The Disciples of Elijah and Elisha

Jan Witold Żelazny

Abstract

In Syrian tradition, the monk is presented as the inheritor of the customs from the prophets in the Old Testament. According to the first Syrian patristic scholars, the lives of two prophets, in particular Elijah's and Elisha's, illustrated the monk's vocation. This applied not only to Elija's and Elisha's vocation to a life of asceticism, fasting, penance and purity, but also to their many narrative aspects. What distinguished them was their zeal and enthusiasm
in defending the true faith. For the Eastern monk, the prophets' unique manner of involvement in the struggle for the truth became the hallmark of his own vocation and task in the Church community. The Syrian monk was therefore, the guardian of his people, and its purity of faith. In this way, his mission was different from that which the monks fulfilled in the West, where the question of doctrine and orthodoxy was primarily the responsibility of the hierarchy’s. Such an understanding, of the monastic vocation, found a specific anchoring in the Eastern communities' ecclesiology. It seems that this aspect of the monastic vocation concerned not only this movements first period of development, but had, and has (in some respects) its continuation to this day.