If death wipes away all sin then when he was reserected Lazarus should've been in a position to not need Jesus' death to cover his sins since the wages of sin is death.
Lazarus question - was he snatched back from heaven when Jesus raised him?
by ithinkisee 12 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Narkissos
An interesting connection between the two Lazarus stories (Luke 16; John 11) appears in the conclusion of the Lukan one:
He (Lazarus) said, 'Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father's house-- for I have five brothers--that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.' Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.' He said, 'No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' He said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.' "
Which is also one point of the Johannine story, cf. 12:9ff:
When the great crowd of the Jews learned that he was there, they came not only because of Jesus but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. So the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death as well, since it was on account of him that many of the Jews were deserting and were believing in Jesus.
Back to the initial question, I guess this shows how religious beliefs and mythical representations usually work. People both believe and don't believe, imagine and don't imagine. Speaking at a "natural," prosaic or basic level, even a "believer" knows what death is and that the dead are not anywhere anymore, looking at the living or playing cards somewhere on a cloud. The believer (or the poet) can shift to a different level of speech and imagine a soul in paradise, but he does not expect this to interact with his everyday world. It is precisely on this frontier between the two "levels" that both Lazarus stories play, in a different way.
Now from a mythical perspective, this reminds me this beautiful story explaining the little depression we all have between our nose and upper lip: when a new soul is to come into the world, an angel shows her the wonders of paradise, then puts his finger on her mouth and says: Sh! That might have worked for Lazarus too.
This is also reminiscent of the tradition about Jesus' descent to hell, which is generally located between death and resurrection, but was apparently first thought as part of a (spiritual) resurrection process, 1 Peter 3:18ff; 4:6:
For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water.
For this is the reason the gospel was proclaimed even to the dead, so that, though they had been judged in the flesh as everyone is judged, they might live in the spirit as God does.
Cf. also Matthew 27:52f.
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peacefulpete
As Narkissos has just said, the story was a late creation spawned by the Luke 16 Rich man and Lazarus parable. In fact the Lazarus character was created by expansion of this and other stories. The author may well have desired to dramatize the resurrection by having it occur after the 3 days in which the soul was believed to linger hoping to reenter the body. However the resurrection belief and immortal soul were not mutually exclusive doctrines as the JWs like to have it. In fact it was commonly held that the souls ascended to a heavenly Paradise (Abraham was the gatekeeper) to await the anticipated resurrection of the messianic age. So yes the story would have been understood by the audience to be saying Lazarus was yanked from Paradise to return to earth.