Leo,
The papias thing is interesting because we know that Jesus not only raised lazarus but that young child of the Pharisee.
Lazarus
by PSacramento 22 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Billy the Ex-Bethelite
I never could grasp how the account of the resurrection of Lazarus could be true since none of the other gospels or letters even mention such a thing. Somehow it's elaborated in John, which supposedly was the last written gospel. Yet the earlier Matthew, Mark, and Luke seems totally unaware of any such event. How could they forget or choose to omit something that huge? Luke records the rich man and Lazarus parable, but that has no relation to an earthly resurrection of Jesus' lover. Paul never mentions any Lazarus either.
Where did Lazarus come from? One would assume he comes from the same place as Little Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks. Oh, maybe Lazarus lives on as Santa.
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Narkissos
Although expressed from a modern rationalistic perspective, Billy's objection might point to the basic reason why the BD's identification with Lazarus was eventually dropped in Christian tradition, maybe already in the latest strata of the Fourth Gospel (after all, chapter 21 denies the claim that the BD would never die): the Lazarus character was the ideal witness to a "spiritual" community living mostly on "mystagogical midrash" and inner testimony, but hardly to a broader church depending on external "apostolic" authority of a historical or pseudo-historical kind...