[1] On the old views relating to the succession of the priests,
according to which the high-priesthood was diverted from the line of
Eleazar and Phinehas into that of Ithamar, see Robertson Smith, _Old
Test. in Jewish Church_, 2nd ed., p. 266.
ELIAS, of Cortona (c. 1180-1253), disciple of St Francis of Assisi, was
born near Assisi, about 1180, of the working class, but became
schoolmaster at Assisi and then notary at Bologna. In 1217 he was the
head of the Franciscan mission to the Holy Land, and in 1219 St Francis
made him first provincial minister of Syria. When St Francis was
recalled from the East in 1220 he brought Elias with him. Elias played a
leading part in the early history of the Franciscan order (see
FRANCISCANS); Francis made him his vicar general in 1221; and he was the
practical acting superior of the order till Francis' death in 1226, and
the real superior till the general chapter of 1227. This chapter did not
elect him minister general, but that of 1232 did; at the chapter of 1239
he was deposed. During these years he erected the basilica and monastery
at Assisi which were entirely his creation--he collected the funds and
carried the work through, being himself the builder and even the
architect. Elias was a man of extraordinary ability, the friend both of
Gregory IX. and of his opponent Frederick II. After his deposition Elias
joined the party of the emperor and so incurred excommunication.
Frederick sent him as ambassador to Constantinople. He dressed and lived
as a Franciscan throughout and a small number of friars adhered to him;
for these he built a church and monastery at Cortona. Unavailing efforts
were made to bring about his reconciliation with the order and the
Church; at last on his death-bed he made his submission to the pope and
died in 1253, having received the Sacraments.
The best account of Elias is that by Ed. Lempp, _Frere Elie de
Cortone_ (1901), who points out the conflict of view, as to the
relations between Elias and Francis, between the _Speculum
perfectionis_ and the _First Life_, by Thomas of Celano; Lempp and
Sabatier accept the hostile picture given by the _Speculum
perfectionis_. But see further FRANCIS OF ASSISI, SAINT, "Note on
Sources," and especially the articles by Goetz, there referred to, in
the _Hist. Vierteljahrsschrift._ There is a good article on Elias, but
written before the new materials had been produced, in Wetzer und
Welte, _Kirchenlexicon_ (ed. 2). (E. C. B.)
ELIAS, JOHN (1774-1841), Welsh Nonconformist preacher and reformer, was
born on the 2nd of May 1774, in the parish of Abererch, Carnarvonshire.
In his youth he came under the influence of the Calvinistic Methodist
revival and became a preacher at nineteen. In 1799 he married and
settled at Llanfechell in Anglesey, giving up his trade as a weaver to
become a small shopkeeper. His fame as a preacher increased, and under
the direction of Thomas Charles of Bala he established numerous Sunday
schools, and gave and secured considerable Welsh support to the founding
of the London Missionary Society, the British and Foreign Bible Society
and the Religious Tract Society. On Charles's death in 1814 he became
the recognized leader of the Calvinistic Methodist Church, and the story
of his life is simply a record of marvellously successful preaching
tours. He died on the 8th of June 1841; ten thousand people attended his
funeral.
His eloquence was so remarkable that he was known as "the Welsh
Demosthenes." His strength lay in his intense conviction of an intimate
connexion between sin and punishment and in his power of dramatic
presentation. As an ecclesiastic he was not so successful; he helped to
compile his church's Confession of Faith in 1823, and laid great stress
on a clause which limited the scope of the atonement to the elect. He
was a stout Tory in politics and had many friends among the Anglican
clergy; he opposed the movement for Roman Catholic emancipation. Several
of his sermons were published in Welsh.
