[Crumb's Crunchy Delights]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

actually.. the pre-christian hebraic mythology ascribed Elijah to be an angel from Creation, not an incarnation, but a vision. Angels in Biblical literature can appear in the illusory form of human beings (as with those who visited Abraham or Jacob) but are not in the flesh, are not literal incarnations, rather they are spiritual beings who can manipulate human sensory perception to appear like flesh, but by no means have any. This is deep Hebrew mysticism..
Christians inherit this tradition, and so if John The Baptist is truly an incarnation of Elijah, then he was not specifically a REincarnation, but rather was perhaps the only true incarnation in human flesh of the angel we call Elijah. But the Church does by default accept reincarnation in regards to Elijah, as the Church accepts the Elijah in his first appearance "was a man of like-minded weakness as ourselves" and so logically he must be a reincarnation in the form of John the Baptist..

bit muddled but you got there in the end