Theme: God's incarnate Light

Exegetical note:
Since the Second Coming of Jesus is a central concern of this very late pseudonymous epistle, that is almost certainly the meaning of the coming (parousia) of Jesus mentioned in v. 16. The account of the transfiguration of Jesus here is intended to affirm the historicity of the gospel as well as to confirm the authority of the writer, as a witness to that the first Christophany, to make pronouncements about the second. The light imagery ("lamp," "star," "dawn") that…