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Originally Posted by MortalWombat Is Luke's parable a dig at John's story of Jesus resurrecting Lazarus? The verse in John following the resurrection of Lazarus is "Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, put their faith in him." But in Luke's parable, the rich man while suffering in hell asks Abraham to send Lazarus back to life to warn his brothers so they will repent and avoid damnation. But Abraham denies him this, saying that if they won't listen to the words of Moses and the prophets, they won't be swayed by someone coming back from the dead. Am I reading too much into this, or might there be something to this?

I think we need to take a close look at the Lazarus story in the fourth gospel. John’s eleventh chapter contains the miracle by which Jesus restores to life a dead man he befriended. In Christian theology, this is the miracle of miracles, the one by which Jesus manifests the splendour of God’s divinity. In the Johaninne providential scheme, this act of life-saving (or rather life-restoration) also has sacrificial overtones, for it is because of Lazarus that the authorities resolve to put Jesus to death.
Yet there has been always a murmur about Lazarus, and there hasn’t been a scholar in the last two hundred years who has not had his or her doubts about what is being related. Except for the biblical literalists, who deny the existence of metaphors, the text poses great difficulties as the tale of Lazarus has a peculiar way of not agreeing with itself. In King James’ Version:

1 Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha.
2 (It was that Mary which anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.)
3 Therefore his sisters sent unto him, saying, Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick.
4 When Jesus heard that, he said, This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.
5 Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus.
6 When he had heard therefore that he was sick, he abode two days still in the same place where he was.
7 Then after that saith he to his disciples, Let us go into Judaea again.
8 His disciples say unto him, Master, the Jews of late sought to stone thee; and goest thou thither again?
9J esus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world.
10 But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him.
11 These things said he: and after that he saith unto them, Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep.
12 Then said his disciples, Lord, if he sleep, he shall do well.
13 Howbeit Jesus spake of his death: but they thought that he had spoken of taking of rest in sleep.
14 Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead.
15 And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe; nevertheless let us go unto him.
16 Then said Thomas, which is called Didymus, unto his fellowdisciples, Let us also go, that we may die with him.
17 Then when Jesus came, he found that he had lain in the grave four days already.
18 Now Bethany was nigh unto Jerusalem, about fifteen furlongs off:
19 And many of the Jews came to Martha and Mary, to comfort them concerning their brother.
20 Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met him: but Mary sat still in the house.
21 Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.
22 But I know, that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee.
23J esus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again.
24 Martha saith unto him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day.
25 Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:
26 And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?
27 She saith unto him, Yea, Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world.
28 And when she had so said, she went her way, and called Mary her sister secretly, saying, The Master is come, and calleth for thee.
29 As soon as she heard that, she arose quickly, and came unto him.
30 Now Jesus was not yet come into the town, but was in that place where Martha met him.
31 The Jews then which were with her in the house, and comforted her, when they saw Mary, that she rose up hastily and went out, followed her, saying, She goeth unto the grave to weep there.
32 Then when Mary was come where Jesus was, and saw him, she fell down at his feet, saying unto him, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.
33 When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled.
34 And said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto him, Lord, come and see.
35 Jesus wept.
36 Then said the Jews, Behold how he loved him!
37 And some of them said, Could not this man, which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died?
38 Jesus therefore again groaning in himself cometh to the grave. It was a cave, and a stone lay upon it.
39 Jesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days.
40 Jesus saith unto her, Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?
41 Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid. And Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me.
42 And I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me.
43 And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth.
44 And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go.
45 Then many of the Jews which came to Mary, and had seen the things which Jesus did, believed on him.
46 But some of them went their ways to the Pharisees, and told them what things Jesus had done.
47 Then gathered the chief priests and the Pharisees a council, and said, What do we? for this man doeth many miracles.
48 If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him: and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation.
49 And one of them, named Caiaphas, being the high priest that same year, said unto them, Ye know nothing at all,
50 Nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.
51 And this spake he not of himself: but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation;
52 And not for that nation only, but that also he should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad.
53 Then from that day forth they took counsel together for to put him to death.
54 Jesus therefore walked no more openly among the Jews; but went thence unto a country near to the wilderness, into a city called Ephraim, and there continued with his disciples.
55 And the Jews' passover was nigh at hand: and many went out of the country up to Jerusalem before the passover, to purify themselves.
56 Then sought they for Jesus, and spake among themselves, as they stood in the temple, What think ye, that he will not come to the feast?
57 Now both the chief priests and the Pharisees had given a commandment, that, if any man knew where he were, he should shew it, that they might take him.

