Aaron, Joshua, and Moses at the Transfiguration

Around Moses stand two other Old Testament saints of the Church: his brother Aaron, the first high priest, and Joshua the son of Nun (feast 1 September), who led Israel into the Promised Land. This file treats these companions of Moses, the priestly and the leader’s callings they represent, and the great New Testament moment at which Moses himself appears in glory — the Transfiguration of Christ on Mount Tabor.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

Aaron the High Priest

Aaron, the elder brother of Moses, is the first named prophētēs of the Old Testament in the strict sense of the word: at the burning bush the Lord appointed him to be Moses’ “mouth,” and Exodus states the relation exactly — “he shall be to thee instead of a mouth, and thou shalt be to him instead of God” (Exodus 4:16), and “thy brother Aaron shall be thy prophet” (Exodus 7:1). But Aaron’s enduring office is priestly rather than prophetic: he is consecrated the first high priest of Israel, the head of the Aaronic priesthood, arrayed in the vestments of the sanctuary, offering the sacrifices of the Law (Exodus 28–29; Leviticus 8). The Church reads the Aaronic priesthood typologically, as the shadow of which the priesthood of Christ is the reality — the argument of the Epistle to the Hebrews, that Christ is a high priest “not after the order of Aaron” but “after the order of Melchisedec” (Hebrews 7:11), whose one offering fulfills and abolishes the many offerings of the Law. Aaron’s budding rod (Numbers 17:1–10), which alone of the twelve tribal rods blossomed and bore almonds overnight, became one of the standard Old Testament types of the Theotokos — the dry rod that bore fruit without natural cause, as the Virgin bore the Christ (Ouspensky and Lossky, The Meaning of Icons, SVS Press, 1982, on the types of the Theotokos). Aaron is commemorated with Moses and the other forefathers, and appears in the Byzantine liturgical tradition among the righteous of the Old Covenant; in some usages he was joined to the commemoration of Moses (the ancient Constantinopolitan synaxis kept Moses, Aaron, and Elisha together in July, before the calendars settled Moses on 4 September).

Joshua the Son of Nun

Joshua (Hebrew Yehōshuaʿ, “the Lord is salvation”; Greek Iēsous — the same name as Jesus) is honored by the Church as the Righteous Joshua the son of Nun, commemorated on 1 September, the first day of the Church’s liturgical year (Righteous Joshua, son of Nun, OCA, oca.org, 1 September). He was Moses’ minister and successor, the general who led Israel in the wilderness wars and, after Moses’ death, brought the people across the Jordan into the Promised Land, took Jericho, and apportioned the inheritance among the tribes (Joshua 1–24). Two features of his story the Fathers read typologically. First, his very name: because Iēsous is the Greek form of both “Joshua” and “Jesus,” the Fathers saw in Joshua a namesake and figure of Christ — the one who, where Moses (the Law) could not, leads the people into the inheritance, as Christ leads His people into the Kingdom. Second, the crossing of the Jordan, in which the waters were held back and the people passed over on dry ground into the land (Joshua 3), was read alongside the Red Sea as a type of baptism and of the passage from death to life. The command that the sun stand still at Gibeon (Joshua 10:12–13) and the fall of Jericho’s walls at the sound of the trumpets and the shout (Joshua 6) are remembered as signs of the divine power at work through Joshua’s obedience. That his feast opens the liturgical year (the indiction, 1 September) situates him as a figure of the entry into the new — a fitting threshold for the Church’s year.

Moses at the Transfiguration

The supreme New Testament appearance of Moses — and the moment that draws Moses and the greatest of his successors into the very heart of the Gospel — is the Transfiguration of Christ on the mountain. There, before Peter, James, and John, Christ “was transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light. And, behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elias talking with him” (Matthew 17:2–3; cf. Mark 9:2–8; Luke 9:28–36). Moses and Elijah stand with the transfigured Christ — the two Old Testament prophets who had each ascended a mountain (Sinai, Horeb) and there met God in cloud and fire, now present at the mountain where the God they sought is revealed in the flesh, radiant with the uncreated glory.

The Fathers read the pairing with precision. Moses represents the Law and Elijah the Prophets — so that the whole Old Testament, Law and Prophets together, stands as witness to Christ, “talking with him” of the exodus He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem (Luke 9:31, where Moses and Elijah “spake of his decease [exodos] which he should accomplish at Jerusalem”). Moses represents those who have died and Elijah (taken up alive, 2 Kings 2) those still living, so that Christ is shown Lord of both the living and the dead. And the whole vision confirms what Moses had sought on Sinai and been denied — to see the glory of God face to face; on Tabor the glory he could not then behold is revealed, and Moses beholds it in the transfigured face of the incarnate Word (the theme is developed in the Transfiguration hymnography and in the patristic homilies on the feast; see The Twelve Great Feasts, for the feast and its theology). The light of Tabor is confessed by the Orthodox tradition, following St. Gregory Palamas, to be the uncreated glory of God, the same divine energy Moses glimpsed and reflected on Sinai (see St. Gregory Palamas; and, on Moses’ Sinai vision, Moses and the Sinai Ascent).

The Transfiguration thus gathers the whole meaning of Moses’ life into a single scene: the God-seer who spoke with God in the darkness of Sinai, whose own face shone with a borrowed and fading glory, now stands in the abiding and uncreated glory of the Son, and speaks with Him of the true Passover — the death and resurrection by which the real deliverance, of which the Exodus was only the figure, would be accomplished. Elijah, his companion on the mountain, is treated in the next section of this compendium (see Elijah the Fiery Prophet); the death and burial of Moses himself, and the traditions surrounding it, belong with the source-critical discussion of the Lives of the Prophets (see The Prophets in Icon, Relic, and Legend).

See Also

References

  • The Holy Bible, KJV (Exodus 4:16; 7:1; 28–29; Numbers 17:1–10; Joshua 1–24; Matthew 17:1–8; Mark 9:2–8; Luke 9:28–36; Hebrews 7:11).
  • Righteous Joshua, son of Nun (Navi), 1 September, Orthodox Church in America, oca.org. (The feast on the first day of the liturgical year; the biography.)
  • Ouspensky, Leonid, and Vladimir Lossky. The Meaning of Icons. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1982. (Aaron’s rod and other Old Testament types of the Theotokos.)
  • “Prophet Moses” and the Constantinopolitan commemoration of Moses, Aaron, and Elisha, OrthodoxWiki. (The joint synaxis of Moses, Aaron, and Elisha in the older calendar.)
  • The Transfiguration hymnography (The Festal Menaion, trans. Mother Mary and Kallistos Ware, London: Faber, 1969) and the patristic homilies on the feast (the Law and the Prophets; the living and the dead; the uncreated glory).