Elijah (oratorio) - The Biblical Narrative

The Biblical Narrative

For the Biblical background to the oratorio, see the article Elijah. Mendelssohn uses these Biblical episodes, which in the original are narrated in rather laconic form, to produce intensely — almost luridly — dramatic scenes. These were doubtless well fitted to the taste of Mendelssohn's time, and a Victorian sentimentality also seems detectable in places. Among the episodes are the resurrection of a dead youth, the bringing of rain to parched Israel through Elijah's prayers, and the bodily ascension of Elijah on a fiery chariot into heaven. Perhaps the most dramatic episode is the "contest of the gods", in which Jehovah consumes an offered sacrifice in a column of fire, after a failed sequence of frantic prayers by the prophets of the god Baal. Mendelssohn did not shrink from portraying the episode according to the stark account in the Hebrew Bible, as the discredited prophets of Baal are subsequently taken away and slain.

It is not agreed how Mendelssohn's own view of the Biblical text might have been shaped by his personal history (born into a Jewish family, he was brought up without religion until his baptism as a Lutheran at age seven), though many scholars have speculated about this. In the final section of the oratorio, some draw parallels between the lives of Elijah and Jesus. The Rev. Julius Schubring, one of the librettists who had earlier supplied the text for the oratorio Paulus (St. Paul), wanted to bring a Christian perspective to the end of the oratorio, but Mendelssohn insisted that the story of Elijah be presented faithfully and without revisionism.