ELIAS LEVITA (1469-1549), Jewish grammarian, was born at Neustadt on the
Aisch, a place in Bavaria lying between Nuremberg and Wurzburg. He
preferred to call himself "Ashkenazi," the German, and bore also the
nickname of "Bachur," the youth or student, which latter he gave as
title to his Hebrew grammar. Before the end of the 15th century he went
to Italy, which thenceforth remained his home. He lived first at Padua,
went in 1509, after the capture of this town by the army of the League
of Cambrai, to Venice, and finally in 1513 to Rome, where he found a
patron in the learned general of the Augustinian Order, the future
cardinal Egidio di Viterbo, whom he helped in his study of the Kabbalah,
while he himself was inspired by him to literary work. The storming of
Rome by the army of the Constable de Bourbon in 1527 compelled Elias to
go to Venice, where he was employed as corrector in the printing-house
of Daniel Bomberg. In the years 1541 and 1542 he lived at Isny, in
Southern Wurttemberg, where he published several of his writings in the
printing-house of the learned pastor Paul Fagius. The last years of his
life he spent at Venice, continuously active in spite of ill-health and
the weakness of old age. His monument in the graveyard of the Jewish
community at Venice boasts of him that "he illuminated the darkness of
grammar and turned it into light." The importance of Levita rests both
in his numerous writings and in his personal activity. In the remarkable
period which saw the rise of the Reformation and gave to the study of
the Hebrew Bible and to its language an importance in the history of the
world, it was Levita who furthered in an extraordinary manner the study
of Hebrew in Christian circles by his activity as a teacher and by his
writings. To his pupils especially belong Sebastian Minoter, who
translated Levita's grammatical works into Latin, also George de Selve,
bishop of Lavaur, the French ambassador in Venice (1536), who was
instrumental in obtaining for Levita an invitation from Francis I. to
come to Paris, which invitation, however, Levita did not accept.
Levita's writings on Hebrew grammar (_Bachur_, a text-book, 1518;
_Harkaba_, an explanation, alphabetically arranged, of irregular
word-forms; a Table of Paradigms; _Pirke Elijahu_, a description--partly
metrical--of phonetics, and other chapters of the grammar, 1520; his
earliest work, a Commentary on Moses Kimhi's Hebrew Grammar, 1508) were
by reason of their methodical exposition, their clear articulation,
their avoidance of prolixity, especially suited as an introduction to
the study of the Hebrew language. Amongst Levita's other writings is the
first dictionary of the Targumim (_Meturgeman_, 1541) and the first
attempt at a lexicon in which much of the treasure of late Hebrew
language was explained (_Tishbi_, explanation of 712 new Hebrew
vocables, as a supplement to the dictionaries of David Kimhi and Nathan
b. Yehiel, 1542). Scientifically most valuable, and of original
importance, are the works of Levita on the _Massora_; his Concordance to
the Massora (_Sefer Zikhronot_ completed in the second revision 1536),
of which hitherto only a small part has been published, and especially
his most celebrated book _Massoreth Hamasoreth_ (1538), published with
English translation by Chr. D. Ginsburg, London, 1867. This was the
first attempt to give a systematic account of the contents and history
of the Massora. By his criticism of the Massora, and especially by
proving that the punctuation of the books of the Hebrew Bible is of late
origin, Levita exercised an epoch-making influence. Of his other
writings may be mentioned his running commentary on David Kimhi's
Grammar and Dictionary (in the Bomberg editions 1545, 1546), his German
translation of the Psalms (1545) and the _Baba-Buch_ (more properly
_Buovobuch_, a German recension of the Italian novel _Historia di Buovo
d' Antona_, 1508).
Of the literature on Levita may be mentioned: Y. Levi, _Elia Levita
und seine Leistungen als Grammatiker_ (Breslau, 1888); W. Bacher, "E.
Levita's wissenschaftliche Leistungen" in _Z. d. D. M. G._ xliii.
(1889), p. 206-272. (W. Ba.)
ELIE, a village and watering-place of Fifeshire, Scotland, on the shore
of the Firth of Forth. Pop. 687. It is 10 m. due S. of St Andrews, but
20 m. distant by the North British railway, which makes a great bend by
following the coast. Though it retains some old houses, and the parish
church dates from 1639, Elie is, as a whole, quite modern and is one of
the most popular resorts in the county on account of its fine golf links
and excellent bathing. The royal burgh of Earlsferry (pop. 317) is
situated in the parish of Elie, which it adjoins on the west. Its
charter, granted by Malcolm Canmore, having been burned, it was renewed
by James VI. The chief structure is the town hall, which is modern but
has an ancient steeple. The place derived its name from its use by the
earls of Fife as a ferry to the opposite shore of Haddington, 8 m.
distant. Macduff's cave near Kincraig Point is believed traditionally to
have been that in which the thane took refuge from Macbeth. Two and a
half miles north is Balcarres House, belonging to the earl of Crawford,
where Lady Anne Barnard (1750-1825) was born.
