Zealot - The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

end-times prophet. Jesus has done
     little to discourage such comparisons, consciously taking upon himself the symbols
     of the prophet Elijah—the itinerant ministry, the peremptory calling of disciples,
     the mission to reconstitute the twelve tribes, the strict focus on the northern regions
     of Israel, and the signs and wonders he performs everywhere he goes.
    Antipas, however, is unconvinced by the mutterings of his courtiers. He believes that
     the preacher from Nazareth is not Elijah but John the Baptist, whom he killed, risen
     from the dead. Blinded by guilt over John’s execution, he is incapable of conceiving
     Jesus’s true identity (Matthew 14:1–2; Mark 6:14–16; Luke 9:7–9).
    Meanwhile, Jesus and his disciples continue their slow journey toward Judea and Jerusalem.
     Leaving behind the village of Bethsaida, where, according to the Gospel of Mark, Jesus
     fed five thousand people with only five loaves of bread and two fish (Mark 6:30–44),
     the disciples begin traveling along the outskirts of Caesarea Philippi, a Roman city
     north of the Sea of Galilee that serves as the seat of the tetrarchy of Herod the
     Great’s other son, Philip. As they walk, Jesus casually asks his followers, “Who do
     the people say I am?”
    The disciples’ response reflects the speculations at Tiberias: “Some say you are John
     the Baptist. Others say Elijah. Still others say you are Jeremiah or one of the other
     prophets risen from the dead.”
    Jesus stops and turns to his disciples. “But who do
you
say I am?”
    It falls upon Simon Peter, the nominal leader of the Twelve, to answer for the rest:
     “You are messiah,” Peter says, inferring at this fateful juncture in the gospel story
     the mystery that the tetrarch in Tiberias could not possibly comprehend (Matthew 16:13–16;
     Mark 8:27–29; Luke 9:18–20).
    Six days later, Jesus takes Peter and the brothers James and John—the sons of Zebedee—to
     a high mountain, where he is miraculously transformed before their eyes. “His clothes
     became dazzlingwhite, like snow,” Mark writes, “whiter than any fuller on earth could whiten them.”
     Suddenly Elijah, the prophet and precursor to the messiah, appears on the mountain.
     With him is Moses, the great liberator and lawgiver of Israel, the man who broke the
     bonds of the Israelites and shepherded the people of God back to the Promised Land.
    Elijah’s presence on the mountain has already been primed by the speculations in Tiberias
     and by the ruminations of the disciples at Caesarea Philippi. But Moses’s appearance
     is something else entirely. The parallels between the so-called transfiguration story
     and the Exodus account of Moses receiving the law on Mount Sinai are hard to miss.
     Moses also took three companions with him up the mountain—Aaron, Nadab and Abihu—and
     he, too, was physically transformed by the experience. Yet whereas Moses’s transformation
     was the result of his coming into contact with God’s glory, Jesus is transformed by
     his own glory. Indeed, the scene is written in such a way so that Moses and Elijah—the
     Law and the Prophets—are clearly made subordinate to Jesus.
    The disciples are terrified by the vision, and rightly so. Peter tries to ease the
     disquiet by offering to build three tabernacles at the site: one for Jesus, one for
     Elijah, and one for Moses. As he speaks, a cloud consumes the mountain—just as it
     did centuries ago on Mount Sinai—and a voice from within echoes the words that were
     uttered from on high the day that Jesus began his ministry at the Jordan River: “This
     is my son. The Beloved. Listen to him,” God says, bestowing upon Jesus the same sobriquet
     (
ho Agapitos
, “the Beloved”) that God had given to King David. Thus, what Antipas’s court could
     not conceive, and Simon Peter could only surmise, is now divinely confirmed in a voice
     from a cloud atop a mountain: Jesus of Nazareth is the anointed messiah, the King
     of the Jews (Matthew 17:1–8; Mark 9:2–8; Luke 9:28–36).
    What makes these three clearly interconnected scenes so significant is that up to
     this point in Jesus’s ministry, particularly as it has been presented in the earliest
     gospel, Mark, Jesus has made nostatement whatsoever about his messianic identity. In fact, he has repeatedly tried
     to conceal whatever messianic aspirations he may or may not have had. He silences
     the demons that recognize him (Mark 1:23–25, 34, 3:11–12).