Legends abound as to who exactly this fellow was, however one of the more popular can be found in
The Chronicles of St Albans from 1228, in which it is recorded that a door keeper to
Pontius Pilate hit
Jesus as he emerged while saying, "Go on faster!" In reply, Jesus said something like, "I shall go, but thou shalt tarry till I come again." An alternative legend is that offered by
dem bones--that the Wandering Jew was named
Ahasuerus, and he was a cobbler. Another still claims that the Wandering Jew was some guy who was standing around when Jesus said, "But I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death till they see the kingdom of
God" (
Luke 9:27) and that for some reason or another, said guy was made to walk the earth until the
Second Coming.
But beyond that one quote from Luke, which, of course, offers nothing beyond perhaps maybe vague implication of something or other, nothing in the
Bible suggests such a figure (at least in the
New Testament; the
Old Testament has, of course, such figures as
Enoch and
Cain who supposedly go on to tread the Earth forever). The Wandering Jew legend is essentially a product of the
Middle Ages and
anti-Semitism.