The Transfiguration on the Mountain

One of the puzzles people consider when reading the account of the transfiguration (Matthew 17:1-13) is what are Moses and Elijah doing there?

The most common answer is to represent the Law and the Prophets, or the Law and the Eschaton (Bock). However, while I think there is some truth in that I wonder whether the thing that elicits their mention is the setting on a "high mountain". Moses and Elijah to my poor memory were the only people to have ascended Mount Sinai/Horeb to talk with God.

All the classic marks of God's presence appear in the Gospel narrative (the cloud, the transfiguration like Moses experienced). The disciples were no doubt thinking at first that we would have a second law giving like Moses received, or perhaps a second message and commission like Elijah received. However all they get is 14 words, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him". God then promptly disappears. Except he hasn't. He is present with the disciples in Jesus. Jesus is not a second Moses, or a second Elijah, such that people looked forward to. He is someone quite different. He is not the messenger of the word, but the word himself. As Jesus himself says to the disciples coming down the mountain, he is not Elijah come again (John the Baptist is). He is the one that the second Elijah is not even worthy to untie the sandals of.

[Incidentally I wonder if Paul's comment in Galatians 1:17 "I went away into Arabia, and returned again to Damascus" is meant to be a demonstration of how he received the gospel that he explains in 1:11-12 was "not man's gospel" because he "did not receive it from any man, nor was [he] taught it, but [he] received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ." i.e. he went to Mount Sinai and was given his message by God in Christ (Note to self: it is probably time to read Tom Wright's essay on Galatians 1:17)]