First Glance

Extracting the historical core of Jesus’ Transfiguration from the three different gospel accounts is the goal Jerome Murphy-O’Connor sets for himself in “What Really Happened at the Transfiguration?” Murphy-O’Connor uses techniques of literary criticism to enter the worlds of the early Christian communities and to reflect upon the traditions they received concerning Jesus. Tracing the development of the Transfiguration tradition, Murphy-O’Connor emphasizes that the motivation of the early Church was to preserve the vitality of tradition, not to record historical events.

Professor of New Testament and intertestamental literature at the École Biblique et Archéologique Française in Jerusalem, Murphy-O’Connor is the author of St. Paul’s Corinth (1983) and The Holy Land: An Archaeological Guide From Earliest Times to 1700 (1980). A popular author for BR and for our sister publication, Biblical Archaeology Review, he contributed “On the Road and On the Sea With St Paul,” BR 01:02.

The violence and pitiless destruction in some biblical passages create a formidable barrier to many readers’ appreciation of the Bible. In “War, Peace and Justice in Early Israel,” Paul D. Hanson demonstrates that these passages grew out of an “ardent sense of justice” and reflect the cultural heritage of the Israelite struggle for freedom.