ABSTRACT
The complex myth of the Wandering Jew combines disparate elements: the wandering is in relation to knowledge of heaven or destiny, is assimilated with the movement of human history itself or is linked to a punishment whose origins has been traced to the most ancient cosmic myths. History had condemned the Wandering Jew to live; history redeems him by making him die, for what dies with him is a past of human error and blindness. The passive image of eternal wandering, profoundly changed as people has seen by the development of a myth of rebellion, was also updated under the influence of Romantic religious disquiet and, particularly in France, by the effects of the theories of Fourier and Saint-Simon. Popularized as the hero of a myth of salvation, Ahasverus synthesizes human history and a divine or messianic revelation within himself. Edgar Quinet's epic Ahasverus, 1833, gives the character a messianic role which makes him choose life.
