Transfiguration
Sir: Martin Sullivan, discussing the Transfiguration (August 9), says rather defensively, "I do not propose to discuss the historicity of this episode," but adds rather rashly: "We are reading the account of an experience which made so deep an impression that three Gospels. out of four reproduce it from the accepted body of Christian teaching. No one can say what actually happened, but three men were aware that they had passed through a transforming moment." He should have made it clear that the three versions of the Synoptic Gospels are so close that they clearly have a common single source, and that not only is it impossible to know what (if anything) happened but it is also, impossible to know who first said that something had happened, in what circumstances, or for what reasons. It is all very well to concentrate on the symbolism of the Transfiguration, but it Is surely impossible to get away from the problem of its historicity.
Nicholas Walter Rationalist Press Association, 88 Islington High Street, London Ni.
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