The chapter opens with a rather cut-and-dry introduction of a man who is unwell, Lazarus, his locale, and his two sisters. Lazarus’ name has symbolic connotations. It may be a Galilean version of the Hebraic Eleazar, which means he whom God helps. Bethany (Bethanias), John says later (v.18), lies near the gates of Jerusalem. The place is well known to the synoptic gospels (Mk 11:1, Mk 14:3, Mt 26:6, Lk 19:29) and the two sisters appear in Luke (10:38-42), although in that narrative their brother is not mentioned and their village is unlikely Bethany. John introduces Mary here as the one who groomed Jesus although the event takes place only later. Probably the gospeller re-arranged his final chronology. It may be worth while noting that John is the only gospel identifying the woman who anointed Jesus by name – agreeing with Mark and Matthew that the event took place in Judean Bethany. The two synoptic gospels place it into the house of Simon the Leper. In Luke, the service is performed by a sinful woman at a Pharisee house.

The sisters do not go themselves with the message to Jesus. The messenger reaches Jesus who is presumably still at the location of the preceding chapter,

(10:40) …across the Jordan,…the place where
John first baptized.

The name of the place where John the Baptist is by coincidence called in English Bethany also, although the native name Bethabara also appear in some translations, the KJV most prominently. This place lay about 30 kilometres from the Judean Bethany.

Jesus reply downplays the seriousness of the sickness; he says plainly that the ailment will not be fatal (ouk estin pros thanaton). He adds mysteriously that Lazarus is sick for God’s glory, so God’ Son may be glorified by it. John, and by John I mean the original architect of the Fourth gospel, makes the first allusion to the miracle that he knows is going to happen. Yet as soon as he does, great difficulties arise. In verse 4, Jesus denies death will occur, and he points to the sickness itself as the means which glorify God and his Son.
In the following two logia, John affirms Jesus’ love for Lazarus and his sisters and says that because Jesus loved them he stayed where he was for another two days. Here John sets up a pivotal point which to modern theological mind is most disturbing. What the gospel suggests is nothing less than that Jesus would stay around one Bethany, as a gesture of concern for a sick friend in another Bethany, a day’s walk away. The delay in Jesus’ answering the call creates great problems and the interpreters cope as best as they can. Most will admit that verses 4-6 are simply imponderable by modern ethical standards – they sense that John’s Jesus is simply letting Lazarus expire in order to effect a great miracle. Most will, however, also deny that such was the motive. C.K.Barrett, for example, offers an ingenious calculation, according to which Lazarus is dead already when Jesus receives the message. From there, Jesus simply computes the maximum effect for his appearance to the mourning family and friends. Sydney Temple admits that the delay is not complimentary to Jesus and rejects the idea that it can be explained in terms of John’s theology. He believes that the sisters in sending the messenger were not really asking Jesus to come. Others, following Bultmann, refer the problem to the internal workings of the saving grace. Among the exegets known to me, only Ernst Haenchen sees the combined effect of verses 4, 11, and 15 which leaves no doubt that Jesus knew of the conversion of the illness into a great miracle which would make faith easier in the view of the narrator. However, none of these commentators focuses on the biggest problem here. Verses 5-6 read together intimate in no uncertain terms that Jesus is helping the family by staying where he is. Such an idea simply cannot be reconciled with any scenario in which Jesus foresees a miracle. The text basically says that Jesus is responding by staying where he is and doing nothing.
The problem is not that John did not know what he was saying. It looks very much like he was working with a text that did not agree with his theology, and that he thought needed to be improved upon. He entered his own elements to bridge the differences. In doing that may have not thought his project through, or he left most of the old thread in purposely to thwart those who would seek to reason the story out. The latter is the manic’s favorite ploy, but both relate to the tendency to mental disorganization typically observed in bipolars when they are high. Either offers itself as a plausible explanation for the Fourth Gospel’s numerous aporias.
John thinking on parallel tracks, and tweaking the old text, left some telling marks. So, for example, in order to effect the great miracle, John has to make Jesus travel to it. It would be inconceivable that he left Jesus camped near Lazarus when the news of the illness reaches him. John then places Jesus at a place twenty miles away. This operation however contradicts, and defeats the purpose of, verse 6 which the editor leaves in as it was. The reader may wish to test the proposition that if Jesus indeed stayed near Lazarus and agreed to monitor his health situation until it got better, then suddenly verses 5-6 pose no great exegetical challenge at all.

