diff --git a/engine/src/main/java/org/hibernate/validator/internal/util/logging/Log.java b/engine/src/main/java/org/hibernate/validator/internal/util/logging/Log.java
index 26731ed4b4..1e9d08093a 100644
--- a/engine/src/main/java/org/hibernate/validator/internal/util/logging/Log.java
+++ b/engine/src/main/java/org/hibernate/validator/internal/util/logging/Log.java
@@ -631,4 +631,7 @@ public interface Log extends BasicLogger {
 
 	@Message(id = 182, value = "No validation value unwrapper is registered for type %1$s.")
 	ValidationException getNoUnwrapperFoundForTypeException(String typeName);
+
+	@Message(id = 183, value = "Unable to load 'javax.el.ExpressionFactory'. Check that you have the EL dependencies on the classpath")
+	ValidationException getMissingELDependenciesException();
 }
diff --git a/engine/src/main/java/org/hibernate/validator/messageinterpolation/ResourceBundleMessageInterpolator.java b/engine/src/main/java/org/hibernate/validator/messageinterpolation/ResourceBundleMessageInterpolator.java
index c201dee8dc..6711468f4c 100644
--- a/engine/src/main/java/org/hibernate/validator/messageinterpolation/ResourceBundleMessageInterpolator.java
+++ b/engine/src/main/java/org/hibernate/validator/messageinterpolation/ResourceBundleMessageInterpolator.java
@@ -163,6 +163,14 @@ public ResourceBundleMessageInterpolator(ResourceBundleLocator userResourceBundl
 			tokenizedELMessages = null;
 		}
 
+		// HV-793 - To fail eagerly in case we have no EL dependencies on the classpath we try to load the expression
+		// factory
+		try {
+			ResourceBundleMessageInterpolator.class.getClassLoader().loadClass( "javax.el.ExpressionFactory" );
+		}
+		catch ( ClassNotFoundException e ) {
+			throw log.getMissingELDependenciesException();
+		}
 	}
 
 	@Override
diff --git a/engine/src/test/java/org/hibernate/validator/test/internal/engine/ValidatorFactoryNoELBootstrapTest.java b/engine/src/test/java/org/hibernate/validator/test/internal/engine/ValidatorFactoryNoELBootstrapTest.java
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..ac550a5424
--- /dev/null
+++ b/engine/src/test/java/org/hibernate/validator/test/internal/engine/ValidatorFactoryNoELBootstrapTest.java
@@ -0,0 +1,130 @@
+/*
+* JBoss, Home of Professional Open Source
+* Copyright 2013, Red Hat, Inc. and/or its affiliates, and individual contributors
+* by the @authors tag. See the copyright.txt in the distribution for a
+* full listing of individual contributors.
+*
+* Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
+* you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
+* You may obtain a copy of the License at
+* http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
+* Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
+* distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
+* WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
+* See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
+* limitations under the License.
+*/
+package org.hibernate.validator.test.internal.engine;
+
+import java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream;
+import java.io.IOException;
+import java.io.InputStream;
+import java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException;
+import java.lang.reflect.Method;
+import javax.validation.Validation;
+
+import org.testng.annotations.Test;
+
+import org.hibernate.validator.testutil.TestForIssue;
+
+import static org.testng.Assert.assertEquals;
+import static org.testng.Assert.assertTrue;
+import static org.testng.Assert.fail;
+
+/**
+ * @author Hardy Ferentschik
+ */
+@TestForIssue(jiraKey = "HV-793")
+public class ValidatorFactoryNoELBootstrapTest {
+
+	@Test
+	public void testMissingELDependencyThrowsExceptionDuringFactoryBootstrap() throws Exception {
+		ClassLoader classLoader = new ELIgnoringClassLoader();
+		Class<?> clazz = classLoader.loadClass( Validation.class.getName() );
+
+		Object validation = clazz.newInstance();
+		Method m = clazz.getMethod( "buildDefaultValidatorFactory" );
+		try {
+			m.invoke( validation );
+			fail( "An exception should have been thrown" );
+		}
+		catch ( InvocationTargetException e ) {
+			Exception exceptionInValidation = (Exception) e.getTargetException();
+			assertEquals(
+					"Unable to instantiate Configuration.",
+					exceptionInValidation.getMessage(),
+					"Bootstrapping in Validation should throw an exception "
+			);
+			Throwable rootCause = exceptionInValidation.getCause();
+			assertTrue(
+					rootCause.getMessage().startsWith( "HV000183" ),
+					"The root cause of the failure should be missing EL dependencies"
+			);
+		}
+	}
+
+	/**
+	 * A lot of classpath magic is happening here. The test suite has the EL dependencies on the classpath.
+	 * To test what happens if the EL classes cannot be found, we need to somehow "remove" these classes from the
+	 * classpath.
+	 */
+	public class ELIgnoringClassLoader extends ClassLoader {
+		private final String EL_PACKAGE_PREFIX = "javax.el";
+		private final String[] PASS_THROUGH_PACKAGE_PREFIXES = new String[] {
+				"java.",
+				"javax.xml.",
+				"sun.",
+				"org.apache."
+		};
+
+		public ELIgnoringClassLoader() {
+			super( ELIgnoringClassLoader.class.getClassLoader() );
+		}
+
+		@Override
+		public Class<?> loadClass(String className) throws ClassNotFoundException {
+			// This is what we in the end want to achieve. Throw ClassNotFoundException for javax.el classes
+			if ( className.startsWith( EL_PACKAGE_PREFIX ) ) {
+				throw new ClassNotFoundException();
+			}
+			// for all other classes we have to jump through some hoops
+			else {
+				// load the class via the parent class loader
+				Class clazz = super.loadClass( className );
+				// if we have a class from the java name space we need to return it, since the security manager
+				// won't allow to redefine it
+				for ( String prefix : PASS_THROUGH_PACKAGE_PREFIXES ) {
+					if ( className.startsWith( prefix ) ) {
+						return clazz;
+					}
+				}
+			}
+
+			// for all other classes we load the class data from disk and define the class new
+			// this will ensure that ELIgnoringClassLoader will be the associated classloader for this class
+			byte[] classData;
+			try {
+				classData = loadClassData( className );
+			}
+			catch ( IOException e ) {
+				throw new RuntimeException();
+			}
+			return defineClass( className, classData, 0, classData.length, null );
+		}
+	}
+
+	private byte[] loadClassData(String className) throws IOException {
+		String path = "/" + className.replace( ".", "/" ) + ".class";
+		InputStream in = ValidatorFactoryNoELBootstrapTest.class.getResourceAsStream( path );
+		ByteArrayOutputStream buffer = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
+
+		int bytesRead;
+		byte[] data = new byte[16384];
+		while ( ( bytesRead = in.read( data, 0, data.length ) ) != -1 ) {
+			buffer.write( data, 0, bytesRead );
+		}
+
+		buffer.flush();
+		return buffer.toByteArray();
+	}
+}