ELIE DE BEAUMONT, JEAN BAPTISTE ARMAND LOUIS LEONCE (1798-1874), French
geologist, was born at Canon, in Calvados, on the 25th of September
1798. He was educated at the Lycee Henri IV. where he took the first
prize in mathematics and physics; at the Ecole Polytechnique, where he
stood first at the exit examination in 1819; and at the Ecole des Mines
(1819-1822), where he began to show a decided preference for the science
with which his name is associated. In 1823 he was selected along with
Dufrenoy by Brochant de Villiers, the professor of geology in the Ecole
des Mines, to accompany him on a scientific tour to England and
Scotland, in order to inspect the mining and metallurgical
establishments of the country, and to study the principles on which
Greenough's geological map of England (1820) had been prepared, with a
view to the construction of a similar map of France. In 1835 he was
appointed professor of geology at the Ecole des Mines, in succession to
Brochant de Villiers, whose assistant he had been in the duties of the
chair since 1827. He held the office of engineer-in-chief of mines in
France from 1833 until 1847, when he was appointed inspector-general;
and in 1861 he became vice-president of the Conseil-General des Mines
and a grand officer of the Legion of Honour. His growing scientific
reputation secured his election to the membership of the Academy of
Berlin, of the Academy of Sciences of France and of the Royal Society of
London. By a decree of the president he was made a senator of France in
1852, and on the death of Arago (1853) he was chosen perpetual secretary
of the Academy of Sciences. Elie de Beaumont's name is widely known to
geologists in connexion with his theory of the origin of mountain
ranges, first propounded in a paper read to the Academy of Sciences in
1829, and afterwards elaborated in his _Notice sur le systeme des
montagnes_ (3 vols., 1852). According to his view, all mountain ranges
parallel to the same great circle of the earth are of strictly
contemporaneous origin, and between the great circles a relation of
symmetry exists in the form of a pentagonal _reseau_. An elaborate
statement and criticism of the theory was given in his anniversary
address to the Geological Society of London in 1853 by William Hopkins
(_Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc_.). The theory has not found general
acceptance, but it proved of great value to geological science, owing to
the extensive additions to the knowledge of the structure of mountain
ranges which its author made in endeavouring to find facts to support
it. Probably, however, the best service Elie de Beaumont rendered to
science was in connexion with the geological map of France, in the
preparation of which he had the leading share. During this period Elie
de Beaumont published many important memoirs on the geology of the
country. After his superannuation at the Ecole des Mines he continued to
superintend the issue of the detailed maps almost until his death,
which occurred at Canon on the 21st of September 1874. His academic
lectures for 1843-1844 were published in 2 vols., 1845-1849, under the
title _Lecons de geologie pratique_.
A list of his works was published in the _Ann. des Mines_, vol. vii.
1875. P. 259.
ELIJAH (a Hebrew name meaning "Yah[weh] is God"), in the Bible, the
greatest and sternest of the Hebrew prophets, makes his appearance in
the narrative of the Old Testament with an abruptness not out of keeping
with his character and work (1 Kings xvii. 1).[1] The first and most
important part of his career lay in the reign of Ahab, i.e. during the
first half of the 9th century B.C. He is introduced as predicting the
drought[2] God was to send upon Israel as a punishment for the apostasy
into which Ahab had been led by his heathen wife Jezebel. During the
first portion of this period Elijah found a refuge by the brook Cherith,
"before the Jordan." This description leaves it uncertain whether the
brook was to the east of Jordan in Elijah's native Gilead, or--less
probably--to the west in Samaria. Here he drank of the brook and was fed
by ravens, who night and morning brought him bread and flesh.[3] When
this had dried up, the prophet betook himself to Zarephath, a Phoenician
town near Sidon. At the gate of the town he met the widow to whom he had
been sent, gathering sticks for the preparation of what she believed was
to be her last meal. She received the prophet with hospitality, sharing
with him her all but exhausted store, in faith of his promise in the
name of the God of Israel that the supply would not fail so long as the
drought lasted. During this period her son died and was miraculously
restored to life in answer to the prayers of the prophet (1 Kings xvii.
8-24).
Elijah emerged from his retirement in the third year, when, the famine
having reached its worst, Ahab and his minister Obadiah had themselves
to search the land for provender for the royal stables. To the latter
Elijah suddenly appeared, and announced his intention of showing himself
to Ahab. The king met Elijah with the reproach that he was "the troubler
of Israel," which the prophet boldly flung back upon him who had
forsaken the commandments of the Lord and followed the Baalim.[4] The
retort was accompanied by a challenge--or rather a command--to the king
to assemble on Mount Carmel "all Israel" and the four hundred and fifty
prophets of Baal. (The four hundred prophets of Asherah have been added
later.) From the allusion to an "altar of Jehovah that was broken down"
(1 Kings xviii. 30) it has been inferred that Carmel was an ancient
sacred place. (On Mount Carmel and Elijah's connexion with it in history
and tradition see CARMEL.)
