us does not venture to determine who the two men
were with whom Jesus held this interview; Kuinoel conjectures that they
were secret adherents of the same kind as Nicodemus; and according to
Venturini, they were Essenes, secret allies of Jesus. Jesus prayed
before these arrived, and the disciples, not being invited to join,
slept. For the sleep noticed by Luke, though it were dreamless, is
gladly retained in this interpretation, since a delusion appears more
probable in the case of persons just awaking. On hearing strange voices
talking with Jesus, they awake, and see him--who probably stood on a
higher point of the mountain than they--enveloped in an unwonted
brilliancy, caused by the reflection of the sun's rays from a sheet of
snow. This light falling on Jesus is mistaken by them in the surprise of
the moment for a supernatural illumination. They perceive the two men
whom, for some unknown reasons, the drowsy Peter and the rest take for
Moses and Elias. Their astonishment increases when they see the two
strange individuals disappear in a bright morning cloud--which descends
as they are in the act of departing--and hear one of them pronounce out
of the cloud the words, "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well
pleased; hear ye him." Under these circumstances they unavoidably regard
this as a voice from heaven.

The resurrection of Christ is regarded by Strauss as a psychological
necessity placed upon the disciples, first to solve the contradiction
between the ultimate fate of Jesus and their earlier opinion of him, and
second to adopt into their idea of the Messiah the characteristics of
suffering and death.

"When once the idea of a resurrection of Jesus had been formed in this
manner," says Strauss, "the great event could not have been allowed to
happen so simply, but must be surrounded and embellished with all the
pomp which the Jewish imagination furnished. The chief ornaments which
stood at command for this purpose were angels; hence these must open the
grave of Jesus; must, after he had come forth from it, keep watch in the
empty place, and deliver to the women,--who, because without doubt women
had the first visions, must be the first to go to the grave,--the
tidings of what had happened. As it was Galilee where Jesus subsequently
appeared to them, the journey of the disciples thither, which was
nothing else than their return home, somewhat hastened by fear, was
derived from the direction of an angel; nay, Jes