India, clothed with skins or stuffs of
camel's hair, having for food only locusts and wild honey.[5] A
certain number of disciples were grouped around him, sharing his life
and studying his severe doctrine. We might imagine ourselves
transported to the banks of the Ganges, if particular traits had not
revealed in this recluse the last descendant of the great prophets of
Israel.

[Footnote 1: Luke i. 5; passage from the Gospel of the Ebionites,
preserved by Epiphanius, (_Adv. Haer._, xxx. 13.)]

[Footnote 2: Luke i. 39. It has been suggested, not without
probability, that "the city of Juda" mentioned in this passage of
Luke, is the town of _Jutta_ (Josh. xv. 55, xxi. 16). Robinson
(_Biblical Researches_, i. 494, ii. 206) has discovered this _Jutta_,
still bearing the same name, at two hours' journey south of Hebron.]

[Footnote 3: Luke i. 15.]

[Footnote 4: Luke i. 80.]

[Footnote 5: Matt. iii. 4; Mark i. 6; fragm. of the Gospel of the
Ebionites, in Epiph., _Adv. Haer._, xxx. 13.]

From the time that the Jewish nation had begun to reflect upon its
destiny with a kind of despair, the imagination of the people had
reverted with much complacency to the ancient prophets. Now, of all
the personages of the past, the remembrance of whom came like the
dreams of a troubled night to awaken and agitate the people, the
greatest was Elias. This giant of the prophets, in his rough solitude
of Carmel, sharing the life of savage beasts, dwelling in the hollows
of the rocks, whence he came like a thunderbolt, to make and unmake
kings, had become, by successive transformations, a sort of superhuman
being, sometimes visible, sometimes invisible, and as one who had not
tasted death. It was generally believed that Elias would return and
restore Israel.[1] The austere life which he had led, the terrible
remembrances he had left behind him--the impression of which is still
powerful in the East[2]--the sombre image which, even in our own time,
causes trembling and death--all this mythology, full of vengeance and
terror, vividly struck the mind of the people, and stamped as with a
birth-mark all the creations of the popular mind. Whoever aspired to
act powerfully upon the people, must imitate Elias; and, as solitary
life had been the essential characteristic of this prophet, they were
accustomed to conceive "the man of God" as a hermit. They imagined
that all the holy personages had had their days of penitence, of
solitude, and of auste