Wandering Jew

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See also Wandering Jew (plant) for information on the plants of the same name.

The Wandering Jew is a figure from Christian folklore. The legend relates that a Jewish shoemaker, taunting Jesus on the way to crucifixion, was told by him "thou shalt go on forever till I return". The shoemaker was thus punished for his indiscretion by being forced to wander the earth until the second coming of Jesus.

Others trace it to the Matthew 16:28:

Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.

When some interpreters see the "wandering Jew" as a metaphorical personification of the Jewish diaspora, the subtext that links the two is that the destruction of Jerusalem was in retribution for Jewish responsibility for the Crucifixion. A more allegorical view claims instead that the "wandering Jew" personifies any individual who has been made to see the error of his wickedness, if the mocking of the Passion epitomizes the callousness of mankind toward the suffering of human beings.

A variety of names have been given for the Wandering Jew, including:

  • Ahasuerus (or Ahasverus)
  • Buttadeus (or Buttadeu)
  • Cartaphilus (or Cartophilax)
  • Der ewige Jude (German: "the eternal Jew")
  • Le Juif errant (French: "the wandering Jew")
  • Isaac Laquedem is a name attributed to him in France, in popular legend as well as in the Dumas novel (see below)
  • Juan Espera en Dios (Spanish: "John [who] waits for God")

There also exists a Jewish family line with the surname Wander. They mostly originate from Galicia in Central Europe.

Contents

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Origin of the legend

The legend first appeared in a pamphlet of four leaves entitled "Kurtze Beschreibung und Erzählung von einem Juden mit Namen Ahasverus" ('short description and tale of a Jew with the name Ahasuerus'). This professes to have been printed at Leiden in 1602 by Christoff Crutzer, but no printer of that name has been discovered, and the real place and printer can not be ascertained.

The legend spread quickly throughout Germany, no less than eight different editions appearing in 1602; altogether forty appeared in Germany before the end of the eighteenth century. Eight editions in Dutch and Flemish are known; and the story soon passed to France, the first French edition appearing in Bordeaux, 1609, and to England, where it appeared in the form of a parody in 1625 (Jacobs and Wolf, "Bibliotheca Anglo-Judaica", p. 44, No. 221). The pamphlet was translated also into Danish and Swedish; and the expression "eternal Jew" is current in Czech.

According to L. Neubaur, the legend is founded on the words given in Matthew 16:28:

Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom. (King James Version)

This is quoted in the earliest German pamphlet of 1602.

Another legend arose in the Church that St. John would not die before the second coming of Jesus. From John 21:20-23:

20. And Peter, turning about, seeth the disciple following whom Jesus loved, who had also leaned on His breast at the supper, and had said, Lord, which is he who betrayeth Thee? 21. When, therefore, Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, Lord, and what shall he do? 22. Jesus saith to him, If I will that he remain till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou Me. 23. Then this saying went forth among the brethren, that that disciple would not die; yet Jesus had not said to him that he would not die; but, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?

Yet another version declares that it is the attendant Malchus, whose ear Saint Peter cut off in the garden of Gethsemane (John 18:10), who was condemned to wander until the second coming.

His action is associated in some way with the scoffing of Jesus, and is so represented in a broadsheet which appeared in 1584. An actual predecessor of the Wandering Jew is recorded in the "Flores Historiarum" by Roger of Wendover in the year 1228. An Armenian archbishop, then visiting England, was asked by the monks of St Albans about the celebrated Joseph of Arimathea, who had spoken to Jesus, and was still alive. The archbishop answered that he had himself seen him in Armenia, and that his name was Cartaphilus, a Jewish shoemaker, who, when Jesus stopped for a second to rest while carrying His cross, hit Him, and told Him "Go on quicker, Jesus! Go on quicker! Why dost Thou loiter?", to which Jesus, "with a stern countenance", is said to have replied: "I shall stand and rest, but thou shalt go on til the last day." The Armenian Bishop also reported that Cartaphilus had since converted to Christianity and spent his wandering days proselytizing and leading a hermitic life.

Matthew Paris included this passage from Roger of Wendover in his own history; and other Armenians appeared in 1252 at the Abbey of St. Albans, repeating the same story, which was regarded there as a great proof of the Christian religion (Matthew Paris, "Chron. Majora", ed. Luard, London, 1880, v. 340-341). The same archbishop is said to have appeared at Tournai in 1243, telling the same story, which is given in the "Chronicles of Phillip Mouskes", ii. 491, Brussels, 1839.

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Claims of sightings

The various appearances claimed for him were at:

The last known claim appears to have been in the United States in the year 1868, when he was reported to have visited a Mormon named O'Grady (see Deseret News, September 23, 1868).