In verse 7 Jesus proposes to go for a walk. When his disciples ask him why he is going to Judea (, in John’s layout he would be entering from Perea), he replies with a general mystical rule on the likelihood of stumbling at various hours of day and night. John Marsh thinks that Jesus promises that while he is in the world,…it is day, and there is no danger of stumbling , for man can see his way clearly. No doubt this is well said, alas, it does not appear to answer the question that was put to Jesus: Why are you going there, when the locals threw stones at you but a little while ago ? Why would Jesus be answering with this teaching whose punchline seems to be that in the dark the unenlightened stumble ? One of two things likely happened: there was a gap in the text before John, or John did not like what he saw in the verse (or verses) and patched it (them) with a gloss to reinforce his chronology of an early Temple incident. He apparently believed that the ensuing verses would sustain the question the disciples ask. They don’t. Verses 9-10 do not refer to Jesus and are in response to a different query.

Verse 11 starts another quiz. Bultmann keenly observed that the desire to go to Lazarus makes the veil fall again on the mysterious background of the story, by ignoring the same intent implied in verse 7. The duplicated effort here seems to support my view of John’s moving Jesus to Perea because he wanted to replace the original thriller (quite possibly from the life of real Jesus) with a thesis. As a result of some poor editing Jesus ends up telling of his trip to Judea and Lazarus twice.
Now then Jesus is returning to Lazarus and suggests that the sick man has fallen asleep and that he would awaken him from sleep, to which the disciples respond that sleep will do him good. But then Jesus tells them in plain words that Lazarus is dead. John evidently intends to create a dramatic effect in having Jesus redefine his own words and correct the misapprehending pupils. However, that again disrupts the flow of the story, and adds to the trail of editorial misses. The reply by the disciples to Jesus on the virtue of sleep becomes meaningless, and the connecting link to 9-10 is severed from the opposite end as well.

Haenchen believed that the idea expressed in 15 stemmed from the narrator’s conviction that resurrection from actual death has a greater effect on faith than a simpler act of healing. That is undoubtedly true although such discovery does not lessen the shocking effect of the verse. Jesus here, and later, in receiving Martha’s confession, does not have any view of Lazarus’ and the family’s comfort, any inkling of the need to lessen their suffering. Having said that, I haste to add that I believe it would be a big mistake to ascribe the failure of Jesus to effect healing in preference to resurrection to the gospeller’s unusually cruel character. As I have noted already, and in that I have followed many who observed, that the early community had a very hard-headed view of the value of suffering in the works of redemption. Haenchen nonetheless made a great point in hinting that John’s Redeemer appears to be somewhat too constrained by the intelligence and imagination of the scribe himself.

On arrival to Bethany, Jesus learns that Lazarus has been in the tomb for four days already (17). The gospel does not name the source of this information to Jesus. He has not yet met Martha, but Martha knows that Jesus is coming, so perhaps someone from the village who knew of the situation connects the two. The idea that Jesus finds out the date of Lazarus burial on entering Bethany strikes one as odd, as he knows that Lazarus is dead, that his resurrection will happen and that his own arrival in Bethany must be timed past the three days allowed by the Jewish belief for the soul of the dead to remain around the body. The great mystery about verse 17 however is that it appears to preserve crucial wording, which places Lazarus in the tomb without saying that he is actually dead.
The Jews who come to console Martha and Mary in their house appear in verse 19. Their designation as Jews may be a genuine tradition of the original presumed text. As Hugh Schonfield pointed out, people from Galilee often used the name to refer not to people of the Jewish faith, but to the inhabitants of Judea, i.e. Judeans. Their presence on the scene seems to have crucial importance.
Martha leaves the house alone to meet Jesus when she hears of his coming (20). It is not explained why Mary stays behind and in John’s version of the Lazarus story indeed this causes some more difficulties. In 21, Martha tells Jesus that if he had been around her brother would have not died. In John’s thinking this evidently agrees with his view that no-one with faith can really die, especially not while Jesus is around in person. Yet, it is far from certain that Martha actually meant to say that. Even the conservative R.H.Lightfoot allowed that Martha’s words sound something like a reproach. She might have been saying in effect: If you stayed around, this would not have happened. Her lament and doubt is overwritten and drowned by the crescendo of John’s Christology: Jesus declares himself to be the resurrection and the life in one of the most inspirational manifests of the whole New Testament. Roused Martha makes her unconditional confession of faith.

