Review of Lindbeck, "Elijah and the Rabbis"

H-NET REVIEW:

Kristen H. Lindbeck. Elijah and the Rabbis: Story and Theology. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. 272 pp. $82.50 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-231-13080-6; $26.50 (paper), ISBN 978-0-231-13081-3.

Reviewed by Eliezer Segal (University of Calgary)
Published on H-Judaic (October, 2011)
Commissioned by Jason Kalman

A (Deathless?) Prophet among the Talmudic Scholars

There is an understandable appeal in the image of Elijah the prophet as a figure who was exempted from the limits of mortality and continues to make appearances in the human world. The Bible provided a complex set of themes related to Elijah that could be drawn upon by later storytellers. The scriptural Elijah was at once a zealous warrior against idolatry, a wonder-worker who performed supernatural miracles for the benefit of common folk, and an eschatological herald who, according to Malachi, would be sent by God "before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord" (4:5). Medieval Jews developed their own legends and customs through which Elijah could participate in their lives, the most familiar of these being his appearances at circumcisions and at the Passover seder, or as a poor wayfarer who might test the hospitality of his hosts.

The present volume focuses on the tales about Elijah that appear in the Babylonian Talmud--the work in the rabbinic corpus that preserves the largest number of such stories. The image of Elijah that emerges from this corpus differs in some significant respects from those of earlier and later eras; e.g., little importance is attached to his role as a messianic harbinger, and much of his activity is tightly enmeshed in the values of rabbinic scholarship. Lindbeck's treatment of the topic is thorough and thoughtful. She subjects the texts to incisive questions, classifications, and analyses, and she succeeds in eliciting interpretations that are true to the texts and their cultural contexts. As befits the topic, there are points when it is best to let the sources speak on their own terms, while it is also instructive to learn from comparisons with related phenomena in Jewish and neighboring cultures.

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