Christian Boy Names Starting With E: Is Elias the Same Prophet as Elijah?

Are Elijah and Elias the same person?

Yes. Elias is the form of Elijah's name used in the Greek New Testament, and the King James Version keeps it there, so Matthew 17:3 reads "Moses and Elias" in the KJV where the NRSV Updated Edition reads "Moses and Elijah."

The clearest proof is in the events. Each of the three King James verses in the table points to Elijah himself: two recall his drought and one places him beside Moses at the transfiguration.

James and Luke give the drought the same length, "three years and six months," and both attach it to Elias. A reader who meets Elias in an older Bible is reading about the prophet who announced the drought to Ahab in 1 Kings 17:1.

The name itself comes from Hebrew Eliyyahu, which Behind the Name translates "my God is Yahweh." The same source says a few early saints bore the name and are usually known by the Latin form Elias, so Elias can recall those saints as well as the prophet.

Behind the Name adds that medieval England usually spelled the name Elis, that it died out there by the 16th century, and that the Puritans revived it as Elijah after the Reformation.

Elijah also appears in scripture as a figure still expected. Malachi 4:5 says "I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord," and in Matthew 11:14 Jesus says of John the Baptist, "he is Elijah who is to come."

Later Jewish mystical tradition goes further and identifies Elijah with the angel Sandalphon, an identification that scripture itself does not state.

Enoch the man, quoted by Jude

Enoch is first a man in the genealogy of Genesis 5. He becomes the father of Methuselah at sixty-five, lives 365 years, and the account ends: "Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him" (Genesis 5:24).

The New Testament reads that ending as a departure without death. Hebrews 11:5 says "Enoch was taken so that he did not experience death," and adds that "he had pleased God."

Jude 14 is where the man and the writings under his name meet in the New Testament. It introduces a prophecy with the words "Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied," so Jude credits him with words that Genesis does not record.

The angels of the Book of Enoch and the question of its place in the Bible belong to that book, and a boy named Enoch is named for the man of Genesis 5 whatever a family concludes about it.

Later Jewish mystical texts also identify Enoch with the angel Metatron, a link that Genesis, Hebrews and Jude do not make.

Is Emmanuel a name or a title?

In Matthew's Gospel, Emmanuel describes who the child is, and the name he is given is Jesus. Matthew 1:23 quotes the prophecy "they shall name him Emmanuel," which means, "God is with us," and two verses later the account closes, "and he named him Jesus" (Matthew 1:25).

The prophecy comes from Isaiah 7:14, where the young woman with child "shall bear a son and shall name him Immanuel," and the NRSV Updated Edition notes "That is, God is with us." Both the KJV and the NRSVUE spell it Immanuel in Isaiah and Emmanuel in Matthew.

Behind the Name derives Emmanuel from Hebrew Immanu'el, "God is with us," and calls it "the foretold name of the Messiah in the Old Testament." It reports English use since the 16th century in both spellings, though never widely, and more use in Spain and Portugal as Manuel and Manoel.

Edward and Ephrem, an English king and a Syriac hymn writer

Edward the Confessor was King of England, born in 1003 and died on 5 January 1066. The Catholic Encyclopedia says he was called to the throne in 1042, at about forty, after the sudden death of Hardicanute.

The same entry says the pope commuted Edward's vow of a pilgrimage to Saint Peter's tomb into the rebuilding of the abbey at Westminster, and that Alexander III canonized him in 1161.

Ephrem, spelled Ephraem in the Catholic Encyclopedia, was born at Nisibis early in the fourth century and died in June 373. He spent his last ten years at Edessa, where he wrote nearly all of his sermons, hymns and commentaries.

The Syrian churches, the Catholic Encyclopedia says, call him the "harp of the Holy Spirit," and Jerome, describing him as a deacon of Edessa, wrote that his works were "publicly read in some churches after the Sacred Scriptures."

Greek, Russian, Coptic and Armenian Christians are among those the encyclopedia lists as honoring him.