"A NESSUNA DI ESSE FU MANDATO ELIA" LC, 4, 25

The book is a pleasant compendium which can offer a true specific area of analysis and study on Elijah, a figure acquiring a privileged role in the Judaic eschatology, as pioneer of Yhwh and of the day of his judgment. In order to understand the importance this figure had for the authors of NT, Cosimo Pagliara leads the reader with contagious enthusiasm through the discovery of this personality, mainly focusing on Luke’s Gospel, the evangelist who - compared with others - depicts in a completely different way the first great prophet of the Northern Kingdom of Israel.

With a fluid language and a well-organized bibliography, the text clearly provides the guidelines to delve into the topic, examining whether the use and the role of Elijah depict the image of Jesus showed by Luke in the Gospel, from the account of his childhood to his baptism, to his ascension and parousia. The subject matter is divided into two parts: the first one lingers over Elijah in Luke’s writings (Gospel and Acts) and the second part highlighting a theological elaboration.

Despite the large amount of mythical material on Elijah, the aim of the Author is not to examine models which have already been represented in various studies of prophetical literature, but to find out new criteria created by Luke in order to contextualise the Biblical Elijah under a different perspective, in the light of Jesus.

Therefore, the volume provides an exhaustive explanation of the interpretative schemes of Luke’s Gospel which are aimed at grasping de facto the paradigmatic function of Elijah in the third Gospel, using a method focusing on the relevance of the final drafyting rather than on the various stages of the textrevision.