It is a matter of some irony that following the stupendous self-revelation, Jesus stays behind with the obvious aim of hiding from the mourners consoling Mary in the house. That intent is betrayed by the implied instruction to Martha in 28 to call out Mary in secret (lathra), in effect separate her from the visitors. It is not clear to what end Jesus wanted to see her alone. The one exeget (I know) that would even comment on the secret nature of the operation, John Marsh, says that the reasons for it could only be conjectured. Marsh concedes that the likely explanation is that the presence of the Jews is unwanted at the scene of the sign, as Jesus work is gravely misunderstood by them which he sees as posing danger to him. This seems like a very good conjecture albeit one that befuddles the divine nature of the incarnated Logos. Be it as it may, Mary fails to free herself from the cortège. The Judeans follow her to Jesus. When Jesus sees Mary weeping, and with her the Jews weeping also, he becomes upset (33). The meaning of the pivotal verb in the verse (embrimaomai) has been the source of never-ending debates among scholars. Most agree that it implies deep indignation, and scorn. Some point out that among the wonder workers in antiquity, this imputed raving frenzy before some miraculous deed. Another school of thought says that the specific construct that occurs in the verse (enebrimesato to pneumati) really wishes to convey an inward directed feeling of deep trouble, therefore not being far from the conventional translation of groaned in the spirit and was troubled.

After Mary professes her faith, Jesus asks (34) for the whereabouts of the grave. The poignant reflection, why should the omniscient ask questions, was termed foolish by Bultmann, on grounds that the story itself is naïve. Nonetheless, the contradictions in the story continue to mount. In verse 35 Jesus weeps over Lazarus who, he promised earlier, would not die and whom he knows he is minutes away in reviving from an unremitting case of rigor mortis. The query here should focus on the confused emotions displayed by the protagonist – ranging from absolutely dominant self-confidence (25-26), to fear (28), to being angered and troubled (33), to helplessness (35), to being angered and troubled again (38), to supreme confidence (40), to (somewhat suspect) selfless gratitude (41-42), to confidence again(43). Does this rapid cycling truly reflect a tradition of Jesus’ conduct at the gravesite, or does it speak of the narrator’s difficulties in visualizing a scene into which he feels compelled to write his own views?
The mechanics of extracting Lazarus become quite unreal in their effect. Jesus first thanks the Father for the gift that has not been given yet. John knows that Jesus knows that the Son manifests the will of the Father, which sort of makes the expression of thanks redundant, so they are offered only as pro-forma aimed at the onlookers. Having thanked the Father for what has not yet happened the Son goes to work on it: again John evidently seeks to stress Christ’s omnipotence and omniscience. Having made sure of the theology, John lets Lazarus march out of the tomb with strips of the burial cloth binding his legs together – a miracle within miracle, as Edwyn Hoskyns pointed out.

Verse 45 tells us that the observers of the miracle split into two groups. Some believe in the miracle and presumably go home, while others, seeing the miracle go and complain to the authorities. The priests and Pharisees acknowledge that Jesus indeed performs many miracles (semeia), and convince themselves that his successful experiments with the supernatural spell a general disaster for the country. This sort of thing has the potential of becoming popular and provoke the Romans to destroy both, the Temple and the nation. They decide, on the advice of the high priest Caiaphas, to put Jesus to death to forestall the calamity.
John’s depiction of the Lazarus miracle and its aftermath has that peculiar double-thinking texture, described at the outset of the essay. Given the claim of the supernatural character of the event - and one cannot deny that John drafts an act of divine intervention - how does one explain the hostile attitude of some of the witnesses, and the priests ? How could it be possible they believe Jesus performed a miracle and yet they conspire to harm him ? Where would people, who saw a man rewarding a family’s faith in the unlimited power of God by making a stinking corpse of their relative walk, get the idea that this was the wrong thing to do ? Why should the Sanhedrin have been afraid of the Romans if they believed in the reality of Jesus’ deeds ? Could not the native son who brought men back from the dead – could he not also turn the Imperial legions into heaps of stones ? Would it not, at the very least, have been prudent to ask a question to make sure he could not do that ? No ? Because, even if the priests were wicked and hated Jesus, would they not have been afraid he could turn them into a heap of stones ? They would, if they had believed.
The logical implication then is that they did not believe, and the reports they received were not of a miracle. Again, as I said at the outset, John’s story of the raising of Lazarus features a peculiar mythical set with a set of characters who, while verbally paying homage to the decor, by their actions cancel its rules, and among the miraculous props assert without difficulty whatever mundane interests hold the sway. In the end, the calculating priests and Pharisees dispatch the temple guards, who take hold of Jesus in the most uncomplicated way and hand him over to the Romans as evildoer (Jn 18:30) He would not be destined to be defeated by competing mythical entities. John’s Jesus, as a mythical hero, seems to have a very unusual tragic flaw: he is an all too human human confounded by the hagiographer’s idea of the nature of divinity.