The scene on Carmel is perhaps the grandest in the life of Elijah, or
indeed in the whole of the Old Testament. As a typical embodiment for
all time of the conflict between superstition and true religion, it is
lifted out of the range of mere individual biography into that of
spiritual symbolism, and it has accordingly furnished at once a fruitful
theme for the religious teacher and a lofty inspiration for the artist.
The false prophets were allowed to invoke their god in whatever manner
they pleased. The only interruption came in the mocking encouragement of
Elijah (1 Kings xviii. 27), a rare instance of grim sarcastic humour
occurring in the Bible. Its effect upon the false prophets was to
increase their frenzy. The evening came,[5] and the god had made no
sign. Elijah now stepped forward with the quiet confidence and dignity
that became the prophet and representative of the true God. All Israel
is represented symbolically in the twelve stones with which he built the
altar; and the water which he poured upon the sacrifice and into the
surrounding trench was apparently designed to prevent the suspicion of
fraud! In striking contrast to the "vain repetitions" of the false
prophets are the simple words with which Elijah makes his prayer to
Yahweh. Once only, with the calm assurance of one who knew that his
prayer would be answered, he invokes the God of his fathers. The answer
comes at once: "The fire of the Lord (Gen. xix. 24, Lev. x. 2) fell and
consumed the burnt offering, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust,
and licked up the water that was in the trench." So convincing a sign
was irresistible; all the people fell on their faces and acknowledged
Yahweh as the true God. This was immediately followed by the destruction
of the false prophets, slain by Elijah beside the brook Kishon (xviii.
40). The deed, though not without parallel in the Old Testament history,
stamps the peculiarly vindictive character of Elijah's prophetic
mission.[6]
On the evening of the day that had witnessed the decisive contest,
Elijah proceeded once more to the top of Carmel, and there, with "his
face between his knees" (possibly engaged in the prayer referred to in
James v. 17 sq.), waited for the long-looked-for blessing. His servant,
sent repeatedly to search the sky for signs, returned the seventh time
reporting a little cloud arising out of the sea "like a man's hand." The
sky was speedily full of clouds and a great rain was falling when Ahab,
to escape the storm, set out in his chariot for Jezreel. As a proof of
Elijah's supernatural power, it is stated that the prophet, for some
unknown object, ran before the chariot to the entrance of Jezreel, a
distance of at least 16 m. On being told what had taken place, Jezebel
sent a messenger to Elijah with a vow that ere another day had passed
his life would be even as the lives of the prophets of Baal, and the
threat was enough to cause him to take to instant flight (xix. 1-3; cp.
LXX. in v. 2). The first stage of the journey was to Beersheba, on the
southern limits of Judah. Here he left his servant (according to old
Jewish tradition, the widow's son of Zarephath, afterwards the prophet
Jonah), and proceeded a day's journey into the wilderness. Resting under
a solitary broom bush (a kind of _genista_), he gave vent to his
disappointment in a prayer for death. By another of those many
miraculous interpositions which occur in his history he was twice
supplied with food and drink, in the strength of which he journeyed
forty days and forty nights until he came to Horeb, where he lodged in a
cave.[7] A hole "just large enough for a man's body" (Stanley),
immediately below the summit of Jebel Musa, is still pointed out by
tradition as the cave of Elijah.
If the scene on Carmel is the grandest, that on Horeb is spiritually the
most profound in the story of Elijah (xix. 9 sqq.). Not in the strong
wind that brake the rocks in pieces, not in the earthquake, not in the
fire, but in the still small voice that followed the Lord made himself
known. A threefold commission was laid upon him: he was to return to
Damascus and anoint Hazael king of Syria; he was to anoint Jehu, the son
of Nimshi, as king of Israel in place of Ahab; and as his own successor
in the prophetic office he was to anoint Elisha (xix. 15-18).[8]
Leaving Horeb and proceeding northwards along the desert route to
Damascus, Elijah met Elisha engaged at the plough probably near his
native place, Abel-meholah, in the valley of the Jordan, and by the
symbolical act of casting his mantle upon him, consecrated him to the
prophetic office. This was the only command of the three which he
fulfilled in person; the other two were carried out by his successor.[9]
After the call of Elisha the narrative contains no notice of Elijah for
several years, although the LXX., by placing 1 Kings xxi. before ch.
xx., proceeds at once to the tragic story of Naboth's vineyard (see
JEZEBEL). He is now the champion of freedom and purity of life, like
Nathan when he confronted David for the murder of Uriah. Without any
indication of whence or how he came, he again appeared, as usual with
startling abruptness, in the vineyard when Ahab entered to take
possession of it, and pronounced upon the king and his house that awful
doom (1 Kings xxi. 17-24) which, though deferred for a time, was
ultimately fulfilled to the letter (see JEHU).
