WANDERING JEW, THE. The legend of the wandering Jew. who cannot die. but, as the punishment of his sin, is obliged to wander over the face of the earth till Christ shall pronounce his doom at the last day, seems to have originated in that passage of the gospel of St. John (xxi. 22) where Jesus says of John: " lf I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me. Then went this saying abroad among the brethren, that that disciple should not die." It arose, probably, in the 13th a., when it is first related by Matthew Paris, and may be supposed to indicate the Jewish people, scattered throughout the world, and nowhere finding a home. According to the cur rent legend, the wandering Jew is Ahasuerus, the shoemaker at Jerusalem, who, when the Saviour wished to rest before his house, on his way to Golgotha, drove him away. Another legend states him to be Pilate's door-keeper. Kartaphilus, who struck Jesus on
the back as he led him out of his master's judgment-hall. So recently as the last cen tury impostors took advantage of the belief in this legend, and gave themselves out for the wandering Jew; and people were not wanting who, from time to time, main tained that lie had appeared to them under different forms. A popular book relating in detail the history of the wandering Jew has been repeatedly printed in the German, French, Dutch, and Latin languages. The legend has likewise been frequently worked up in a poetical form, as by A. W. von Schlegel in the romance entitled Die Warnung; by Schubert in his poem of AU/miner; by Goethe in Aus meinent, Leben; by Mrs. Norton in The Undying One (Loud. 1842); and by Eugene Sue in his Le Alf errant. Compare Grgsse, Die Sage rem Ewigen Aden.