Election of Pope. See Cardinals ; Con- clave ; Pope.
El-elo'he-Is'Tael (Hebrew El Elohy' Yisrael', bx^b'i "'ribx h^ — Mighty One, God of Israel ; Sept. 6 S-tof '\apaij\ ; Vulg. Fortissimus Dens Israel), the name bestowed by Jacob on the altar which he erect- ed facing the city of Shechem, in the piece of culti- vated land upon which he had pitched his tent, and which he afterwards purchased fiom the Bene-Hamor (Gen. xxxiii, 20). This compound term designates God as the being who can do whatever seems good to him, and who, in the recent experience of Jacob, had peculiarly manifested his power in overcoming the deep-rooted enmity of Esau, and thereby averting the most alarming evil which Jacob had ever been called to encounter. See Jacob.
Elements (otoix'eio)- The etymon both of the Eng- lish and Greek word conveys their primary meaning : thus, elements, from "elementa," the alimenta from which things are made, and nToixtici, from t77f(\'w,"ta go up t)y steps" — the first principles whence the subse- quent parts of things (rrroixoifft') proceed in order. It seems to have been believed, from a very early period,
ELEM-RECnOKIM
132
ELEPHANT
that all bodies consist of certain first, specific ingredi- ents (rTToi\Ha), into wliich tliey are all resolvable, although difi^erent opinions prevailed respecting the nuinljer and nature of these primary' constituents of things. Ilesychius cxjilains iTro(\;aa by Trup, v^uip, ■)■)}, icai c'ti'if), cup' (01' Tu aojjKira — lire, water, earth, and air, (if which bodies ai'c formed. This, which is the simplest, may be called the primary sense of the word. A secondary use of tlie word relates to the organized parts of which anything is framed, as the letters of the alphaViet (Hesychius gives also yfid/.i^iarct), these be- ing the elements of words ; also the elements, rudi- ments, or first principles of anj'^ art or science.
The word occurs in its jirimary sense. Wis. vii, 17, (Ti'd-arnv Ko(Ti.iov Kui tit'ipytiav a-oixti<^v, "the con- stitution of the world and the operation of the ele- ments ;" also xix, 18. It is used in the same sense, 2 Pet. iii, 10, aroixtla ok Kavcroufieva XnOiiaovrat, and ver. 12, ri'iKsrai, "the elements burning will be dis- solved and melted." The Jews, in Peter's time, spoke of four elements (Josephus, Ant. iii, 7, 7).
The word occurs in a secimdari) sense in Gal. iv, 3-9, Til aroixf'ici tov Kodfiov, "the elements or rudiments of the world," which the apostle calls drT9ii>)~i Kai tttoi- \d oTOtYf ««, " weak and poor elements." He intro- duces the word to preserve the unity of his comparison of the law to a pedarjngue (iii, 24), and of persons under it to children imder tutors; and by the elements or rud'uiients of tlie world he evidently means that state of religious knowledge which had subsisted in the world, among Jews and Gentiles, before Christ ; the weakness of which, among the Jews, may be seen in Heb. vii, 18, 19 ; x, 1 ; and among the Gentiles, in the epistle to the Romans, passim. " The elements of the world'' occurs again. Col. ii, 8-20, in the same sense, as appears from the various allusions Ijoth to the terms used in Grecian philosophy, and the dogmas of the Judaizcrs in the subsequent verses ; the phrase being possibly suggested to the apostle by his previous use of it to tlie Galatians. The word (rrotxtia, in Heb. v, 12, is restricted, by the addition rcov Xoyltov roii Bcoi), to the rudiments of Christianity (see Roscnmiiller and Benson on the passages). — Kitto, s. v.
