V. TRANSFIGURATION.

Though the alleged longevity of the Jewish patriarchs temporarily made up for the absence of the conception of immortality, this idea arrived. The representatives of Seth live above an average of nine centuries each, with one remarkable exception: Enoch, the best of them, lives less than half the years of the least. Whatever may have been the original reason for this exception, the explanation was that Enoch really outstripped even the 969 years of Methuselah, having never died at all. In paradise he would have access to the Tree of Life. In the farther development of Israel other “beginners”—as Moses representing Law, and Elias Prophecy—might eclipse Enoch, and wear “by authority” his mantle of immortality; but in popular faith and folk-lore Enoch held his own. He was said to have invented writing, arithmetic, and astronomy; to have filled 300 volumes with the knowledge acquired by long residence among the angels; his first being a book predicting the Deluge, which was preserved by Noah in the Ark. In many respects Enoch resembles Teiresias, to whom Zeus granted a life on earth of seven or nine generations, and who even in Hades was said by Homer to have retained his human perception, while those around him were mere shades (Plato, Meno, 100).⁠[15] His fame as a soothsayer, both on earth and in Hades, grew out of the belief in his long experience, and no doubt this was the case with Enoch also. Most folk-sayings and predictions were connected with Enoch as forged runes and verses are now attributed to Mother Shipton. (It will be remembered that the first English book on this theme was entitled The Wandering Jew telling fortunes to Englishmen, 1640.) It might have been supposed that Enoch would be present at the Transfiguration of Jesus. Paul had spoken of him with honour; Jude quoted from him; and it is probable that he was meant as one of the “two witnesses” alluded to in Rev. xi. 3. In the Gospel of Nicodemus the “two witnesses” are Enoch and Elias, who welcome those arriving in Paradise.

That Moses was substituted for Elias at the Transfiguration was probably due to the strong hold which the “Book of Enoch” had taken on the Jewish mind. In this work there are indications that among some Jews Enoch himself had become connected with the Messianic hope. The writer, personating Enoch and speaking in his name, describes his journey through heaven and hell; thus, in the second century B.C. anticipating the journeys and visions of Lucian, Mohammed, Arda Viráf, Dante, and Swedenborg. He is attended by an angel, and he is named and appointed the Son of Man. “That angel came to me, and with his voice greeted me and said, Thou art the Son of Man who is born to righteousness; and righteousness dwells over thee, and the righteousness of the Head of Days leaves thee not.” That a claim for Enoch’s Messiaship is intended appears in the event then described. Enoch’s body melts away, and his spirit is transformed into a heavenly body. Enoch had described the glory of the renovated earth; but he himself, assuming him alive, would be some 2000 years old. No legend said he had been endowed with perpetual youth; consequently to reign over a rejuvenated earth he must be rejuvenated himself. Such a notion could only, at that time, have survived among the ignorant; but it is to them that new “schools” have to make their appeal, and in the transfiguration of Enoch the old idea, though spiritualised, is regarded.

The phrase of the Book of Enoch, “Head of Days,” is a remarkable modification of Daniel’s “Ancient of Days.” It almost looks as if,—assuming Ewald’s theory that Enoch (Beginner) was a god of the New Year,—this earliest of the immortals were still invested with more than patriarchal sanctity. As a Janus or Ganêça (with whom Ewald compares him) Enoch would himself be the Head of Days, thus as it were the Ancient of Days dialed on time. The idea of co-eternal existence is suggested, but also of an Unchangeable and a Changeable.

It must be remembered that we are considering ideas which, however poetical, are based on fancies of the world’s childhood. The transformation of Enoch under the angel’s spell belongs to the same class as the transformations which Yuletide evokes for the delight of the young from our own German Mythology, in which deforming spells are broken, handsome princes step forth from bears or dwarfs, decrepit crones become fair maidens, and Cinderellas rise from their ashes and rags in shining raiment and beauty.

