Sfântul Prooroc Ilie – în scenariul eshatologic biblic doctrinar și în scenariul eshatologic popular românesc

Abstract

The Holy Prophet Elijah occupies a place of honour in the religious thinking and living of Romanian orthodox believers in general, and of the Romanian peasant in particular. In the Romanian folk tradition, he is known as the patron of weather, of crops and beekeepers, being celebrated every year on July 20, in the middle of summer. In addition to the fact that the Holy Prophet Elijah is a model for true faith in troubled times and is considered a veteran testamentary precursor of Christian monasticism, he fulfils in the biblical scripture of the New Testament an important eschatological role. Thus, we can see him present, along with Moses, at the Transfiguration of the Lord on Mount Tabor, an event related in all three synoptic gospels, but above all we find him (unnamed) in the book of Revelation, in chapter 11, where, together with the Enoch (also unnamed), they will face the Antichrist, being killed by it, and then raised by God and ascended to heaven. The Holy Prophet Elijah will be the Forerunner of the Second Coming of Christ, as this truth is repeated in his akathist hymn. The Romanian popular eschatology, taking over the scriptural motif from the book of Revelation, chapter 11, enriched it over time with a series of fabulous details regarding the eschatological role of the Prophet Elijah, details which, although nowhere in the pages of the Holy Scriptures, are not found. it contradicts this, even though their sources of inspiration constituted, to a large extent, a series of apocryphal writings of apocalyptic character, which circulated in the Romanian space during the Middle Ages. We will thus see that, at least from an eschatological point of view, in the religious mentality of the Romanian peasants, the Holy Prophet Elijah also combines in a harmonious, but fantastic way, the concept of Christian doctrinal religion and that of popular Christian religion.