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The Wandering Jew in literature

The figure of the doomed sinner, forced to wander without the hope of rest in death till the millennium, impressed itself upon the popular imagination, mainly with reference to the seeming immortality of the wandering Jewish people. These two aspects of the legend are represented in the different names given to the central figure. In German-speaking countries he is referred to as "Der Ewige Jude" (the immortal, or eternal, Jew), while in Romance-speaking countries he is known as "Le Juif Errant" and "L'Ebreo Errante"; the English form, probably because derived from the French, has followed the Romance. The Spanish name is Juan Espera en Dios, "John [who] waits for God"

The legend has been the subject of poems by Schubart, Aloys Schreiber, Wilhelm Müller, Lenau, Chamisso, Schlegel, Julius Mosen (an epic, 1838), and Köhler; of novels by Franz Horn (1818), Oeklers, and Schücking; and of tragedies by Klingemann ("Ahasuerus", 1827) and Zedlitz (1844). Hans Christian Andersen made his "Ahasuerus" the Angel of Doubt, and was imitated by Heller in a poem on "The Wandering of Ahasuerus", which he afterward developed into three cantos. Robert Hamerling, in his "Ahasver in Rom" (Vienna, 1866), identifies Nero with the Wandering Jew. Goethe had designed a poem on the subject, the plot of which he sketched in his "Dichtung und Wahrheit". Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, appears to be inspired by the Wandering Jew story.

In France, Edgar Quinet published his prose epic on the legend in 1833, making the subject the judgment of the world; and Eugene Sue wrote his Juif Errant in 1844. From the latter work, in which the author connects the story of Ahasuerus with that of Herodias, most people derive their knowledge of the legend. Grenier's poem on the subject (1857) may have been inspired by Gustave Doré's designs published in the preceding year, perhaps the most striking of Doré's imaginative works.

In England — besides the ballad given in Percy's "Reliques" and reprinted in Child's "English and Scotch Ballads" (1st ed., viii. 77) — there is a drama entitled The Wandering Jew, or Love's Masquerade, written by Andrew Franklin (1797). William Godwin's novel St. Leon (1799) has the motive of the immortal man, and Shelley introduced Ahasuerus into his "Queen Mab". George Croly's "Salathiel", which appeared anonymously in 1828, treated the subject in an imaginative form; it was reprinted under the title "Tarry Thou Till I Come" (New York, 1901).

