As I listened to the sermon this morning about the Transfiguration of Jesus, I immediately started wondering if this was a motive found in other previous traditions. Turns out it is. A transfiguration in the myth of Horus/Osirus in the Egyptian pantheon preceded this story by almost two thousand years. Krishna, as a manifestation of Vishnu, was also transfigured in front of his followers some half-century previously. Mithras, who many see as the template for the image of Jesus, also underwent a transfiguration in the six hundred years previous to the time of the Gospels (though this and the Indian myth may have “borrowed” from each other).

I had looked at the similarities of the story of Jesus with Mithras before; I was interested to find out that many of the features I had previously thought “unique” to Christianity were found abundantly in the surrounding cultures. As I’m writing this on a Blackberry now, there isn’t quite the time or space for a study of the topic, but I do find it to be worth further study.