Let me know if you find any patristics on Moses at Transfiguration, please.
My knee jerk reaction is that the Transfiguration was a prophetic vision, given the three apostles, of the futire ascension of Christ into glory, rather than the event contemporaneous with the trip to Mount Tabor.
I would wholeheartedly agree, but I will search for Patristic commentaries on it. After all, the visions described in the Revelation of John are also prophetic (although, again, we have a problem here with the notion that after Christ there were no mor prophets).
Well, here’s Origen’s comment, from Book XII, Chapter 37 on The Gospel of Matthew:
“But when the Son of God in His transfiguration is so understood and beheld, that His face is a sun, and His garments white as the light, straightway there will appear to him who beholds Jesus in such form Moses,—the law—and Elijah,—in the way of synecdoche, not one prophet only, but all the prophets—holding converse with Jesus; for such is the force of the words “talking with Him; ” but, according to Luke, “Moses and Elijah appeared in glory,” down to the words, “in Jerusalem.” But if any one sees the glory of Moses, having understood the spiritual law as a discourse in harmony with Jesus, and the wisdom in the prophets which is hidden in a mystery, he sees Moses and Elijah in glory when he sees them with Jesus.”
And later on:
“But since we have not yet spent our energy in interpreting the things in the place figuratively, but have said these things by way of searching into the mere letter, let us in conformity with these things, consider whether the aforesaid Peter and the sons of thunder who were taken up into the mountain of the dogmas of the truth, and who saw the transfiguration of Jesus and of Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory with Him. might wish to make tabernacles in themselves for the Word of God who was going to dwell in them, and for His law which had been beholden in glory, and for the prophecy which spake of the decease of Jesus, which He was about to accomplish; and Peter, as one loving the contemplative life, and having preferred that which was delightsome in it to the life among the crowd with its turmoil, said, with the design of benefiting those who desired it, “It is good for us to be here.””
Or, from +Leo the Great, this from Sermon LI. A Homily Delivered on the Saturday Before the Second Sunday in Lent—On the Transfiguration, S. Matt. XVII. 1–13:
“
The Significance of the Appearance of Moses and Elias.
For Moses and Elias, that is the Law and the Prophets, appeared talking with the Lord; that in the presence of those five men might most truly be fulfilled what was said: “In two or three witnesses stands every word .” What more stable, what more steadfast than this word, in the proclamation of which the trumpet of the Old and of the New Testament joins, and the documentary evidence of the ancient witnesses combine with the teaching of the Gospel?For the pages of both covenants corroborate each other, and He Whom under the veil of mysteries the types that went before had promised, is displayed clearly and conspicously by the splendour of the present glory. Because, as says the blessed John, “the law was given through Moses: but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ ,” in Whom is fulfilled both the promise of prophetic figures and the purpose of the legal ordinances: for He both teaches the truth of prophecy by His presence, and renders the commands possible through grace.”
It would seem that their appearance was seen as allegorical by at least those fathers who sought to delve into the question. By the way, the others really didn’t that I can see, except perhaps for Tertullian and he seems to be leaning towards a allegorical presence.