Why did people mistake Jesus for Elijah or John the Baptist, and will Elijah return?

They had the idea that Elijah was coming again, from Malachi chapter 4 verse 5. Remember Elijah went into heaven on a fiery chariot and did not come back, so people got the notion he would return the same way, and there is a similar expectation about Jeremiah, which is why some take one of the two witnesses in Apocalypse 11 to be Jeremiah. So when people wondered who Jesus was, they thought maybe He was Elijah come back under a different name. What is interesting about Malachi 4 is that it confused Augustine, and because of that we have held a wrong belief since his time, that there will be a mass conversion of the Jews because Elijah is going to come back and preach to them. That is bunk. The Septuagint reads Elijah the Tishbite, and Augustine, who did not know Hebrew and depended on the Latin, took that to mean the precise Elijah of First Kings rather than a symbolic prophecy. But how do we know it is symbolic? Because Jesus said so: when the apostles asked about John the Baptist, Jesus said, if you can receive it, this is Elijah who is to come, two different people. Jesus is the perfect interpreter, so the Elijah of Malachi 4:5 is Elijah in the person of John the Baptist, because they did the same things, and the original Hebrew Masoretic text says simply Elijah, not Elijah the Tishbite, showing the Hebrew is the more accurate text. So Elijah is not going to come again, except with everyone else at the last day. This is a mistake Augustine made, and we have some housecleaning to do in eschatology.