ELIAS. - Greatest among the prophets of action in Israel, whose name ('Elifjah[d] "my God is Yahweh") constitutes a whole program of life and activity. A native, it seems, of Tishbe (modern el-Istib) in Gilead, in Transjordan, and therefore called the Tishbite, Vulgate Theobites, as the Septuagint interprets (θεοβίτης ὁ ἐκ θεοβῶν τῆς Γαλακῆς, I Kings 17:1). Roughly clothed (II Kings 1:8), like John the Baptist afterward (Mt. 3:4), accustomed to the harsh life of the desert (I Kings 17:5; 18:46; 19:3), he carried out his mission under the reign of Ahab (873-854 B.C.) and of Ahaziah.
The schism from the kingdom of Judah, the religious schism created by Jeroboam with the erection of the golden calves at Bethel and Dan (I Kings 12:25-32), then the alliance of Omri with Phoenicia and the marriage of Ahab to Jezebel, daughter of the king of Tyre, developed syncretism and struck a death blow at the religion of Yahweh. Jezebel officially introduced the cult of Baal-Melqart, seeking to impose it as the cult of the kingdom; she killed prophets (those belonging to the so-called "schools" or congregations of the pious, directed by E. and by true prophets) and persecuted the Yahwist faithful, destroyed their altars, while she royally supported hundreds of prophets of the Phoenician deities (I Kings 16:23-34; 18:13-19; 19:14; etc.). Monotheism was thus stifled, and a great part of the people was idolatrous (cf. I Kings 19:18).
The Lord intervenes through E., who suddenly presents himself to Ahab and announces to him the divine punishment: a three-year drought (probably from 857 to 856, with some months before and some after, reckoned in the Semitic manner), which struck Samaria and Phoenicia hard (cf. Flavius Josephus, Antiq. Jud., VIII, 13, 2). E. kept himself hidden near the brook Cherith (Kārith) in Transjordan; when this dried up, he went to Zarephath near Sidon, as the guest of a widow whose scanty provisions he miraculously multiplied and whose son he raised from the dead. Toward the end of the punishment, he presents himself to Ahab, reproaches him with the responsibility for what is happening in Israel, and obtains from him the convocation of the people on Carmel for a decisive confrontation between Yahwism and the cult of Baal.
Before all the people, E. stands alone against the 400 prophets of Baal. If Baal is the true God, let him send fire from heaven to consume the victim placed on the altar. Despite their rites, their long prayers, they obtain nothing. At the hour of the evening sacrifice, E. rebuilds an altar to Yahweh, places on it the wood and the flesh of an ox, which he sprinkles with water to make the miracle stand out the better; then he briefly invokes Yahweh to demonstrate that he is the only God. A fire descends and reduces everything to ashes. It is the victory of Yahweh, which the people acclaim ("Yahweh is God!"); then, obeying E., they kill the false prophets at the brook Kishon (cf. Deut. 13:2-5); shortly afterward the refreshing rain falls (I Kings 17-18). But E. must flee before the threats of the furious Jezebel (I Kings 19:2). Beyond Judea, where Athaliah, daughter of Jezebel, is queen, he crosses the desert as far as Mount Horeb, where in a vision Yahweh restores him for the struggle, making him understand that one must await without impatience the hour of God, which will come without the violent blows that shatter.
God gives E. the task of anointing Hazael as king of Damascus, Jehu as king of Israel, and Elisha as prophet; they will be the instruments of God for the victory of Yahwism: the first will devastate the kingdom of Samaria (cf. II Kings 8:28 ff.; 10:32 ff.; 12:3), the second will drown in blood the dynasty of Ahab and the worshippers of Baal (cf. II Kings 9-10), the third will cooperate with his oracles. To Elisha E. entrusts the other two anointings (I Kings 19). To Ahab, who goes to take possession of the vineyard of Naboth, murdered with a view to that usurpation, E. reproaches the crime and predicts the same end as his victim (I Kings 21). He reappears briefly to reproach the sick Ahaziah for having wished to consult Beelzebub and to predict his death (II Kings 1).
The end of E. is narrated as it appeared to the eyes of Elisha (cf. I Mach. 2:58): E. vanished in the midst of a whirlwind. The same verb lagh "to take" (II Kings 2:3 ff.) expresses elsewhere the intervention of God in the serene death of the just man: Gen. 5:24; Ps. 47 (Heb. 49):16; Is. 53:8. The other elements are symbolic. In Mal. 3:1, 23 ff. (Heb. 4:5 f.) it is said that E. will come to prepare the ways for the Messiah, preaching penance. This is precisely the mission carried out by John the Baptist (Lk. 1:17), who is the foretold precursor (Mt. 11:10; 17:10-13), who incarnated "the strong character" of E.; E. was only his type. Ecch. 48:1-12 in its eulogy synthesizes the biblical data compiled thus far. It is clear therefore that the expectation of the return of E. at the end of the world has no foundation in Sacred Scripture; Christians, among whom it was very widespread, took it from the Jews. The Church celebrates the solemnity of E. on July 20. Legend, among Jews, Christians and Arabs, loved to elaborate on the figure of E., considered still living in expectation of his return to fight against the Antichrist at the end of time.
