A reader writes:
At the transfiguration it says that Jesus was talking with Moses and Elijah. Moses and Elijah have been deceased for a considerable amount of time. There are no portraits of either man anywhere. Jesus is still alive, so the Holy Spirit has not descended on the Apostles yet. So, How was Peter able to recognize that Jesus was talking to Moses and Elijah?
We really can’t do more than speculate on this one since Scripture doesn’t give us the answer, but I can envision a number of possibilities:
1) They heard the figures identified by a heavenly voice; it just doesn’t record this fact in Scripture.
2) The just knew–like in a dream–who the figures were. The fact that the Holy Spirit had not been generally given as he was on Pentecost is not really an issue for this since God can make exceptions if he wants and the Holy Spirit is said to have been active even in the Old Testament prophets; he simply had not bee poured out in the way that he was on Pentecost.
3) They may have had symbols associated with them that identified them. For example, in the icon above Moses is shown holding the Ten Commandments. I know if I saw a vision and there was an old guy with a beard talking to Jesus and he (the old guy) was holding the Ten Commandments, I’d think of him as Moses. Maybe Elijah’s mantle gave him away or (hypothetically) maybe he seemed to descend in a whirlwind or something like that.
4) It says that they conversed with Jesus, so maybe it was made clear from what they said. Perhaps Jesus referred to them by name or perhaps Moses and Elijah made references to things they had done during their earthly lives (e.g., "Back in my day the people were really ornery, too! Why I hadn’t even gotten off the holy mountain before they’d gone and made a golden calf for theyselves!").
Or maybe it was a combinatoin of these. We really can’t say, though personally I’m partial to the just knowing it like in a dream theory, followed by the conversation and symbol theories.
