The Tradition and The Iconography of The Prophet Elijah, in East and West Late-Antique and Medieval

Abstract

The devotion and worship to Prophet Elijah have their origin in the Holy Scripture and they gain reinforcement in the Hebrew tradition, which influenced the early Christianity becoming the Prophet remembered in the Christian Scriptures and obtained many interpretations by the first Fathers of the Church. In the Islam, in which the revelation is deeply linked to Judaism and Christianity, the Prophet Elijah would appear again in this tradition. However, if this Prophet is worshiped by the three monotheist religions, due the prohibitions of representations in Judaism and Islam, the iconography representation of Elijah would be in charge of the Christianity, in which we find records since the first centuries of the Church in the Occident or Orient, and it covers many facts of Elijah’s life, like the peculiar devotion of the Churches in their respective traditions.