who is elijah

Who was Elijah?

The most fabulous person in the Old Testament was Elijah the Tishbite.
Here are some of his antics:
 He controlled the weather
   He confronted and threatened the king
     He set fire to soaking logs
       He killed over 300 Baal priests
         He saw God
            He raised a dead boy to life
              He provided a woman with an endless supply of food
                He went into heaven alive in a chariot

These eight miraculous feats point to a miracle worker.  He was from Tishbe, a place unknown in all of Middle East.  He neither taught or prophesied. What can we make of him?

I think Elijah was a symbolic figure, like Uncle Sam. He was invented as a teaching element for religious education of the Jews. His name is a giveaway. EL was the name of God in Israel, the north.  JAH was the name for God in Judah, the south. That distinction led to great strife between the two sections of the country.   But putting the two names together gives a symbolic figure representing the whole country.

What purpose did he serve?  My suggestion is that Elijah was fashioned to show the Hebrew people a picture of the miraculous power they might achieve if they united north and south, overcoming the antagonism and power struggle in that divided country.  Whatever the original projection of that unity may have been, it was elaborated through successive generations of story-tellers until it reached the written scroll that became the Book of Kings.

Larry Gruman