Patristic Perspectives on Luke's Transfiguration

Interpreting Vision

Peter Anthony

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780567699794
• eBook ISBN: 9780567699787
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Peter Anthony explores how visionary elements in Luke's Gospel had a particular influence on early interpretation of the Transfiguration, by examining the rich hermeneutical traditions that emerged - particularly in the Latin West - as the Transfiguration was first depicted visually in art. Anthony begins by comparing the visual and visionary culture of antiquity with that of the present, and their differing interpretations of the Transfiguration. He then examines the Transfiguration texts in the synoptic gospels and their interpretation in modern scholarship, and the reception of the Transfiguration in 2 Peter, the Apocalypse of Peter and the Acts of Peter, Tertullian and Origen. Proceeding to look at interpretations found in the Greek East and the Latin West, Anthony finally discusses the earliest visual depictions of the Transfiguration from the sixth century onward, drawn from a wealth of different art forms. Anthony concludes that early commentators' and artists' understanding of how we see and visualise, and therefore, how the Transfiguration was apprehended, is closer to that of the writers of the New Testament than many modern interpreters' is.

Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION

People saw things differently in antiquity. There is a huge difference between how vision was conceived in the patristic age and our understanding of it now.

The ancients expected to be able to see a wide range of phenomena which we consider irrational, invisible or non-existent, such as phantasms, deities, ghosts and portents. We, by contrast, have visual access to a thousand and one things which the ancients could never have conceived as perceptible to sight, like telescope imagery of far distant planets, cells under a microscope, or two friends in different continents chatting by Zoom.

Our popular culture frequently relegates claimed vision of anything that cannot be measured by empirical science to the realm of crankdom, mental illness or fraud. Modern scientific theories on vision, sight, memory and perception, however, increasingly assert the subjective, illusory and inconstant character of our understanding of the things we think we see. There is an all-too-fickle overlap between vision, memory, fantasy and imagination.¹

This study seeks to examine the way in which one of the New Testament’s most extraordinary accounts of miraculous vision was interpreted in the patristic period. When contrasted with the academic and hermeneutic approach of our own age, we see a considerable divergence in the way in which the incident is assessed, what it signified, parallels drawn with it and the way in which it is depicted.

I argue that there is much worth in that earlier perspective. Considerable insight can be gained concerning the meaning, value and hermeneutic potential which early readers, hearers and artists saw in this narrative. A diachronic approach reveals ways in which much modern historical-critical scholarship on the Transfiguration focuses on a very narrow field of questions, frequently to the exclusion of the rich tradition of interpretive creativity, homiletic speculation and artistic depiction which we see in the patristic period.

The purpose of this study

This study seeks to make three broad contributions to knowledge. The first is to focus on the distinct character of Luke’s version of the Transfiguration narrative. I argue that the narrative found in that gospel exploits certain themes, phrases and images to emphasize the visionary character of the incident. These include the following: mention of the disciples’ drowsiness, hints at Peter being out of his mind, Luke’s different sequence of events and description of space and movement, cultic language of prayer and evocation of the Jerusalem Temple, terms such as ‘glory’ and ‘exodus’, and evocation of other visionary scenes in Luke’s texts through shared vocabulary.

It is notable how sensitive early interpretation was to these visionary characteristics and apocalyptic imagery. I argue that Luke’s version of the narrative has a significant influence on depiction of the narrative in the Latin West. I also hope to reveal just how inventive, lithe and complex Latin hermeneutic traditions were when the Transfiguration was interpreted in the light of other visionary or prophetic texts by early theologians. This monograph is in part, therefore, also a call for the re-evaluation of the worth of early Western traditions of interpretation concerning the Transfiguration.

A second contribution to knowledge made by this work is the proposition of further evidence for the worth of reception history approaches to biblical scholarship. I argue that this is particularly useful with visionary texts which claim to be an account of visionary experience. The cultural difference between modern and ancient understandings of vision is considerable. By attending to the many voices which commented on the Transfiguration in the patristic period, we realize how different our hermeneutic assumptions are and how distant our visual culture is from theirs. A reception history approach reveals the different cultural contexts in which readings and depictions of the Transfiguration narrative have taken place and gives us deeper understanding of what these texts meant to early readers, hearers and beholders of the Transfiguration. The insight afforded by a reception history approach contextualizes our own assumptions and perspectives on the Transfiguration. It challenges the hegemony of the postmodern intellectual culture we inhabit and the value judgement it makes concerning experience of the ecstatic, the miraculous, the visionary and the apocalyptic.

