Commenting
on “the eschatological role of the rabbinic Elijah,” W.D. Davies wrote the
following about the rabbinic treatment of Elijah:
Perhaps because of the vividness of the
stories about him in the Old Testament, but, more probably, because of the last
words of that volume, Mal. iv. 5: ‘Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet
before the great and terrible day of the LORD comes’, already in the
pre-Christian Judaism he had become a figure of the End: while not strictly a
Messianic figure himself, he was a Messianic ‘forerunner’. In the Old
Testament, the LXX and the New Testament, three things were connected with him
in that capacity—repentance, restoration and resurrection Although the first of
these, repentance, is not a prominent characteristic of the work of Elias redivivus in the rabbinic
materials, the other two reappear in them also. What concerns us, however, is
that the figure of Elijah underwent a process of ‘rabbinizaton’. In the
rabbinic sources he appears especially as one who would explain points in the
Torah which had baffled the Rabbis. This has been made clear by Ginzberg in his
work Eine unbekannte jüdische Sekte (New
York, 1922), pp. 303ff. He notes no less than seventeen places where this emerges.
These are: TB Berakoth 35b; TB
Shabbath 108a; TB Pesaḥim 13a; TB Pesahim 70a; Mishnah Shekalim ii, 5; TB Chagigah 25a; TB Tebamoth 35b, 41b, 102a; TB Gittin 42b; Mishnah
Baba Metziah i. 8; iii. 4, 5; TB Menahoth 45a;
ARN 98, 101 (ed. Schechter); TB Tannith viii. I; Jer. Berakoth I c; Mishnah Eduyoth viii. 7. This last passage
reveals not only the significance of Elijah was a living issue in first-century
Judaism but that possibly it was a living issue in its dialogue with
Christianity. It reads as follows:
7. R. Joshua said: I have received a
tradition from Rabban Johanan b. Zakkai, who heard from his teacher, and his
teacher from his teacher, as a Halakah given
to Moses from Sinai, that Elijah will not come to declare unclean or clean, to
remove afar or to bring nigh, but to remove afar those [families] that were
brought nigh by violence and to bring nigh those [families] that were removed
afar by violence. The family of Beth Zerepha was in the land beyond Jordan and
Ben Zion removed it afar by force. And yet another [family] was there, and Ben
Zion bright it nigh by force. The like of these Elijah will come to declare
unclean or clean, to remove afar or to bring nigh. R. Judah says: To bring nigh
but not to remove afar. R. Simeon says: To bring agreement where there is
matter for dispute. And the Sages say: Neither to remove afar nor to bring
nigh, but to make peace in the world, as it is written, Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet . . . and he shall turn the
heart of the fathers to the children and the heart of the children of their
fathers.
Two tasks are assigned to Elijah by the
various rabbis mentioned in this passage. He is to pronounce on questions of
legitimate Israelitish descent, that is, declare what is clean and unclean, and
to create peace. All the scholars mentioned are entitled ‘rabbis’, so that the situation
which called forth this discussion prevailed after A.D. 70. Since the tradition
about Elijah to which appeal is made goes back to an earlier date, Allen is
perhaps to be followed in his suggestion that the words, ‘God is able of these
stones to raise up children unto Abraham’ (that is, purity, not blood, is the criterion
for inclusion in the Kingdom), may refer to M. Eduyoth viii. 7; Rabban Johannan
ben Zakkai’s words wold agree with such a point of view. But more probably it
was the dissension among scholars after A.D. 70, which threatened the unity of
Judaism, that called forth that emphasis on the importance of reconciliation. Elijah
would come not to engage in legal niceties, but to reconcile the differences
among scholars, that is, by implication, to give the true interpretation of the
Law. Danby comments on the passage that ‘[Elijah] will make no change in the
Law but only make an end to injustice’. Is the Christian claim to have had its ‘Elijah’
and his interpretation of the Law, reflected in this insistence on the part of
the rabbis that this was not what mattered so much as ‘peace’?
Before we leave this section reference must
also be made to Ginzberg’s emphasis in the volume already cited that, among the
rabbis, the Messiah or Messiahs, as such, were not expected to exercise a didactic function. Instead in the Messianic Age this was to be concentrated in
the figure of Elijah. ON this ground, Ginzberg argued that no new strictly
Messianic Torah was anticipated. Although we are fully aware of the danger of presumption
in this matter, his position prompts two questions. First, as we have
previously implied, may not the ‘rabbinization’ of Elijah, that is, the
concentration of the didactic function in him, have been due to a reaction
against Christian claims that their Messiah was the teacher, who had authority?
And, secondly, does not the evidence . . . make Ginzberg’s radical rejection of
the conception of a New Torah at least dubious? Certainly in such passages as
Test. Benj. xi. 2; Test. Levi xviii. 9 the Messiah is the source of new
knowledge, and the total evidence is more ambiguous, it seems to us, that
Ginzberg allows. Jeremias has even urged that Elijah himself was conceived as
the Messiah. This must be regarded as questionable. But as precursor of the Messianic
Age, Elijah is a ‘Messianic’ or ‘eschatological’ figure, who, in his work of
reconciliation, prepares for the Messianic unity. Part of the work had to do
with new interpretation of the Law. This justifies our reference to him here:
he would be the instrument of changes in the understanding of the Law in
Messianic times. (W.D. Davies, The
Setting of the Sermon on the Mount [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1964], 158-61)