Elijah’s Cup: a Reminder, a Tradition, and a Memory

Posted on December 7, 2024 by Brian H. Gill

Brian H. Gill's photo: an Elijah cup we've had for years, now; make that decades. (December 4, 2024)I can’t claim Abraham as an ancestor.

My ancestors very likely hadn’t even heard of Abraham and Isaac until missionaries arrived, and I’ve mentioned that before.

I have, however, learned a bit about our Lord’s family history. That brings me to the Elijah cup my wife and I bought, some years back.

Make that decades. My wife and I got it while in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, for a brother-in-law’s wedding, which puts it in the 1990s.

Elijah’s Cup in Context

Photo: Brian H. Gill, at his desk. (March 2021)I had a little more hair then, and more of it was black, but I did and still do have a haven’t-shaved-in-years beard.

At any rate, while down in the Cities, we bought an Elijah cup.

There’s a lot of history, and even more tradition, involved in the Elijah cup’s story. Including why I should probably be calling it Elijah’s Cup.

But that’s for another time. Maybe around Easter, since Elijah’s Cup is part of the Passover Seder. Then again, maybe not. Calling the topics complicated would be a massive understatement.

The Passover Seder meal goes back to what’s outlined in Exodus 13:3–10.1 This was centuries after Joseph entered Egypt as a slave, ended up handling Pharaoh’s internal affairs, and that’s another story.

The point is that Moses had, reluctantly, gone back to Egypt — that’s yet another story — and had several unsatisfactory interviews with the Pharaoh of his era, before Egypt’s ruler told him to get out of Dodge.2

“During the night Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, ‘Leave my people at once, you and the Israelites! Go and serve the LORD as you said.
Take your flocks, too, and your herds, as you said, and go; and bless me, too!'”
(Exodus 12:31–32)

“Remember This Day….”

James Tissot's 'Moses Speaks to Pharaoh'. (ca. 1896-1902) at the Jewish Museum, New York; via Wikipedia.Moses and the Israelites were on their way when Pharaoh changed his mind. Maybe he finally realized that they were a fair fraction of his land’s workforce.

Whichever pharaoh it was, I’ll give him credit for decisive action.

Leading a significant military force, including at least one elite unit, he caught up with the refugees. But I’m getting ahead of the story.

Meanwhile, Moses was taking steps to ensure that the folks heading for a homeland they’d never seen didn’t forget this part of their long story.

“Moses said to the people, ‘Remember this day on which you came out of Egypt, out of a house of slavery. For it was with a strong hand that the LORD brought you out from there. Nothing made with leaven may be eaten.”
(Exodus 13:3)

Millennia later, they’re still remembering that day, eating unleavened bread and re-telling the story of how they left Egypt.

An Elijah’s Cup is part of that Passover Seder. I gather that it’s the ‘fifth cup’, set for Elijah, a sign of hope and expectation: looking forward to his coming, as herald for the Messiah.

I see Elijah’s Cup as a reminder that the Messiah has come. But that’s because I’m a Christian, and think that Peter was right.3

“Simon Peter said in reply, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.'”
(Matthew 16:16)

A few more points, and I’ll get around to the time my wife and I bought an Elijah’s Cup.

First, how I see the book we call “Exodus”, AKA שְׁמוֹת‎/Shemoth/Shmot‎ (“Names”).

I think the book of Exodus is true. I also think it is not a history book, written by someone with a contemporary American viewpoint. As for what Sacred Scripture is, this is a pretty good summary:

“…Know what the Bible is – and what it isn’t. The Bible is the story of God’s relationship with the people he has called to himself. It is not intended to be read as history text, a science book, or a political manifesto. In the Bible, God teaches us the truths that we need for the sake of our salvation….”
(“Understanding the Bible” , Mary Elizabeth Sperry, USCCB)

Moses, Pharaoh —

John Martin's 'Seventh Plague of Egypt' (1823)I’ve been wandering off-topic, but there are a couple more points I want to make about Exodus, Moses, and all that.

I gather that “the modern scholarly consensus” is that Moses is make-believe, maybe based on someone who really existed, but mostly mythical.

“Scholars hold different opinions on the historicity of Moses. For instance, according to William G. Dever, the modern scholarly consensus is that the biblical person of Moses is largely mythical while also holding that ‘a Moses-like figure may have existed somewhere in the southern Transjordan in the mid-late 13th century B.C.’ and that ‘archeology can do nothing’ to prove or confirm either way. Some scholars, such as Konrad Schmid and Jens Schröter, consider Moses a historical figure….”
(Moses, Historicity, Wikipedia (excerpt taken December 4, 2024))

The consensus crowd has a point.

An historical document of a sort: Thutmosis III cartouches in the temple at Deir el-Bahari.

Whoever was pharaoh at the time didn’t see to it that future generations would remember him as the leader who deprived Egypt of a whole mess of workers, wiping out significant parts of his country’s military in the process.

I’m not surprised. Official records at the time were like today’s press releases, and the debacle described in Exodus wasn’t good PR. Not from Pharaoh’s viewpoint.

If the current academic consensus is right, and “a Moses-like figure” lived in the mid to late 13th century B.C., then about three and a quarter millennia have passed since his time.

