Apocalypse of Elijah Traditions (Earlier / Patristic References)

James1920 historical fragment dossier, printedpage 53

Elijah. Apocalypse EUas. The list of the Sixty Books speaks of the Apocalvpse of E/ias. The other two have simply " Of Elias the Prophet." The Latin version of the sticho- metry, by Anastasius Bibliothecarius, renders " Prophecy of Elias." The Armenian has " The Mystx^ries of Elias." The stichometry gives it 316 lines. To this book, two passages in St. Paul's Epistles are referred. The first is i Cor. ii. 9 : " Eye hath not seen," etc. Origin {on Malt, xxvii. 9) says : " This is found in no canonical book, but in the apocrypha {in secrclis) of Elias." Jerome (Ep. loi to Pammachius), with his eye on Origen, no doubt, writes : " In this place some will follow after the drivellings of apocryphal wiitings and say that the quotation is taken from the Apocalypse of Elias, whereas we read thus in Isaiah according to the Hebrew, ' From everlasting they have not heard,' etc. (Isa. Ixiv. 4)." And again, in his great commentary on Isaiah (lib. xvii.) he fulminates against this view, contorting Ps. x. 3, and making it say " the devil lies in wait in the Apocrypha," after which he adds, " for the Ascension of Isaiah and the Apocalypse of Elias have this quotation." The truth about the quotation seems to be (as Mr. H. St. J. Thackeray has shown in St. Paul and Con- temporary Jewish Thought, p. 240) that it was a blend