E. for Judaism is the tutelary genius of the race; and the Jews believe that he participates each year in the celebration of the paschal supper, as in the rite of circumcision.
Bibliography13 works
Francesco Spadafora
ICONOGRAPHY
Christian antiquity represented the prophet E. taken up into heaven just as classical art had represented the sun (Helios) on his speeding quadriga. St. John Chrysostom explains to his audience how the very name of the prophet led poets and artists to connect it with the representation of Elijah (Homil., 3, E., 27); Sedulius calls E. "meritoque et nomine fulgens": De Melia, I, 169. In funerary monuments the scene of the taking up of E. is found in a fresco in the cemetery of Domitilla from the 4th century (Wilpert, Pitture, pl. 230, 2); contemporary with it are the scenes offered by the sarcophagi, in Rome and in Milan (Wilpert, Sarcofagi, pl. 190, 3; pl. 189, 2). In the latter city the scene of the taking up was represented in S. Ambrogio, accompanied by a distich (G. R. De Rossi, Inteript. Christ. Urbis Romos, II, Rome 1887, p. 161). The taking up of E. is also found in one of the panels of the wooden door of S. Sabina in Rome (5th century).
As for the symbolic meaning of the scene, in funerary art it refers to the resurrection, as already in Irenaeus (Adv. Haeror, 1, 5) and then in the "ordo commendationis animas: libera Domine animam... sicut liberasti Eliam de morte communi". St. Gregory the Great, on the other hand, sees in it a figure of the Ascension of the Lord (Homil. 20 in Evang.: PL 76, 1247). Of this opinion was also Wilpert. In the scenes of the taking up Elisha also appears, who in a sarcophagus of Arles he divides the waters of the Jordan with his mantle.
Enrico Josi
The scene later enters Byzantine miniature painting, the Catalan Bibles of the 11th century, the stained-glass windows of 13th-century French cathedrals as well as the Romanesque sculptures of the cathedrals of Modena, Cremona and Borgo S. Donnino, inspiring, thanks to its immanent dramatic quality, still the art of the 16th century and of the Baroque age (Antonio Campi, fresco in the cathedral of Cremona; R. Donner, relief in the cathedral of Gurk). Also The meeting with the widow of Zarephath owes its iconographic importance originally to the related symbolic meaning according to which E. prefigures Jesus and the woman gathering wood, the church of the gentiles. See, for example, the stained-glass windows of Bourges and of Le Mans where moreover The resurrection of the widow's son symbolizes the Resurrection of Christ. And just as the episode of E. in the desert became in itself dear to painters of various times and countries (Dick Bouts, panel formerly in Berlin; Tiepolo, fresco in the archiepiscopal Palace of Udine; F. Preller, cartoon in the Goethe Museum of Weimar), so finally the Pre-Raphaelite school proved particularly attached to the miraculous events surrounding the prophet E.
Bibliography4 works
Kurt Rathe
APOCALYPSE of E
Apocryphon mentioned in the Constitut. Apost. VI, 16, by some Fathers, in the stichometric list of Nicephorus, and which the Ambrosiaster (Comm. in I epist. ad Cor.: PL 17, 205), Jerome (Epist. 57: ibid., 22, 576) and the anonymous list Montfaucon-Cotelier at no. 10 define as an Apocalypse. It was almost certainly of Jewish origin (Schürer, p. 262 ff., 265).
According to Origen (Comm. in Mf., 27, 9: PG 13, 1769), St. Paul would refer to this apocryphon in I Cor. 2, 9; cf. Ambrosiaster, ibid.; and Pseudo-Euthalius. Against this assertion St. Jerome rightly reacted, ibid., [saying] that the form "as it is written" always refers to inspired Scripture, and here there is a reference to Is. 64, 3; 65, 16. St. Epiphanius (Havr. 42) was the only one to hold that Eph. 5, 14 referred to the Apocalypse of E. It cannot be said whether some Coptic fragments of the 5th century, discovered at Alpinim and published in 1835, belong to it; and a fragment in Latin that speaks of a vision of E. concerning the last events, contained in the Epistle of Titus of the 3rd-4th century A.D., published by D. De Bruyne in 1925.
The Coptic fragments were grouped into an anonymous Apocalypse, an Apocalypse of Zephaniah and an Apocalypse of E. The first probably forms part of the Apocalypse of Zephaniah. In the third E. receives the order to preach penance; he predicts the appearance of the antichrist, his struggles against E. and Enoch, his defeat, the coming of the Messiah and the millennial reign of the saints. In its present text it is certainly of Christian origin, but it seems to presuppose a Jewish writing which, very ancient, appears to be at the basis of all these texts. - See pl. XVIII.
