Lazarus

by PSacramento 22 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  PSacramento

  Leo,

  I had heard of that view, that Lazarus is the one "speaking" in the Gospel of John, before, certainly we don't see the mentioning of "the one Jesus loved" as aimed at anyone else in specific.

  Still, Jesus preached loved and he loved all his disciples and brothers and, when Peter asks him about "the disciple" this is an opportuen time for the author to state it is Lazarus, I don't see a reason for hiding that, unless it is the issue of his ressurection and that the authour may feel that if it was Lazurus writting it, it would be reagred differently, perhaps...
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  Leolaia

  The argument that Jesus loved all his disciples is imo weak because "the one whom Jesus loved" is used deliberately in ch. 13-21 to refer to a specific individual; it is thus significant that the story of Lazarus is the antecedent for this expression (as well as the motif of this disciple reclining with Jesus), and it is also probably not coincidental that the references to Lazarus stop and the references to the beloved disciple begin at the same juncture.

  A few other minor points could be made as well. In John 19:25-27, Jesus entrusts his mother to the beloved disciple (who becomes her "son") and he immediately took her to his home. Unlike the Twelve who journeyed to Jerusalem from Galilee, Lazarus is the only named male disciple who lived near Jerusalem. Then when the beloved disciple comes to Jesus' empty tomb, upon the report of Mary Magdalene that Jesus' body had been removed from the tomb, he "saw and believed" upon seeing the linen and burial shroud (20:8), which, if the redactional gloss in v. 9 is ignored, suggests that the beloved disciple is the first to grasp the meaning of what happened (such a comment is not said about Peter). Such discernment fits well with the similar experience that Lazarus is described as having in exiting his own tomb after being raised.

  I'm not sure it is obvious that the editor responsible for ch. 21 would have motivated to reintroduce the name of Lazarus in this chapter, rather than continue the moniker that was used in the immediately preceding chapters.
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  ldrnomo

  He's the lead Vampire.

  LD
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  PSacramento

  LOL @ "lead vampire", there's a movie jsut waiting to happen !

  Leo,

  Its fair to sepculate and you may even be right, but why name the Gospel after John ( according to John) adn why not simply mention that Lazarus is the one he loved?

  Do you think there was a particualr reason for this? maybe because Lazarus wasn't one of the "12" ?
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  Narkissos

  The extant Gospel is clearly the result of several successive literary developments: as the climax in a series of "signs," the Lazarus story belongs to the concluding part of an early unit ending in chapter 12; what follows from chapter 13 onward (to which the anonymous "beloved disciple" belongs) is not one but a series of later developments (e.g. chapters 15--16 modifying and expanding on chapter 14, chapter 17 and the Passion story being also relatively independent units, and chapter 21 being obviously one of the latest additions after the conclusion of chapter 20). Even though the BD figure was likely a development of the Lazarus character in chapter 13 for instance, it is by no means certain that this "identification" still works in chapter 21 which seems to have "political" / "diplomatical" objectives, i.e. setting a viable compromise for the coexistence of the "Johannine" community and/or tradition with(in) the "Great Church" identified with Peter's leadership. At that point the beloved disciple is definitely not a miracle story character, but the claimed source and warrant of Johannine tradition, i.e. a "historical" apostle at least in a broad sense (whether he was already identified as "John the apostle" is difficult to say, but that he could be identified with some important figure of the common Christian tradition was certainly important).
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  RubaDub

  He likely made a lot of money on the lecture circuit and talk shows explaining what it is REALLY like to die and be resurrected.

  Rub a Dub
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  PSacramento

  RubaDub,

  So Tony Robbins = Lazarus ?