When the Jewish legends were transferred to the Gentile world this incident (of transfiguration) was detached from the patriarch and connected with the generalised type of Israel which represented the popularisation of its faith among other races. Probably the Transfiguration, concerning which secrecy was demanded, was first whispered about in the Jewish quarters of Rome. In the New Testament narrative the Transfiguration comes as a tableau at the end of a conversation immediately bearing upon the subject of the undying ones. After being told, in answer to his question, that some thought he was John the Baptist (in whose death probably his followers refused to believe), others thought him Elias, others Jeremiah, Jesus asked, “But whom say ye that I am?” Peter said, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” This was the Christian equivalent of the address of the Angel to Enoch, quoted above. Jesus then assumes the Messiaship; founds his church, declares his future course and office, and ends by transferring to the patriarchs of the new kingdom the mantle of earthly immortality worn by the Jewish patriarchs. “Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here which shall not taste of death till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” The next thing related is the Transfiguration. “His face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light.” Luke says, “The fashion of his countenance was altered, and his face was white and glistering.” Beside him are Moses and Elias, whose office as surviving witnesses is falling upon their successors—James (here the brother of Jesus), who was miraculously supported without food from the crucifixion until after the resurrection, and after death rose again for an important legendary career; and John, who was to “tarry” till Christ should come.⁠[16] Peter could only survive by proxy: it would have been inconvenient to have him often interfering with the arrangements of his successor, as in the one case of his reappearance, when he supplanted a Bishop in consecrating the first Abbot of Westminster, leaving the Deans thereof perilously independent ever since. As Enoch was omitted from the scene because he was a rival Messiah, Peter received no mantle of immortality because he might become an invisible rival Vicar.

The transfigured representative of the “Head of Days” was there, but not the transfigured world. The event was as a rehearsal; the actual performance had to be postponed for a thousand years. The hopes of those who had expected to see the thorn-crown changed to a coronet and the crucified Jew appearing, resplendent with the aureole of Moses and the chariot of Elias, to enter on his kingdom, faded away. It was replaced by the rumours that Jesus and a few chosen friends were invisibly moving near, and would befriend the faithful unto the millennial hour. Then they should all awaken from what, for believers who had eaten the vitalising body and blood of Christ, would be but a sleep.

Animistic philosophy in the second century was such as to admit of the transient death of a Messiah provided his body was not supposed to be left long enough under ground to taste corruption. The Psalm (xvi. 10) said, “Thou wilt not suffer thy holy one to see corruption;” but, as in the case of Alcestis, a human being might live again if wrested from death by the third day. In the case of Lazarus the miracle consisted in the recovery of life after the body had been buried four days. The resurrection of Christ, so far from being a proof of human immortality, manifestly means that Jesus did not die in the ordinary sense, but recovered in the sepulchre the ghost he had breathed out on the cross. In theological statement he might be thought of as dwelling in heaven; but for a long time his ascension into heaven was as much an excursion as his descent into hell; in both he but went through the rôle of Enoch, and in Christian folk-tales he was still “always with them,” moving near, as when he met Peter near Rome, where his foot-prints are still worshipped.⁠[17]

That which was Job’s aspiration had become the humble Christian’s faith. Unable amid perishing nature to believe that one who died could live again, Job wishes that he could be hid “in the under-world,” concealed for “an appointed time, then remembered.” All the days of his hard time there he would await his “change.” And finally he does believe that his Vindicator will secure something like this; not that he expects to live for ever, but, however wasted his body, he will live long enough to see Elohim no longer an adversary, but on his side. With Paul this belief has arrived at the phase of comparing the human body to a seed which rises to a flower. After the alleged resurrection of Jesus it was evidently important to show that it was the same body, even to its wounds, but at the same time so transformed that it was with difficulty recognised, and was mistaken for a spirit. In the Gospel according to the Hebrews (Nicholson, p. 68) it is written, after the story of James living without food until he saw Jesus risen from the dead, that “when he (Jesus) came to those about Peter, he said to them, ‘Take, feel me, and see that I am not a bodiless dæmon.’” Ignatius, who preserved this, says (Ep. ad Smyrnæos, c. iii.), “I both know that he was in the flesh after the resurrection and believe that he is [in it].... And straightway they touched him and believed, being constrained by his flesh and spirit Because of this they thought lightly even of death, and were found superior to death. And after the resurrection he ate and drank with them as one in the flesh though spiritually united to the Father.”

The main difficulty about earthly immortality, presented in the shrivelled form of Tithonus, solved in Enoch’s case by transfiguration, was settled in later mythologies by the theory of a fountain of Perpetual Youth. When Ponce de Leon heard of the New World he hastened thither to find this Fountain: in the depths of luxuriant Florida he searched, and never reappeared.