The Apocalypse of Elijah is an early Christian work written in the Coptic language commonly held to be a documentation of the oral presentation of multiple original and classical manuscripts.
[1] Presented in part as the direct word of the Hebrew God, Yahweh, to the biblical prophet Elijah, from where its name is derived, the text includes a short commentary on some early Christian fasting and prayer disciplines, a prophetic message about the kingdoms of Assyria and Egypt, and accounts of the presentation of the antichrist, his encounters with Elijah and Enoch, and his ultimate demise.
[3][4][5] Contrary to what the title would suggest, the Coptic text is not often formally considered to be an apocalypse in genre, nor is it believed to be written or influenced by the biblical prophet Elijah.
[2] Additionally, around the time of the manuscript’s potential origin within the Christian communities in Egypt (discussed in detail below), there is evidence for the existence of multiple pseudepigraphic works attributed to the prophet Elijah, most famously referenced by the 4th century theologian Didymus the Blind.
[6] There is another text called the Apocalypse of Elijah that is referenced by both Origen and Jerome, early Christian scholars, that was subject to debate concerning its relationship to Paul the Apostle's first letter to the Corinthians.
Together, these pseudepigraphic works allude to a period of time in early Christianity where Elijah was considered to be an important biblical figure and his name was associated with a number of circulating manuscripts.
[8] Firstly, there are a host of recessional documents and original texts coming from that era that establish a tradition of Elijah receiving revelations, putting him as a prime pseudonymous author.
There is some question regarding the potential for the Coptic (and presumably the Greek) fragments to be drawing upon and re-interpreting a much earlier Jewish manuscript which could have been dated anywhere as early as the 1st century BCE; however, there is yet to be any significant evidence for the existence of such a text.
[18] There exists a papyrus fragment dated to 4th century which is written in ancient Greek and includes only a small section of the end of the Apocalypse of Elijah.
[23] A section in Chapter 5 is considered by some scholars to reference the original Apocalypse of Peter, as 5:27-29 seemingly discusses how the righteous may ask for the salvation of sinners in torment, and an act of grace will occur.