The events surrounding the transfer of Elijah’s prophetic powers to Elisha which open 2 Kings are quite sensational: King Ahaziah falls unexpectedly from his upstairs window (1:2), the river Jordan is parted twice (first by Elijah and then by Elisha: 2:8, 14), and Elijah ascends to heaven in a whirlwind in his famous chariot of fire (2:11). 

But two episodes are troubling: the callousness with which Elijah calls down fire from heaven to consume King Ahaziah’s troops (twice, 1:10, 12), and Elisha’s impulsiveness in summoning she-bears to maul forty-two boys as a punishment for the trivial offence of simply calling him names (2:23–24).

The images selected for this exhibition exemplify different approaches to depicting Elisha’s multifaceted and contradictory character as he assumes the prophetic authority bestowed on him in such dramatic and unparalleled circumstances. 

The earliest of the three artworks discussed here is the historiated initial P from the twelfth-century Winchester Bible. With its swirling, writhing figures, the artist—aptly named The Master of the Leaping Figures—evokes the intense drama and turmoil of Elijah’s final moments on earth, culminating in Elisha grasping the mantle of Elijah as it falls from his chariot. Elijah’s horses and chariot of fire, and the outstretched arms of Elisha as he seizes the falling mantle, seem to spill out beyond the edges of the initial and into the text itself. The urgency and speed with which the two prophets move suggest an impatience and a barely controllable energy. King Ahaziah, by contrast, doomed never to recover from his injuries, is held captive in the enclosed cup of the initial. The Bible was created for the Benedictine monks of the Old Minster of Winchester and the fact that this page is darkened by intensive use, compared with other pages in the Bible, demonstrates its particular appeal through the centuries. 

At a later date and in a different medium, we find Elisha depicted for another monastic context in the Cistercian abbey of Mariawald in Germany. In an elaborate series of exquisitely wrought stained glass, the window focusses not on the drama surrounding the start of Elisha’s ministry but rather on that special group of followers called ‘the sons of the prophets’ who, throughout the Bible, are associated almost exclusively with the prophet. Throughout Elisha’s life, they will remain his committed and ardent disciples. Unlike the leaping, dancing figure in the Winchester Bible, Elisha is here represented as someone with a gravitas that the monks might have considered appropriate to his calling. Clothed in the garments of a Cistercian, his appearance evokes one of his many attributes, namely his role, along with Elijah, as an archetype of the monastic life.

Unlike the ornately historiated Winchester Bible, or the stained glass of the wealthy Mariawald Abbey (both painted by professional artists of some repute), the image from the Biblia Pauperum (a picture Bible that represented the typological correspondences between the Old and New Testaments) almost certainly gained more popular currency. The Biblia Pauperum, with its standard presentation of a New Testament subject flanked by two Old Testament scenes, encouraged typological approaches to the Bible, and, in the case of Elisha, drew detailed comparisons between the prophet and Christ. Comparisons could be creative and imaginative, but, often too, they revealed a predisposition to anti-Jewish hostility. The folio from the Netherlandish Biblia Pauperum discussed here demonstrates how the episode of Elisha summoning bears to kill forty-two children was typologically interpreted: the typological approach conveniently equated the boys who mocked Elisha with the Jews who tormented Christ, thus exonerating the prophet from any personal blame or ethical responsibility.

The behaviour of Old Testament prophets could be enigmatic and controversial, and Elisha was no exception. Taken together, the three images in this exhibition portray different aspects of the prophet’s life: the drama and spectacle surrounding the start of his ministry, represented in the historiated initial; the dignified figure of authority advising his disciples in the Mariawald stained glass; and the irritable and impetuous actions of ‘a man of God’ (his questionable behaviour neatly side-stepped by the use of convenient typological parallels) in the Biblia Pauperum.

To us today, the behaviour of Old Testament prophets may seem enigmatic and controversial, and Elisha is no exception. The three images in this exhibition reflect centuries of theological interpretation that strove to make the prophet meaningful and relevant to times and circumstances different from our own. That all three present quite different aspects of Elisha’s character—flamboyant, contemplative, or impetuous—is an encouragement to imagine biblical figures, and not just Elisha, in ways appropriate to (even while sometimes challenging of) our own settings.

References

Edden, V. 1999. ‘The Mantle of Elijah: Carmelite Spirituality in the Fourteenth Century’, in The Medieval Mystical Tradition: Exeter Symposium IV, ed. by M. Glasscoe (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer), pp. 67–84

Ziolkowski, E. 1991. ‘The Bad Boys of Bethel: Origin and Development of a Sacrilegious Type’, History of Religions 30.4: 331–58