With one more denunciation of the house of Ahab, Elijah's function as a
messenger of wrath was fully discharged (2 Kings i.). When Ahaziah, the
son of Ahab, having injured himself by falling through a lattice, sent
to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron, whether he should recover,
the prophet was commanded to appear to the messengers and tell them
that, for this resort to a false god, the king should die. The effect of
his appearance was such that they turned back without attempting to
fulfil their errand. Ahaziah despatched a captain with a band of fifty
to arrest him. They came upon Elijah seated on "the mount,"--probably
Carmel. The imperious terms in which he was summoned to come down were
punished by fire from heaven, which descended at the bidding of Elijah
and consumed the whole land. A second captain and fifty were despatched,
behaved in a similar way, and met the same fate. The leader of a third
troop took a humbler tone, sued for mercy, and obtained it. Elijah then
went with them to the king, but only to repeat before his face the doom
he had already made known to his messengers, which was almost
immediately afterwards fulfilled. The spirit, even the style of this
narrative, points unmistakably to its being of late origin. It shocks
the moral sense with its sanguinary character more than, perhaps, any
other Old Testament story.
The only mention of Elijah's name in the book of Chronicles (2
Chronicles xxi. 12-15) is where he is represented as sending a letter of
rebuke and denunciation to Jehoram, son of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah.
The chronological difficulties which are involved suggest that the
floating traditions of this great personality were easily attached to
well-known names whether strictly contemporary or not. It was before the
death of Jehoshaphat that the last grand scene in Elijah's life occurred
(2 Kings ii., see iii. 1). He had taken up his residence with Elisha at
one of the prophetic guilds at Gilgal. His approaching end seems to have
been known to the guilds at Bethel and Jericho, both of which they
visited in their last journey. At the Jordan, Elijah, wrapping his
prophet's mantle together, smote the water with it, and so by a last
miracle passed over on dry ground. When they had crossed the master
desired the disciple to ask some parting blessing. The request for a
double portion (i.e. probably a first-born's portion, Deut. xxi.
17)[10] of the prophet's spirit Elijah characterized as a hard thing;
but he promised to grant it if Elisha should see him when he was taken
away. The end is told in words of simple sublimity: "And it came to
pass, as they still went on and talked, that, behold, there appeared a
chariot of fire, and horses of fire, which parted them both asunder; and
Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven" (2 Kings ii. 11). It is
scarcely necessary to point out, however, that through the figure the
narrative evidently means to convey as fact that Elijah passed from
earth, not by the gates of death, but by miraculous translation. Such a
supernatural close is in perfect harmony with a career into every stage
of which the supernatural enters as an essential feature. For whatever
explanation may be offered of the miraculous element in Elijah's life,
it must obviously be one that accounts not for a few miraculous
incidents only, which might be mere excrescences, but for a series of
miraculous events so closely connected and so continuous as to form the
main thread of the history.
Elijah occupied an altogether peculiar place in later Jewish history
and tradition. For the general belief that he should return for the
restoration of Israel cf. Mal. iv. 5-6; Matt. xi. 14, xvi. 14; Luke
ix. 8; John i. 21, and on the development of the thought see Bousset,
_Antichrist_, s.v., and the _Jewish Encyc_. vol. v. p. 126. In
Mahommedan tradition Elijah is the everlasting youthful el-Khidr or
el-Khadir.
Elijah is canonized both in the Greek and in the Latin Churches, his
festival being kept in both on the 20th July--the date of his
ascension in the nineteenth year of Jehoshaphat, according to
Cornelius a Lapide. The natural and most reliable estimate of the
career of Elijah is that which is based upon a critical examination of
the narratives; see, in addition to Robertson Smith, _Prophets of
Israel_(^2), pp. 75 sqq., Cheyne, _Hallowing of Criticism_, the
articles by Addis in _Encyc. Bib_., and J. Strachan, Hastings' _Dict.
Bib_., H. Gunkel, _Elias, Yahve u. Baal_ (Tubingen, 1906), the
literature to KINGS, BOOKS OF, and the histories referred to in JEWS.
There is difference of opinion as to the historical importance of both
Elijah and Elisha; for a useful summary of views, as also for fuller
bibliographical information, see W.R. Harper, _Amos and Hosea_
(_Internat. Crit. Comm._), pp. xxxiv.-xlix., and article HEBREW
RELIGION. (W. R. S.; S. A. C.)