II. In the Sacraments. — The materials used in the sacraments are called the elements. Water is the ele- ment of baptism, bread and wine are the elements of tlie Eucharist. " This use of the word ' elements' (vroixila) sprung from the philosophy of the school divines, and evidently had reference to the change supposed to take place after consecration. The Church of England has discarded the term in her services, and has introduced instead the word 'creatures' ('These thy creatures of bread and wine') in the communion service, though the word ' elements' is found in one of the rubrics of that office" (Eden). "In all the Jewish sacrifices of which the peopje were partakers, the viands or materials of the feast wei"e first made God's by a pious oblation, and then afterwards eaten by the communicants, not as man's, but as God's pro- visions, who, by thus entertaining them at his own table, declared himself reconciled, and again in cov- enant with them. And therefore our blessed Saviour, when he instituted the new sacrament of his own bodv and blood, first gave thanks and blessed the elements — that is, offered tliem up to (iod as Lord of the crea- tures, as the most ancient fathers expound that pas- sage ; Avho for that reason, wlienev(>r tliey celel)rated the holy Eucharist, always offered the bread and wine for the communion to (Jod upon the altar i)y this or some short ejaculation : ' Lord, we offer thee tliine own out of what thou hast bountifully given us' " (Bishop Patrielv, cited liy Hook, Church Dictionary., s. v.).
Elem-Recho'kim. Sec Jonatii-Elem-Recho-
KIM.
E'leph (Ileh. with the art. ha-F/liph, r^Stn, Vulg. Eleph\ one of the second group of towns allotted to
Benjamin, and named between Zelah ami Jerusalem (Josh, xviii, 28). It is possibly the ruined site mark- ed as Katamon on Van de Velde's " Map of the envi- rons of Jerusalem," about one mile S.W. of Jerusa- lem. The Sept. unites the preceding name with this, under the comjiound form ^)j\a\B<p (Vat. MS. J£i\e- Kui'), and accordingly assigns only thirteen {etKaT{>tlc') cities to this group. Eusebius and Jerome (in then- Onomasticcm, s. v.) mention Sela (SsXa, (pvXifc ^tvia- Hiv) as distinct from Eleph. The Peshito strangely renders the name as Gehira. From the occasional use of r5X in the bucolic sense of "ox," it has been con- jectured tliat "Eleph and its villages" was a pastoral district. The extremely frequent numerical sense, however, of r]7N, a thousand, points rather to the^op- ulousness of these towns, which laj' in the neighboi-liood of Jebus or Jerusalem. Schultens (Prov. Solom. ii, 17) refers to the Arabic alaph, "union," in illustration of both the numerical and the domestic sense of the Heb. root. (See further Meier, Heb. W. w. b. p. 379.) Si- mon (in his Onomasticon, p. 141) refers to the name of the Cilician town MvpiavcpoQ in illustration, and to Deut. i, 11 ; Psa. xci, 7, etc., for an indefinite use of ribx, to designate a great multitude. Fiirst, in his Ilebraisches Worferb. (i, 91, 98), finds in Zech. ix, 7 another mention of our town Eleph, under the form r^SN or ~iX, AUuph; which, like Jebusi, he makes a frontier city belonging to Benjamin and Judah. He quotes from Jephet (or Jefet ben-Ali), a Jewish com- mentator who lived at Jerusalem in the 10th century, a statement that the words of Josh, xviii, 28, "bu "ip^l-^rl wlbxin, are, in fact, the designation of but a single city — or still less, apparently, than even that, for he furtlier quotes Jefet as saying that in his time a ward of Jerusalem bore that aggregate name, in which was the sepulchre of Zechariah. We reject this view as not only doing violence to the distinct enumeration of the group of cities given in Josh, xviii, 28, but as disturbing the sense of the passage in Zech. ix, 7 (see Hongstenberg, Chrisfologt/, iii, 392-394). The phrase tTl^il"3 rSX {tribe-jvince in Jiidah), used bj' the prophet in tliis passage, is by him repeated twice (see Zech. xii, 5, G). In the Pentateuch and 1 Chron. the same noun, riiiSi;, in the plural, designates the chief- tains or "dukes" of Edoni. For some valuable re- marks on the phrase, as indicating the genuineness of the passages in Zechariah, see also Hengstenberg, iv, 67, note. — Kitto, s. v.