E'le'cid (Heb. Elud , 'l^'pN;, whom God has applaud- ed; Sept. ' KXeai), Vulg. Elad), a descendant of Ephra- im (1 Chron. vii, 21), but whether through Sliuthelah (q. v.), or a son of the patriarch (the second Sliuthelah being taken as a repetition of the first, and Ezer and Elead as his brothers), is not determined (see Ber- theau. Comment, zu Chronik, p. 82). B.C. post 1850. Perhnps he is the same with Eladaii (<i. v.) in the preceding verse, who appears to have survived, if iden- tical with Eran (Num. xxvi, 36).
Elea'leh (Heb. Elaleh' , 'rh'S^^, whither God has ascended, once Elale' , X^^lpx, Num. xxxii, 37; Sept. 'EkioXri), a place on the east of Jordan, in the pastoral conntiy, taken possession of and rebuilt by tlio trilie of Kcuben (Num. xxxii, 3, Ti). We lose sight of it till the time of Isaiah and Jeremiah, by both of whom it is mentioned as a Moaliitish town, and, as before, in close connection with Ileshbon (Isa. xv, 4; xvi, 9 ; Jcr. xlviii, 34). It apparently lay close to the border of Ileuben and Gad (Josh, xiii, 26). On the decline of Jewish power, Elealeh, with the whole Mishnr, fell into the hands of the Moabites, and is thus included in
the woes pronounced bj' Isaiah on Moab (xvi, 9) : "I will water thee with my tears, 0 Heshbon and Elea- leh ; for the alarm is fallen upon thy summer fruits, and thj' harvest." Elealeh was still a l&riie village in the time of Eusebius and Jerome, one mile from Heshbon (Onomast. s. v. 'EXtaXt, Eleale). The ex- tensive ruins of the place are still to be seen, bearing very nearly their ancient name, El-A'al, thougli with a modern signification, " the high," a little more than a mile north of Heshbon (llohinson, Researches, ii, 278). It stands on the summit of a rounded hill commanding a very extended view of the plain, and the whole of the southern Belka (Burckhardt, Syria, p. £65 ; Seet- zen, 1854, p. 407). The whole surrounding plain is now desolate. The statements of all travellers who have visited it show how fully the prophetic curses have been executed (Irliy and Mangles, 1st ed. p. 471 ; Ritter, Pal. und Syr. ii, 1172; G. Eobinson's Palest, and Syr. ii, 180 sq.). — Kitto, s. v. ; Smith, s. v.
Ele'asa ('EXfoo-rt, Alex. MS. 'A\ana ; Vulg. La- isa'), a place at which Judas Maccabaus encamped be- fore the fatal battle with Bacchides, in which he lost his life (1 Mace, ix, 5). It was apparently not far from Azotus (comp. ver. 15). Josephus {Ant. xii, 11, 1) has Bithzetho (Bj/S^j/S-w), by which he elsewhere renders Bezeth. But this may be but a corrupt read- ing of Berzetha or Bethzetha, which is found in some MSS. for Berea in 1 ]Macc. ix, 4. Elsewhere {War, i, 1, 6), however, .Josephus states that Judas lost his life in a battle with the generals of Antiochus Eupator at Adasa (q. v.), which is probably the correct reading here, since Adasa was where Judas had encamped on a former memorable occasion (1 Mace, vii, 40). It is singular that Bezeth should be mentioned in this con- nection also (see verse 19). — Smith, s. v.
Ele'asah [many £'^<?a'sah], the name (in the A. V.) of two men (1 Chron. ii, 39 ; viii, ."7 ; ix. 4''), iden- tical (in the Heb.) with that of two others (.b r. xxix, 3 ; Ezra x, 22), more properly Anglicized Elasah (q. v.).
Eleatic School, the designation given to an early and brilliant sect of Greek philosoi hers. The name was bestowed in consequence of the residence or birth of the chiefs of the school at Elea or Velia, a town on the western coast of Italy, founded in 544 by the Pho- caians, who abandoned their Ionian home rather than submit to the arms of Cjn-us. The general character- istic of this type of speculation is the maintenance of a broad and irreconcilable distinction between the ap- parent and the intellectual universe — between transi- tor}' phenomena and eternal truth. It is thus con- trasted with the earlier Ionic School, which assumed material principles as the origin of the world, and with the Pythagorean vSchool, which assigned a mathemat- ical basis for the creation. But it exhibited several points of contact with these more ancient doctrines, and hence both Empedocles and Democritus are some- times enumerated among the Eleatics. In its wider acceptation, the Eleatic philosophy includes the pan- theistic idealism ofXenophanes and Parmenides, and the sceptical materialism of Leucippus and Epicurus, embracing both extremes of metaphysical thought. It may thus be distrilnited into two main divisions :
I. The Eleatic School proper, which asserted a di- vine unity to be the origin and essence of all things, regarded multiplicity as only the manifestation of the incessant activity oif this divine unity, considered all change as merely phenomenal, and all temporal fiiets as onlj' the transitory and deceitful shows of things, lielieving that the only true existence was the one in- discrete divine Essence, which underlay, determined, animated, and enclosed the whole sensible and intelli- gilile order of the universe.
II. The Atomistic or Ejiicurean School, which con- fined attention to the earthly and material side of the problem, not denying the immaterial and spiritual, but