17:1–3 Following Peter’s great messianic confession, Jesus begins to teach his disciples that his messiahship would involve rejection by the religious authorities and lead to death (16:21). To encourage his followers and to provide hope that victory lies beyond defeat, Jesus takes Peter, James and John to a high mountain, where he is transfigured before them. There is no particular reason why this account should be considered “a creation of mythopoetic imagination” that leaves us without “the slightest hope of recovering any element of historical fact that might conceivably lie behind it” (Beare, p. 361). We take it to be a reliable account of a supernatural transformation, the purpose of which is entirely appropriate to the ministry of Jesus the Messiah.

That Matthew locates the event af…