Sublime

The notion that Elijah became an angel accords with rabbinic tradition, but the Zohar alludes to a more radical view: Elijah was originally an angel, even before his biblical phase.

Elijah fills a need for hope—and for justice.

Who but Elijah would presume to address Ein Sof directly? His intimacy with God enables him to know the unknowable and trace the indescribable.

If Elijah eventually enlightened the kabbalists, as the patron saint of the Carmelites he also inspired two of the greatest Christian mystics.

Elijah’s power is limited, because traditionally a prophet cannot invoke his own authority to establish the halakhah:

2Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, “So may the gods do to me, and more also, if I do not make your life like the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.” 3Then he was afraid; he got up and fled for his life, and came to Beer-sheba, which belongs to Judah; he left his servant there. 4 But he himself went a day’s journey into the wi

This is one of many parallels between Elijah and Moses. Whoever composed the early legendary accounts of Elijah (later incorporated into the biblical saga) intended to portray him as a sort of Moses redivivus (reborn).