  • Le Juif Errant (The Wandering Jew) - a novel by Eugene Sue
  • The Wandering Jew - a novel and a 1921 Broadway play by E. Temple Thurston
  • Isaac Laquedem - an unfinished novel by Alexandre Dumas
  • "The Wandering Jew" - a short story by Rudyard Kipling
  • Atta Toll - a novel by Heinrich Heine
  • Histoire du juif errant (Wandering Jew story) - a novel by Jean d'Ormesson
  • In Walter M. Miller, Jr.'s novel A Canticle For Leibowitz, an important early novel in the post-apocalyptic science fiction genre, the wandering Jew is portrayed as an anti-social hermit living in the desert in Utah. His first and last appearances in the book are set about 1,200 years apart. Miller appears to identify the wandering Jew with Lazarus, whom Jesus resurrected but never actually sent back to death — so he has been alive since that time. (This is a common though apocryphal interpretation: see also Midnight Nation below.)
  • The Polish author Jan Potocki's The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, published in French starting in 1799, has the Wandering Jew as a character named Ahasuerus. He is summoned several times by a cabbalist and made to tell stories.
  • Charles Maturin retold the story and renamed the Wandering Jew as the eponymous protagonist of the Gothic novel Melmoth the Wanderer (1820).
  • In Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, the Wandering Jew is a strange mule-like creature that spoils crops; he also features in the Macondo-based short story "One Day After Saturday."
  • Stefan Heym - Ahasver (known in English by the title "The Wandering Jew")
  • In Jack L. Chalker's science fiction series "The Well of Souls", the wandering Jew is transformed to a very powerful character.
  • Russel Griffin's science-fiction "space opera", The Makeshift God, provides a novel identity for Battadeus: a robot sent to Earth by the Albarian civilisation in the Sirius system to document mankind's technological progress to space travel.
  • In the gothic novel The Monk (1795) by Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818), the main protagonist was saved from a curse by the legendary "Wandering Jew".
  • In the comic book/graphic novel The Sandman by Neil Gaiman, Dream and a man named Hob Gadling met in the same pub on the same day every hundred years, and local legend said they were the Devil and the Wandering Jew. Hob had been granted eternal life by Dream's sister, Death. It is made clear in the story that Hob knew the legend of the Wandering Jew before he became immortal, though.
  • One of the possible origins of the comic book character "the Phantom Stranger" is that he is the Wandering Jew.
  • In Dan Simmons' book, Ilium, one of the characters, a woman named Savi, is portrayed as the Wandering Jew.
  • In Dan Simmons' book, Hyperion, one of the characters, a man named Sol Weintraub, is portrayed as the Wandering Jew.
  • In a short story called "The Lost Leonardo" in J.G. Ballard's The Terminal Beach (1964) the Wandering Jew appears as an art thief who steals old master paintings of the Crucifixion in order to alter his depiction in them.
  • In the book The Homeward Bounders by Diana Wynne Jones the Wandering Jew is a Homeward Bounder, forced to travel from world to world for seeing some demonic entities playing a board game with the entire world. In the book, he claims that he cannot tell anyone about Them (the demons) but must admit to sinning against god.
  • In the comic book/graphic novel Midnight Nation by J. Michael Straczynski, Lazarus whom Jesus resurrected is the Wandering Jew who briefly helps the main character in his quest to save his soul.
  • In the story Cartaphilus in the collection of short stories Persian Dawns, Egyptian Nights by the Scottish author Lewis Grassic Gibbon (the pseudonym of James Leslie Mitchell), best known for his epic work A Scots Quair. Gibbon may have heard of the story connected with the Armenian Archbishop, as this story is set in the 13th century. In it an imprisoned knight when freed goes in search of Cartaphilus, the Wandering Jew, with whom he shared a cell. The knight in turn, after much travelling, is seen as the Wandering Jew himself.
  • In the play "Underneath the Lintel" (2001) by Glen Berger
  • In a single issue of Mr. Majestic written by Alan Moore the last survivors of our dying universe (all immortals) gather to see the end of creation, amongst them is a stereotypical New York Jew, who is clearly (though not explicitly) the Wandering Jew.
  • In "the Immortal", a tale written by Jorge Luis Borges, the main character is Joseph Cartaphilus.
  • In The Lost Chronicles of Ephraim Grey, the comic series written by Derik Hefner and illustrated by David R. Wagoner, several versions of the legend are merged together. The series follows the centuries-spanning stories of both Ephraim Grey (the Wandering Jew) and Longinus (the Centurion).
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The Wandering Jew in movies and television

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The Wandering Jew in computer games

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Related legends

There is a strong correspondence between the legend of the Wandering Jew and that of The Flying Dutchman, a fact noted by Heinrich Heine.

The captain of a ship named the Flying Dutchman swore in 1681 that he would not retreat in the face of a storm, but would continue his attempt to round the Cape of Good Hope even if it took until Judgment Day. The ship, legend goes, was thenceforth doomed to sail forever. The Flying Dutchman is usually spotted from afar, sometimes glowing with ghostly light. If she is hailed by another ship, her crew will often try to send messages to land, to people long since dead.

Another similar legend involves the origins of the Gypsies. In that tale, no blacksmith would make the nails that would hold Jesus on the cross--either they were followers of Jesus or they anticipated a backlash from his followers. Finally, one blacksmith was paid an enormous amount for the nails when the time drew short. After the Crucifixation, the nails appeared in a ghostly visage (much like the knife in MacBeth) that followed and haunted the blacksmith and his family where ever they went. The family was thus forced into a rootless wandering, always attempting to escape the nails they'd sold their souls for. Their decendants were reviled by "decent" Christians for their part in the Crucifixion, hence the Gypsies' perpetual existence on the outskirts of Christian society. Hence, the Gypsies constant wandering and exclusion were explained by their betrayal of Jesus -- much in the same way the exclusion and pogroms against Jews were explained.

Another doomed wanderer is found in the Irish tale of Jack of the Lantern. Of course, in Genesis, Cain is issued with a similar punishment — to go to the Land of Nod (which means 'wandering'), and wander over the earth, never reaping a harvest again, but scavenging.

The Book of Mormon includes the Three Nephites who also became immortal after interacting with Jesus. They were given immortality as a reward, however, rather than a punishment.

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References

  • Anderson, George K. The Legend of the Wandering Jew. Providence: Brown University Press, 1965. xi, 489 p.; reprint edition ISBN 0874515475

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External links

es:Judío Errante eo:Ahasvero fr:Juif errant he:היהודי הנודד ja:彷徨えるユダヤ人 pl:Żyd Wieczny Tułacz pt:Judeu errante ru:Агасфер sv:Ahasverus

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