Wandering Jew
A cursed immortal condemned to wander until the Second Coming.
The earliest known written account appears in a Latin chronicle from Bologna, dated to 1223, describing pilgrims meeting a Jew in Armenia who scolded Jesus.[1]
Quick Facts
- First known manuscript
- Flores Historiarum by Roger of Wendover, under the year 1228
- Early name
- Cartaphilus, later baptized as Joseph
- First pamphlet
- Kurtze Beschreibung und Erzählung von einem Juden mit Namen Ahasverus (1602)
- First french edition
- Bordeaux, 1609
- First english appearance
- 1625 (as a parody)
- Nazi exhibition
- Der ewige Jude, 1937–1938
Facts from the source article.
Making and release
Roger of Wendover's Flores Historiarum, around 1228, records a variant where an Armenian archbishop visiting England told monks about a Jew named Cartaphilus, later baptized as Joseph.[2][3] The name Ahasver was given to the Wandering Jew from at least the 17th century, adapted from the Persian king Ahasuerus in the Book of Esther.[4] A 17th-century pamphlet, Kurtze Beschreibung und Erzählung von einem Juden mit Namen Ahasverus, greatly popularized the legend.[5] The first French edition appeared in Bordeaux in 1609, and the story reached England as a parody by 1625.[6]
The first written version of the legend appears in a Latin chronicle from Bologna, which describes a Jew in Armenia who scolded Jesus on the way to his crucifixion and is therefore doomed to live until the Second Coming, and who returns to the age of 30 every hundred years.[1] This pamphlet spread quickly, with eight different editions appearing in 1602 alone.[6] Matthew Lewis's 1796 Gothic novel The Monk includes the Wandering Jew in one of its secondary plots, where he is depicted as an exorcist.[7]
What the cited sources add
P. Hume Brown's account of Goethe's youth states that Goethe was familiar with the Wandering Jew legend from chap-books he read in childhood.[8] Brown notes that Goethe designed a poem on the subject, opening with Ahasuerus incurring the curse of Cain.[8] The same source describes Goethe's portrayal of the shoemaker as half Essene, half Methodist or Moravian, not the type originally conceived by Goethe.[8] Brown records that while Goethe was courting Lili, his wandering desires went out to another correspondent, and that the distracting image of Lili was never absent from his mind during a tour.[8]
References
- Wikipedia, "Wandering Jew" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Anderson 1965 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Wandering Jew" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Roger of Wendover's Flowers of History", 1849; "Flores historiarum", H.M. Stationery Office, 1890, p. 149; For the 13th century expulsion of Jews, see History of the Jews in England and Edict of Expulsion. (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Wandering Jew" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "De Joseph, qui ultimum Christi adventum adhuc vivus exspectat", 1849, p. 175; "Roger of Wendover's Flowers of History", H. G. Bohn, 1842; Jacobs 1911; "Roger of Wendover's Flowers of history, Comprising the history of England from the descent of the Saxons to A.D. 1235; formerly ascribed to Matthew Paris.", London, 1849; Anderson 1965 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Wandering Jew" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Daube, "Ahasver", The Jewish Quarterly Review, January 1955, p. 243−244; "Ahasver, Ahasverus, Wandering Jew—People—Virtual Shtetl" (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Wandering Jew" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Daube, "Ahasver", The Jewish Quarterly Review, January 1955, p. 243−244 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Wandering Jew" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Jacobs, "Books of Character", J. E. Adlard, 2013, p. 44 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Wandering Jew" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Wallace Austin Flanders, "Godwin and Gothicism: St. Leon", Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Winter 1967, p. 533–545 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- P. Hume Brown, The Youth of Goethe (London, 1913). Chapter XI, "Goethe and Spinoza—Der ewige Jude 1773–1774". facts only, no text reused. gutenberg.org
Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Wandering Jew (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.
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