NRSV]

The elements inviting a serious comparison are the following. We have a limit character (to be defined, because he is beyond the usual boundaries), whether Moses, Elijah the Tishbite at a lesser degree, and Jesus; the mountain; prayer (worshipping in the case of Moses in Ex 34.8); the dazzling or shining of the face for Moses and of clothing for Jesus. In Jesus’ case, the face is not said to glow, but it does sort of, hendiadycally. The idea of brilliance is indicated by two effects, that on the face and the clothes.

I read the Exodus chapter as part of a text created by a priest group after the fall of the Judaean kingdom. It mentions no kings, contrary to what one would normally expect in ancient societies whose kings guaranteed the application of divinely-expressed laws (presented as coming from the divinity, or inspired in some way by it). Moses is no king, no prophet normally (in spite of the tradition), and no priest (in spite of his Levite-ness). Surprisingly in regard to the latter, it is his brother Aaron who is imagined to start the priesthood line. I can’t go in the detail of all these questions here, but the short of it is: the writers of the book of Exodus have thought long and hard about their political condition under the Babylonians and the Persians, after the collapse of their own kings and temple(s) and god(s), and are re-thinking the type of mediation likely to work for them and the people. Moses is their hero-mediator, but this mediation itself is a problem. Direct access to the ground for authority (religious and political, since Moses is the founder of the nation) must be mediated, hence the veil on his face. Hence also the story on the death of Moses in Moab, and his burial by God in a grave not to be found. Access to the founder is denied by the story: no monumentalization (think of any political system’s representation of its own foundations, be it the Kremlin with the Lenin mausoleum and mummy, “to this day,” or the Washington Mall, the Vatican, etc.), no relics, no political derivation by touching metonymically the imaginary source of power.

One could do a similar reasoning for Elijah (end of the first book of Kings), the resident or marginal prophet (Tishbite, a toshav), who does some shocking things such as being fed by crows or living with a foreign/enemy widow, and who is taken up to heaven (2 Kings 2), like Enoch (Gen 5.24).

Back to the transfiguration scene. The disciples are invited up the mountain in this story of re-foundation. So one could see this as some political progress: the people are there up with the founder, this time, though it is only the male part of the people, through their three paradigmatic representatives. Remember that three disciple women were named by Luke also, but disconnected (somewhat) from hearing and preaching the new word, and made part of a life of service and support. No veil between these male representatives of the disciples and Jesus in all his power. No tents either, which I take to mean: no monuments or relics or temple on a mountain top, no memorializing of this brief vision and contact with the imagined source of power. This is a story about someone who somewhat like Moses and Elijah (and Henoch could be added) leaves no monument or relics of his body after his death. The tomb will be empty. Of course, this was unacceptable to many and hasn’t prevented Christianity at all, especially with Constantine and his numerous past and present successors, from looking for that tomb and “inventing” (=finding) the true cross. The story of the transfiguration, in spite of its being rooted in a reflection on the absence of fixed ground for any political system, will become a source of power transmitted through the church organization, from apostles and disciples to early episcopal authorities. But the worm is in the fruit, let’s call it the sign of Jonah.