A third contribution to knowledge made in this monograph is an emphasis on the value of artistic depiction in the history of biblical interpretation. I argue that this is particularly the case with visionary texts which claim to be a verbalized, written record of an experience apprehended or experienced visually by the eyes and/or mind. Textual comment on biblical narratives is good at expressing categorized meaning, linear order and rhetorical, reasoned argument. Visual depiction, however, can sometimes express better a sense of the more allusive meaning at the heart of visionary experiences, characterized by paradox, simultaneity and verbal ellipsis. Indeed, artistic depiction allows visionary passages to be brought into conversation with other biblical texts, which might otherwise be considered to have little in common from a historical-critical perspective. Later chapters of this study will reveal a range of prophetic, visionary and apocalyptic biblical texts which the Transfiguration is used to elucidate through visual depiction. Artists reveal unexpected parallels, curious similarities and intriguing points of contact with other biblical texts through innovative depiction of the Transfiguration which allows these texts to sit side by side. We will undertake an extensive survey of written patristic comment on the Transfiguration narratives’ status as vision, but we will then use that survey to offer readings of a number of ancient images whose meaning has sometimes been opaque to modern commentators. The approach of this study is not one in which either textual comment or artistic depiction is seen as superior to the other. Rather, I seek an approach in which both have a fruitful role to play in revealing how early Christians understood the Transfiguration narratives.

Some hermeneutical questions and points of first principle

When one examines modern scholarly comment on the Transfiguration, one is struck by a sense of disjuncture between the expansive significance the narrative had in the history of theological and liturgical reflection, and the narrow focus of modern historical-critical scholarship’s questions. The questions this study seeks to answer were prompted by an incisive comment made by Ulrich Luz on the Transfiguration in his commentary on Matthew’s gospel:

The modern exegesis of our text leads us into a different world. It asks not how hearers and readers participate in this story; it primarily asks historical questions about the origin of our story … While I would by no means dispute such interpretations, what they have in common is that they experience the story as alien and try to rationalise this strangeness. It is surprising by contrast how vivid our story is in the exegesis of the church and how relevant it is to life.²

His critique highlights two significant issues. The first is the way in which modern scholarship experiences the Transfiguration narratives as ‘alien’ and as characterized by ‘strangeness’. He points here to a tension inherent in historical-critical approaches. On the one hand, modern scholarship sees as its aim ascertaining the historical ‘origin of our story’. In other words, it focuses on the events which lie behind it and how we account for the creation of our narrative in the light of that. On the other hand, however, the fact that our narrative claims to be an account of a subjective visionary experience means that, to some extent, the ‘origin of our story’ will always remain resistant to historical enquiry.

A number of voices have come to similar conclusions in more recent comment on this question. In an essay comparing modern interpretation of the Transfiguration with that offered by Origen and Chrysostom, Frederick Norris speaks about the way in which the Transfiguration throws into particularly acute relief some of the tensions within modern biblical studies:

NT studies is a sub-discipline that too often depends on rather narrow views of reality, parts of which were learned from the age of Western Enlightenment rationalism, which have now been discredited by contemporary physics, biology and chemistry, as well as historical and literary investigations. Such outlooks occasionally struggle with the accounts of the Transfiguration of Christ … The miraculous is frequently defined poorly and treated as suspect.³

This monograph will argue that one of the reasons historical critics find the Transfiguration ‘alien’ and ‘strange’ is that they are operating with a very different model of what it meant to experience such a vision from that embraced by those who wrote the gospels.

A second problem highlighted by Luz’s words is the gap between the tightly focused desire of much modern scholarship to account historically for the Transfiguration narrative’s origins and the hugely creative influence our narratives have had in the history of Christian theology, spirituality, liturgy and artistic expression. To put it bluntly, a large number of historical-critical scholars quite simply don’t believe the Transfiguration happened and their study of it is as a fictive literary construct. By contrast, Norris⁴ shows in the essay quoted above, a consistent hermeneutic agenda characterizing patristic interpretation was a concern to relate the Transfiguration narratives to theological questions concerning the transformation of the Christian church and of the human subject. Luz argues that this wider influence by the Transfiguration on Christian theology and spirituality is so great that to set one’s investigative horizons no wider than simple historical accounting for the ‘origin of our story’ would only offer a partial account of the meaning and significance of the Transfiguration narratives.⁵ For Luz, there is a disjuncture between the richness and complexity of the reception history of the Transfiguration and the narrow focus with which historical scholarship has often approached a much smaller number of critical questions, frequently resulting in little consensus. His observation prompts the question whether an examination of that history of interpretation might, in fact, reveal exegetical insights which offer a wider account of the Transfiguration’s meaning and significance.

Cosmin Pricop⁶ comes to similar conclusions and responds to some of Luz’s ideas in an excellent monograph comparing modern and patr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 An Examination of the New Testament Synoptic Transfiguration Narratives
• Chapter 3 Modern Interpretation of the Synoptic Transfiguration Narratives
• Chapter 4 Reception of the Transfiguration in 2 Peter, The Apocalypse of Peter, The Acts of Peter and the Acts of John
• Chapter 5 The Transfiguration in Tertullian and Origen
• Chapter 6 Interpretation of the Transfiguration in the Greek East after Origen
• Chapter 7 Interpretation of the Transfiguration in the Latin West after Tertullian
• Chapter 8 The Earliest Depiction of the Transfiguration
• Chapter 9 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index
• Index of biblical references
• Copyright Page