In Mark 9:14-29 we read of Jesus’ return from the Mount of Transfiguration and of His healing of a boy with an evil (unclean) spirit – a healing which the Disciples had been unable to accomplish. It is widely recognised that this event in the life of our Lord has close affinities with Moses’ descent from Mt. Sinai and the Golden Calf incident recorded in Exodus 32:19-29 and Deuteronomy 9:6-21.
It is the purpose of the present article (which I wrote as a magazine article a number of years ago and which I hope to revise at some stage) to explore some of the intertextual connections between these two accounts, and I hope you will find this approach interesting and helpful.
The miracle is also recorded in Matthew and Luke (Matt. 17:14-18 and Luke 9:37-43), but we will here concentrate on Mark’s account which contains a number of interesting, unusual and even puzzling details – some of which, I suggest, relate back to the Golden Calf incident. I am very conscious of the fact that I have, in this article, missed so many of the insights that are available to more astute readers, but I hope nevertheless that the connections that I attempt to describe, (or most of them anyway), are plausible and hopefully even genuine.
Jesus’ miracle has other Old Testament echoes and allusions that are widely recognised. For example, Peter Leithart in Jesus as Israel (his 2 volume commentary on Matthew’s Gospel) relates the Transfiguration, the miracle itself and other events recorded in this part of Matthew’s Gospel to the “Divided Kingdom” period including the time of Elijah. It is interesting that both Moses and Elijah are present on the Mount of Transfiguration.
I welcome all comments and corrections about this article!
The article is in pdf format and can be accessed below.
Categories: Chiastic and Other Structures, Deuteronomy, Exodus, Gospel of Mark, New Testament Exegesis, Old Testament Exegesis, Typology
Famous Fox Book Publishing 
Leave a comment