I won’t insist on this, but maybe some records from that period got lost in what happened about a century later.

— The Late Bronze Age Collapse, George Washington, and Me

Finn Bjørklid's (?) map showing the Bronze Age collapse.Folks talking about burned cities and unburied corpses littering abandoned streets call it the Late Bronze Age collapse.

Others, discussing Homer’s “legendary” conflict involving the world’s major powers, call it the Trojan War.

These days, I gather that conventional wisdom says Homer’s epic just happened to be set around the time when civilization shattered: abruptly and messily

After the Late Bronze Age collapse, life went on. Folks endured centuries of chaos, poverty, and illiteracy. But they endured: eventually rebuilding, or restarting, their civilizations.

Think of that period as being sort of like those post-apocalypse movies. But without giant mutant frogs.

I’m impressed at how much knowledge didn’t get lost during those centuries.

And, partly because accommodating the academic in-crowd isn’t among my priorities, I figure that Moses really was Moses.

I’m also willing to think that George Washington was a real person: which seems obvious, today, only two and a half centuries later.

John James Barralet's 'Apotheosis of Washington,' based on work by Gilbert Stuart. (1800-1802)But let’s say it’s three and a quarter millennia after our first president’s heyday, the same interval that’s elapsed since a scholarly consensus says “a Moses-like figure” lived.

Okay. My hypothetical future year is 4824. Much of what’s known about the United States is based on “America’s Story”, written during the 21st century.

Let’s also say that academic fashions of this imagined future are like today’s.

Eminent academicians might say that “America’s Story” is an unreliable account, since it was written by Americans: and therefore biased. As for George Washington, he’s clearly a mythologized figure, embodying the spirit of civic virtues.

They’d point out that not only is there no documentation of the Cherry Tree Myth; but artwork depicting the Apotheosis of Washington demonstrate that this figure was worshiped, possibly as a guardian deity.4

And that’s another topic. Several, actually.

Overheard While Getting Our Elijah’s Cup

Brian H. Gill's photo: an Elijah cup we've had for years, now; make that decades. (December 4, 2024)
The Elijah cup we bought in the 1990s.

Finally, it’s time that I recall the time my wife and I, and our oldest daughter, picked up that Elijah’s Cup. Maybe our second-oldest, too.

We had some free time, enough to find a Jewish gift shop and look for an Elijah’s Cup. Three decades later, I can’t remember the name of the place.

I do remember that while we were looking around, a conversation was in progress. Another couple were discussing their options with the man who was tending the shop.

Seems that they had something specific in mind: a wedding gift, maybe. At any rate, there were two versions of this item in stock.

One had been prepared the right way, and was significantly more expensive. The less expensive item was indistinguishable from the correctly-prepared one.

I don’t know why the couple didn’t either buy the one that was kosher, or take the less expensive one, and palm it off as the real McCoy.

I also don’t know if “kosher” is the right word in this context, but never mind.

That conversation went on at some length.

Now, I’m aware of cultural norms regarding eavesdropping. But these folks weren’t making any effort to avoid broadcasting.

They also seemed unable to either (1) accept the correct item’s extra expense or (2) economize and pass off the substitute as a genuine article.

I’m pretty sure my reaction to their expressed attitude was obvious. I’ve got pretty much the opposite of a poker face. I’m not sure that I was exactly appalled, but I can’t think of a better word for how I felt.

Taking Traditions Seriously

Black Stripe's photo: A set of tefillin, made from cow hide rather than sheep hide, single leather piece, tefillin in the Ashkanazi tradition. (2013)Again, I’m about as gentile as it gets, west of the Urals and north of the Mediterranean.

But whoever was getting that item probably took Judaism’s traditions and customs seriously. So do I, for that matter, although I’m not about to start wearing tefillin: and that’s yet another topic, for another day.

The cost-conscious couple made their decision and left. The shopkeeper looked at me, smiled and shrugged as he spread his hands. Then my wife and I got our Elijah’s Cup.

We haven’t included a Passover Seder in our Maundy/Holy Thursday routines.5 It’s not that we’re against doing so. We just haven’t adopted that custom.

I do, however, see to it that I get to Mass on Holy Thursday. My wife: she gets out even less than I do. Ours isn’t the world’s healthiest household, and that’s yet again another topic.

I’ve talked about some of this before, and probably will again:

1 Feasts and a prophet:

2 asdfasdf:

3 Remembering:

4 The distant and not-so-distant past, remembering that reality has layers:

“…It’s something too many of us forget, that reality has layers. Occasionally people ask me how I can be Catholic and a science journalist. The answer is simple: Truth does not contradict truth. Both science and religion are pursuit of truth. They’re after different aspects of truth, different layers of reality, but they’re still both fundamentally about truth….”
(Camille M. Carlisle, Sky and Telescope (June 2017)) quoted in “Science, Religion, and Saying Goodbye to the 19th Century”, Perspectives (May 25, 2024)

5 Religious practices:

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About Brian H. Gill

I was born in 1951. I'm a husband, father and grandfather. One of the kids graduated from college in December, 2008, and is helping her husband run businesses and raise my granddaughter; another is a cartoonist and artist; #3 daughter is a writer; my son is developing a digital game with #3 and #1 daughters. I'm also a writer and artist.
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