“Despite a sense of failure, Elijah‘s struggle against the paganizing regime of King Ahab and queen, Jezebel, managed to save monotheism from eclipse, and in so doing alter the course of human history. ”

“Despite all that is said, Elijah the person remains an enigma. Unlike the supercharged personalities previously mentioned, we are told nothing about Elijah’s family, his background, how he lives–indeed anything but what he says and does on a limited number of occasions. he is an alien to us earthlings as a comet: he appears unannounced from nowhere, blazes across the heavens, and as suddenly disappears back from where he came. Both he and his life remain enigmatic.”Hillel Millgram in The Elijah Enigma

“Elijah was a pivotal figure in the development of monotheistic religion. It was he who is shown as initiating the decisive shift from understanding the religious vision that we know by the name monotheism as being centered on the worship of the LORD, the God who created and controls Nature–a conception not all that far removed from the pagan worship of nature itself an its gods–to seeing the deity as first and foremost the God of History, arbiter of and directly involved in the destiny of humanity. And perhaps even more important in the long perspective of the development of monotheism, it was Elijah who can be credited with initiating the transition from preoccupation with the LORD Himself and His formal worship to a focus on His demand for justice and equality.” Hillel Millgram in The Elijah Enigma