And I suppose this information came to you by divine revelation right?

A scholarly argument must be able to explain clear evidence – not imagination – for each proposition. Your scenario of a treck by Christians to Mount Hermon to have a vision of Jesus is imaginative but is lacking any support in the evidence. Your scenario of all this coming to a stop when James joined the group is more imaginative but again without any evidence. It is all conjecture.

What you are doing is “multiplying hypotheses upon hypotheses” to create an ever more elaborately imaginative scenario. This is the exact opposite of what we understand is a more justifiable principle known as Occam’s Razor — keeping it as simple as possible.

In the other case, they are confused about what they saw, because they slept through half of the experience and because Jesus seems to deliberately confuse them about Elijah’s role. That is why stories indicate that Jesus did her miraculous healings just like Elijah did them. Jesus just told the disciples that Elijah was John the Baptist, and then Jesus acts like Elijah is Jesus himself.

I do give a quite different explanation than you do. My explanation is that the healings are similar because they are part of a series of stories about Jesus, Elijah and the disciples — stories in which the disciples are mocked as old and confused. In fact, Jesus deliberately performs miracles in the same manner as Elijah performed them, in order that the old disciples be confused.

Elijah appears explicitly in the Transfiguration story and appears implicitly in the healing stories that you point out in your post. Elijah appears also in some arguments among the disciples about whether Jesus perhaps is Elijah. I have attempted to link all this together.

This termination led to a new development, in which some young converts wrote so-called gospels, which imagined that Jesus Christ descended to the Earth and interacted with human beings there. Many of these gospels subtly mocked the older leadership. Jesus would cleverly confound the leadership’s teachings and rules, especially the rule that prohibited mystical visions for the new converts.

For example, Jesus led a group of his older disciples and a multitude of new converts to the mountain’s foot. The disciples told the converts to go away, because they could not climb the mountain. Jesus told the converts they could wait at the mountain’s foot. Then Jesus and the disciples climbed to summit, spent a long time there, and then came back down to the foot. Again, the disciples told the converts to go away. Jesus said they could stay. The disciples explained to Jesus that there was enough food only for Jesus and the disciples. But then Jesus took the small quantity of food and magically fed everyone with it.

As another example, Jesus led Peter and a couple other old disciples up to the mountain’s summit. Moses appears on one side of Jesus, and Elijah appears on the other side, and those three emit a bright light, and they begin a discussion about the imminent death of Jesus in Jerusalem. Old Peter and the other two old disciples fall fast asleep. (Luke 9:28-32)

The same story is retold and then elaborated. Old Peter and the other two disciples wake up just as Moses and Elijah are leaving. Peter asks them to stay a while longer. He promises that he and the other two old disciples will build three sheds on the mountain top, so that Jesus, Moses and Elijah will not get rained on if they stay longer.

The same story is retold and then elaborated. Moses and Elijah decline the old disciples’ offer to build sheds on the mountain top. Moses and Elijah disappear. Jesus and the old disciples go down the mountain. Peter asks Jesus about an ancient prophecy that Elijah would come back to Earth before the Messiah arrives. Jesus explains that Elijah already did descend to Earth, that Elijah was John the Baptist, that Peter and all the other old disciples saw Elijah as John the Baptist countless times and did not recognize him. (Matthew 9:9-13)

The same story is retold and then elaborated. Right after Jesus has just convinced the old disciples that Elijah was John the Baptist, Jesus himself does some miraculous cures that were done exactly like Elijah used to do miraculous cures. Peter and the old disciples are confused. Maybe Elijah was not John the Baptist — maybe Elijah was Jesus. The disciples start to argue with each other — some say Elijah was John the Baptist, some say Elijah is Jesus. The old disciples are totally confused and squabbling soon after they have climbed up and down the mountain with Jesus himself.