when John wrote, we have in this silence a stronger testimony to this great wonder of Christ's history than his mention of it would have furnished; for we see in that omission an incidental proof of the absence of all design and concert between the writers. The history of the New Testament canon confirms this priority of the Synoptists to John's gospel.

Place and Time of the Transfiguration.

This great scene of the Transfiguration (according to the generally received order of Christ's ministry) belongs to the third year of his public life, and just before he left Galilee for the last time to go up to Jerusalem, and there suffer and die in fulfillment of his own words that such an end awaited him in that city. See Matthew xvi. 21 ff; Mark viii. 31 ff; Luke ix. 22 ff. After the second miracle of the loaves Jesus turned northward from Bethsaida Julias (Mark viii. 22), and came with his disciples into the cities or villages of Cæsarea Philippi. This Cæsarea was near the southwest foot of mount Hermon, from beneath which out of a cavern issues one of the principal tributaries of the Jordan. It was originally called Panias (hence its modern name Banias), from the grotto there consecrated by the Greeks to Pan. Herod the Great built a temple here in honor of Augustus,' and Philip the tetrarch, a son of Herod, in whose territory it lay (Luke iii. 1), enlarged and adorned the place, and named it Cæsarea. It was called Cæsarea Philippi, or Philip's Cæsarea, to distinguish it from the other Cæsarea on the coast south of Carmel. (Acts ix. 30.) It seems almost beyond doubt that the Mount of Transfiguration must be sought in this vicinity, for we have no intimation of any departure of Christ from this region till after his transfiguration and subsequent return to Capernaum. See Matthew xvii. 24; Mark ix. 33. Mark, it is true (if we confine ourselves to him), does not make it clear whether Jesus spent the "six days" of which he speaks (ix. 2), among "the towns of Cæsarea Philippi," or in travelling southward again; but Luke reckons these six or eight days expressly from the Saviour's memorable words relating to his sufferings and death at Jerusalem (ix. 28), and which he had uttered here among the towns of Cæsarea. (Luke ix. 22.) It is certainly more natural to regard him as still in the same region, and not to read, as it were, between the lines, that after foretelling near Cesarea what he must suffer at Jerusalem, he left that region, and made a long journey southward, and was there transfigured. The exact place of the Transfiguration, near Cæsarea, cannot be certainly known; but it may have been some spur or lower ridge of Mount Hermon. It 1 Josephus' Antiq., xv. 10, § 3.

could not have been the summit, of course, of that mountain; for Hermon is nine thousand feet high above the Mediterranean, and covered with perpetual snow. Mount Hermon has various lower ridges, such as Panias, for example, high enough to afford the solitude appropriate to such an occasion, and high enough to be described as "high" (5) by the Evangelists. (Matt. xvii. 1; Mark ix. 2.) This is the conclusion which scholars generally adopt. So Ewald, De Wette, Meyer, Krabbe, Weiss, Godet, Robinson, Andrews, Ellicott, Trench, Stanley, and others.1

One of the earliest tradițions (though not earlier than the fourth century) placed the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor, about five miles nearly east of Nazareth. But it is impossible to maintain that opinion. During the days of Christ the summit of this mountain was occupied as a town and fortress, and could not have been the place to which he withdrew for seclusion and prayer. Dr. W. M. Thomson shows himself still partial to that belief, but would place the event not on the summit, but in some copse or glen on the mountain side, where the Saviour would be undisturbed. The difficulty still remains that Christ was not then in that neighborhood, but in the region of Cæsarea Philippi. Dean Alford would place the Transfiguration on some unknown mount near Capernaum, and regard the six or eight intermediate days as spent on the way thither. See his remarks on Matthew xvii. 1. But this conjecture, in addition to other difficulties, conflicts with the clear intimation in Mark ix. 30; for and thence (xàxeider) in that passage must not only distinguish the part of Galilee or Trachonitis. from which Jesus had come from that part through which he was passing so rapidly at that time (rapeñopeúovтo), but decides that the Transfiguration had already taken place before he reached the part of Galilee where Capernaum was situated. (Mark ix. 33.)

