Readers Reply

In Defense of Murphy-O’Connor

With so much negative comment appearing in your Readers Reply column concerning Jerome Murphy-O’Connor’s article on the Transfiguration (“What Really Happened at the Transfiguration,” BR 03:03), I want to register a strong vote of support for a fine example of biblical scholarship. Certainly as we come to better understand the literary forms found in the New Testament, we will be forced to reconsider our interpretations of the text. Not only did Murphy-O’Connor supply the scholarship that guides us in this reinterpretation, he also did it with a caring and a clarity that are rare in any magazine article, biblical or otherwise.

What I find particularly amazing in the readers’ criticism (Readers Reply, BR 03:04) is the refusal to acknowledge the humanness of Jesus. As explained by Murphy-O’Connor, the Transfiguration was a profound moment in Jesus’ life—what we might call today a “peak experience.” As such it is something I can both understand and identify with. And I can then appreciate more fully why the evangelists presented it as they did. For me, the Jesus reflected in the article by Murphy-O’Connor is much more attractive than a Jesus whose message cannot stand on its own, but must be continually shored up by appeals to belief in the extraordinary, a belief that’s based on how we’d like to interpret what’s in the New Testament, rather than on what respectable scholarship tells us is there.