years the friendship of Cardinal Egidio, and of several other dignitaries of the church. So intimate were his rela- tions with the Christians that he was accused of having apostatized from Judaism. His opinions were undoubtedly more liberal than those of the majority of the Jews of his time, but there is no reason to question his own assertion that he remained true to the faith in which he was born. When Rome was attacked by Charles V. in 1527, Elias Levita lost all his means for the second time, and again found an asylum in Venice. In 1540 he went to Isny in Swabia, having been invited by Paul Fagius to join him in the superintendence of a printing-press for Hebrew books. The last two years of his life were spent in Venice, where he died in 1549. The most valuable of the numerous works of Elias Levita were those bearing on Hebrew grammar and lexicography. His Massoreth Hammassoreth (Venice, 1538) is a critical commentary on the text of the Hebrew Scriptures, and contains a very able discussion of the question of the origin of the vowel points, which he assigns to the Massoretic doctors of the school of Tiberias in the 5th century after Christ. He also wrote a treatise on Hebrew grammar, a dictionary, chiefly to the Targums and the Talmud, and several smaller works in Hebrew philology. In the preface to his Massoreth, and other por- tions of his works, there are various autobiographical details. A German translation of the Massoreth Hammassoreth by Semler appeared in 1772, and an edition of the work with notes and an English translation was published in London
in 1867.ÉLIE DE BEAUMONT, Jean Baptiste Armand Louis Léonce (1798–1874), a celebrated French geologist, was born at Canon, in Calvados, on the 25th September 1798. He was educated at the Lycée Henri IV., where he took the first prize in mathematics and physics; at the École Polytechnique, where he stood first at the exit examination in 1819; and at the École des Mines, where he began to show a decided preference for the science with which his name is associated. In 1823 he was selected along with Dufrénoy by Brochant de Villiers, the professor of geology in the École des Mines, to accompany him on a scientific tour to England and Scotland, with the double object of inspecting the mining and metallurgical establish- ments of the country, and of studying the principles on which the geological map of England had been prepared, with a view to the construction of a similar map of France. An account of the tour was published by Élie de Beau- mont and Dufrénoy conjointly, under the title Voyage métallurgique en Angleterre (1827). In 1835 he was appointed professor of geology at the École des Mines, in succession to Brochant de Villiers, whose assistant he had been in the duties of the chair since 1827. He held the office of engineer-in-chief of mines in France from 1833. His growing scientific reputation secured his election to the membership of the Academy of Berlin, of the Academy of Sciences of France, and of the Royal Society of London. By a decree of the president he was made a senator of France in 1852, and on the death of Arago (1853) he was chosen perpetual secretary of the Academy of Sciences. Élie de Beaumont’s name is best known to geologists in connection with his theory of the origin of mountain ranges, first propounded in a paper read to the Academy of Sciences in 1829, and afterwards elaborated in several treatises and shorter papers, of which the Notice sur le système des montagnes (3 vols. 1852) may be named as the most important. According to his view, all mountain ranges parallel to the same great circle of the earth are of strictly contemporaneous origin, and between the great circles a relation of symmetry exists in the form of a pentagonal réseau. For an elaborate statement and criticism of the theory, see the introductory address by Hopkins in the Journal of the Geological Society of London for 1853. The theory has not found general acceptance, but it has proved of great value to geological science, owing to the extensive additions to the knowledge of the structure of mountain ranges which its author made in endeavouring to find facts to support it. Probably, however, the best service Élie de Beaumont rendered to science was in con- nection with the geological map of France, in the prepara- tion of which, from 1825 till its completion eighteen years later, he had the leading share. After his compulsory superannuation at the École des Mines, he continued to superintend the issue of the detailed maps almost until his death, which occurred on the 21st September 1874. His academic lectures for 1843—44 were published in 1847 under the title Leçons de Géologie Pratique.
ELIJAH (Elijahu, literally God-Jehovah; in N.T., Elias), the greatest and sternest of the Hebrew prophets, makes his appearance in the narrative of the Old Testament with an abruptness that is strikingly in keeping with his character and work. The words in which he is first intro- duced—“Elijah the Tishbite, of the inhabitants of Gilead” (1 Kings xvii. 1)—contain all that is told of his origin, and, few as the words are, their meaning is not without ambiguity. By varying the pointing of the Hebrew word translated “of the inhabitants” in the authorized version, the passage is understood by a number of critics to indicate a Tishbeh in Gilead, not named elsewhere, as the birth- place of the prophet; but it is not certain that anything more definite is meant than that the prophet came from Gilead, the mountainous region beyond Jordan. Whether the place of his birth is definitely indicated or not, there is nothing said of his genealogy; and thus his unique position among the prophets of Israel, whose descent is almost invariably given, is signalized from the first. Some have supposed that he was by birth a heathen and not a Jew, but this is an unfounded conjecture, so inherently improbable that it does not deserve consideration. His appearance in the sacred narrative, like Melchisedek, “without father, without mother,” gave rise to various rabbinical traditions, such as that he was Phinehas,[1] the grandson of Aaron, returned to earth, or that he was an angel in human form.
prophet lay in the reign of Ahab, which, according to the usual chronology, commenced about 918 b.c. He is introduced in the passage already quoted (1 Kings xvii. 1) as predicting the drought God was to send upon Israel as a punishment for the apostasy into which Ahab had been led by his heathen wife Jezebel. The duration of the drought is vaguely stated in Kings; from Luke iv. 25 and James v. 17, we learn that it lasted three years and a half. During the first portion of this period Elijah, under the divine direction, found a refuge by the brook Cherith, “before the Jordan.” This description leaves it uncertain whether the brook was to the east of Jordan in Elijah’s native Gilead, or to the west in Samaria, as Robinson supposes. Here he drank of the brook and was fed by ravens, who night and morning brought him bread and flesh. The word translated “ravens” has also been rendered “merchants,” “Arabians,” or “inhabitants of the rock Oreb.” There is a general concurrence of opinion, however, that the authorized version represents the true sense of the original. When the growing severity of the drought had dried up the brook, the prophet, under the same divine direction as before, betook himself to another refuge in Zarephath, a Phoenician town near Zidon. At the gate of the town he met the widow to whom he had been sent gathering sticks for the preparation
of what she believed was to be her last meal. Though
- ↑ Cf. Selden, De Success. in Pont. Heb., lib. ii. cap. 2.