The question with regard to the time of the Transfiguration is less difficult to decide. The popular belief, perhaps, is that it took place by day. Mr. Longfellow follows this view in his Divine Tragedy, and represents the apostle John as saying:

Behold a bright cloud sailing in the sun!

It overshadows us. A golden mist

Now hides them from us.

1 Bleek remarks that Jesus could have gone a great distance in six days (Synoptische Erklärung, etc., p. 55). That is true, but we are not informed that he spent the six days in that way.

2 This tradition prevails in the Greek Church. The Greeks call their festival of the Transfguration τὸ Θαβώριον.

See Robinson, Physical Geography of the Holy Land, p. 26, and Smith's Bible Dictionary, Vol. IV, p. 3166.

Land and Book, Vol. I, , p.

139.

But the Transfiguration took place unquestionably by night. First, the Saviour, as Luke mentions (ix. 28), went to the mountain for prayer, and, as we see from other passages, he often went to a mountain by night for that purpose. A night of prayer in such a place preceded the consecration of the apostles for their official work. (Luke vi. 12.) For other examples see Matthew xiv. 23 ff; Mark i. 35; vi. 46; John vi. 15, and compare especially Hebrews v. 7 ff. Secondly, such a scene would be much more impressive by night, and hence conducive in a higher degree to the moral ends of the great miracle and its teachings. Thirdly, the disciples, during a part of the time, were so oppressed with drowsiness as with difficulty to keep themselves awake. See Luke ix. 30. This would be natural after a day of labor and fatigue in journeying from place to place. Fourthly, they descended from the mountain on the following day (as Luke states, ix. 37), and that would hardly be mentioned in so formal a manner, except after a night spent by them in that solitude.

Commentary.

Verse 2. "And after six days Jesus takes with him Peter, and James, and John, and brings them up into a high mountain apart alone: and he was transfigured before them."

Matthew (xvii. 1) states the interval in the same terms, but Luke (ix. 28) says about eight days, adding, of course, the first and the last days to the intermediate days. The modern Greeks speak in like manner of a week (and auspov ozrú) as eight days. Our Lord rose from the dead after three days (Mark viii. 31, and John ii. 19), though the time strictly was one day and a part of two days. So in Hebrew usage. "three years" means no more than one whole year, and parts larger or smaller of the two other years.

Takes along (rapahapßávet), implies a change of place (see Acts xxi. 32), i. e., from the foot of the mountain or some village where he had parted from the other disciples. Mark says into a mountain (els pos), where Luke (ix. 28) says into the mountain (à čpos), and Peter (2 Peter i. 18), the holy mountain. The localization may be mental simply; i. e., the event had its place, and Jesus went to that one place, wherever it was, and such a place in the eyes of the disciples was hallowed ground. Yet some tradition even at that time may have pointed out a place as the place of the Transfiguration, and thus a definite place may have been in the mind of Luke and Peter. To make the article merely distinguish the mountain from the plain (Godet), as perhaps in Matthew v. i, and John vi. 3, separates this passage too much from 2 Peter i. 18. Carries them up (àvaçépet avroús), implies that Jesus

selected these three, and led them up thither by his special guidance and impulse. Apart (xar' idia), refers to the three disciples as thus separated from others. Some understand it incorrectly of this mountain as detached from other mountains. Alone (μóvous), or by themselves, states a result of this seclusion after being thus separated from others. And was transfigured (xaì pstapopgóðŋ); or, in other words, was invested in their eyes with a different form (opp) from his ordinary one. Matthew employs the same term (xvii. 2), while Luke has the equivalent but somewhat explanatory words: "The fashion or aspect of his countenance became other or different." But Mark furnishes a still more nearly equivalent phrase in his gospel (xvi. 12), where, speaking of Christ's manifestation to the two disciples on the way to Emmaus, he says: "He was manifested (to them) in another form,” (¿yavspódŋ ¿v Eτépṛ μopyĥ), i. e., one unlike that in which they had been accustomed to see him. Yet the fact only that Christ appeared to the three disciples in this state of glory is affirmed by such language, but whether the medium itself of this appearance was realistic, and the impression made on the disciples was through their ordinary human senses, or whether it was a revelation to the eye of the soul, a vision, spiritualistic, and, of course, supernatural, we seem not to be able to decide. For instructive passages relating to such or similar modes of divine communication, see especially Acts ix. 10, 12; x. 10 ff; xvi. 9; xxii. 17; 2 Cor. xii. 1-5, and others.