  Now it all makes sense !!!
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  Leolaia

  PSacramento.....The book is technically anonymous; the title is secondary to the text, which nowhere names the author. However since ch. 21 was written by a different author from the main body of the text (cf. the original ending at 20:30-31, and compare with 21:25 which echoes it, and especially cf. 21:24 which comments on what the beloved disciple wrote down: "we know that histestimony is true"), it is likely that a "John" was responsible for the book's final form, whether John of Patmos or John of Ephesus (it is unclear whether they were the same person), much less the traditional John son of Zebedee who did not live into the 90s but died fairly early according to Papias and other (Eastern) traditions that run counter to the more popular traditions in the Western Church. As you may know, Papias (who personally knew the latter) distinguished between the apostle John and John the "elder" (= John of Ephesus), a title that appears in the letters of 2-3 John (cf. Jerome who assigns 1 John to a different author than 2-3 John), and the statement in 21:24 is in fact echoed in 3 John 12 ("you know that our testimony is true"). So the title may come from the name of the person who put the book into its final form.

  why not simply mention that Lazarus is the one he loved? Do you think there was a particualr reason for this? maybe because Lazarus wasn't one of the "12" ?

  As I mentioned above, it may be for the same reason why Paul is very coy and indirect (by referring to himself in the third person) in relating his visionary experience in ch. 12 of 2 Corinthians — modesty. Before he broke down and related his experience, Paul ranted at length against the sin of boasting. If the author wanted to make an authorial claim of being the same person as the beloved disciple, being indirect may be the best way to do so if he also wanted to claim that the beloved disciple was more privileged and important (e.g. specifically loved by Jesus, reclined upon by Jesus, who remained at the cross when the Twelve fled, who reached the tomb ahead of Peter, who "saw and believed", etc.) than the other disciples.
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  PSacramento

  Thanks Leo, much food for thought.

  I often wonder what the people around Lazarus felt about his ressurection and how it is not mentioned in any of the Epistels.

  Could there have been some issues with the Apostles? maybe he creeped them out, they did seem to be a "cowardly" bunch at times.

  Maybe there was Jealousy or maybe Lazarus was indeed killed after.
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  Leolaia

  Even though the BD figure was likely a development of the Lazarus character in chapter 13 for instance, it is by no means certain that this "identification" still works in chapter 21 which seems to have "political" / "diplomatical" objectives, i.e. setting a viable compromise for the coexistence of the "Johannine" community and/or tradition with(in) the "Great Church" identified with Peter's leadership. At that point the beloved disciple is definitely not a miracle story character, but the claimed source and warrant of Johannine tradition, i.e. a "historical" apostle at least in a broad sense.

  I think the same compromise is detectable in the gloss in John 20:9 which reduces the beloved disciple's insight to Peter's level.

  I am not so sure that the linkage with Lazarus has receded in ch. 21. It was the writer of ch. 13-20 who linked his authorial voice with that of the beloved disciple (if the parallel between 19:35 and 20:31 is indicative) and linked the beloved disciple to Lazarus, and ch. 21 reasserts that the author was the beloved disciple present at the Last Supper (21:20, 24) and it also refers to the beloved disciple as a person known to the readers of the gospel. It is possible however that the author of ch. 21 was responsible for the comment in 19:35 (but notice that 19:34-35 is echoed in 1 John 5:6-9), which would remove any hint of authorial claim from the earlier chapters. But there is also the resonance with the notion that the beloved disciple (alone) would not die refuted in 21:22-23 with the problem of whether a person raised by Jesus would die a second time (cf. 5:25-26, 10:10, 11:25-26), and I'm tempted to think that this is not coincidental. Philip Sidetus also reports that Papias wrote that "those resurrected from the dead by Christ lived until Hadrian", and if Papias said any such thing, then this raises the possibility that there were people in the early second century AD who claimed to have been (or were believed to be) raised by Jesus. But more likely this could simply be a piece of rumor that Papias was passing on.

  Also, the concern for the beloved disciple's authority vis-a-vis Peter is quite apparent in the passion and resurrection narratives (ch. 18-20), although here the emphasis is on asserting the dominance of the beloved disciple over that of Peter.