Matthew, Mark and Luke all mention Peter, James, and John as the chosen witnesses of the scene on the mount. There may have been special reasons why our Lord selected them in preference to others. The reasons may have been that they had already a deeper insight into the mystery of his nature, and that they were to perform in the future a more peculiar work than the others, as his disciples and apostles. Archbishop Trench remarks here:

They are Peter, who loved him so much (John xxi. 17), and John, whom he loved so much (John xxv. 20), and James, who should first attest that death could, as little as life, separate from his love (Acts xii. 1); being the same three who should hereafter be witnesses of the deepest depth of his humiliation in the agony of the garden, and who, therefore, were thus fitly forewarned by what they now beheld against what they should then behold.

Verse 3. "And his garments became glistening, exceeding white, such as no fuller on earth can so whiten."

We are not to think of his garments (rà luária auroù) as changed in material or texture, but that they took on them this appearance in

the eyes of the disciples as a part of the miracle.

The term which describes this appearance (σtíßovta) is a very expressive one. It is applied in the classical writers (as Professor Alexander remarks) by Homer to the glittering of polished surfaces, and to the glistening of arms; by Aristotle to the twinkling of the stars, and by Euripides to the flashing of lightning. We have it applied here (if we retain sy as genuine) to snow glittering on mountains where the sun pours down its rays on them from an oriental sky. One of the names of this Hermon itself, near which, if not on which, Christ and the disciples then were, was Sirion or Shirion. (Deut. iii. 8) The name signifies breast-plate, not with any reference to its figure or shape, but its polished surface. Hermon answers remarkably to that description. Seen at a distance through the clear atmosphere, with the snow on its summit, and stretching in long lines down its declivities, it glows and sparkles under the rays of the sun as if robed in a vesture of silver. Bleek, Meyer, and others, retain sy as genuine, though the external testimony is not so strong for it as against it. Yet the participle alone (oríλßovta, glistening), as a figurative term, implies of itself some such object of comparison, though unexpressed, and we can reach its full import only as we think of some such external symbol.'

Such as no fuller (ola rvaçɛús) upon the earth can so whiten. Mark's illustration from the fuller (vageùs inl Tys ris), suggests a comparison between heaven's resources in such alchemy and those of men. The Greek idiom here denies the predicate of the subject (où dóvarat), but in English we concede the attribute but deny the subject itself (no fuller). The best Greek text has ours after dóvatar at the end of the sentence. This brightness of his garments seems to be viewed as an irradiation from the glorified body. Matthew adds

here a still more significant trait to the description. While Christ was arrayed in such garments, his countenance was still more resplendent and glorious. The face of the transfigured Messiah shone as the sun itself (os), as Matthew states (xvii. 2). This description recalls to us the glory of Christ as he appeared to Paul on the way to Damascus. The light of that manifestation (cogávɛta) exceeded the splendor of the sun at noon-day, and blinded the apostle as it flashed around him. (Acts xxvi. 13.) Some think that John refers to this glory of Christ on the mount in his gospel : "We beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten one, full of grace and truth" (i. 14).

1 "Even the transient comparison of the celestial splendor with the snow," says Dean Staney," where alone it could be seen in Palestine, should not perhaps be overlooked." (Sinai and Palestine, p. 392.) This may be exactly the tacit comparison (if not expressed) that Mark's picturesque term (oríaßovra) involves, as suggested in the text above.