In the Fourth gospel, Jesus’ divinity controls his humanity. Yet, luckily for us, John did not discard, or rewrite from scratch the Lazarus tale which originally bespoke of a much more vulnerable and mortal individual. Evidently, John believed he had sacred history in front of him and that belief would limit to a degree the liberty he would allow himself to take as a redactor. His purpose was to superimpose a theological view on the Lazarus happening and convert it into a koan. Given what he left behind, it almost looks like he decided to preserve enough of the core in place to make the original tale readable and thus enhance the effect of mystery.

We have seen that the gospel story of Lazarus revival left a number of gaping holes behind, if read as John presented it , i.e. an omnipotent, omniscient Christ performing the feat of reversing the biological fact of death in Lazarus:

1. Jesus sends the messenger back to Bethany with a reply that says that Lazarus is not going to die from what ails him.
2. He insists mysteriously on staying away from Lazarus, while the text affirms his love for the family.
3. When disciples ask Jesus, why he wants to go to Judea, he answers with a non-sequitur.
4. He repeats without purpose his intent of going to Lazarus.
5. When he arrives to Bethany and finds people believe Lazarus has passed away, he tries to hide from the mourners.
6. When Mary is followed by the mourners to the tomb, Jesus is angry and worried
7. Jesus is overcome by emotion when he sees the grief of Mary and her friends
8. When Lazarus emerges live from the tomb, a group of witnesses reports the incident to the authorities who, in consequence, seek to put both Jesus and Lazarus to death.

Unlike the gospel events analyzed earlier in this essay, Lazarus displays more complex cognitive patterns sustained over longer narration. This affords us the opportunity to test them against each other to see if they fit them into a contrasting logical structure. Namely, I would like to test if in the tale there is a consistent thread external to John’s intent, such that it yields an unambiguous meaning. In other words, can we detect the presence of another story in John’s chapter 11, not just the elements of one, but a structure of which we can have a reasonable certainty ?

Let us begin by examining the factual data around Lazarus’ condition. The story does not tell us the nature of his illness. Jesus seems to know (4) what ails Lazarus. He says that illness is not lethal. John advertises this as Jesus omniscience, but that need not be assumed; in fact such conclusion seems forced to someone who does not approach the story with a commitment to a doctrine. Jesus simply might be familiar with what is happening to Lazarus because he had experience with it. Perhaps himself. The other point to be noted is that prior to his arrival (return) to Bethany, Jesus seems unconcerned. This sharply contrasts with his behavior after he learns people believe Lazarus is deceased and is confronted by them.

Was Lazarus dead when Jesus arrived ? The idea is first introduced in verse 13, by way of interpreting the comment by Jesus, that Lazarus was asleep. Only then, Jesus himself is quoted as saying plainly Lazarus was dead. The only other near-direct evidence of Lazarus demise comes in 34, where Jesus asks Mary where the body was laid . That Jesus did not know where to find the tomb is obviously challenged on grounds of Jesus omniscience, therefore the verse can be safely assumed to have been manipulated. However, it need not have been a straightforward insert; it may have originated in the memory of Jesus being confused about where Lazarus’ tomb was. The other ominous evidence of death, Mary’s comment in verse 40 that there would be an odour, since Lazarus was dead four days, may again be part of the original script, but does not necessarily signify what most people think it does.

In contrast, on his arrival to Bethany, Lazarus is said to have been in the tomb for four days, without mentioning he was dead. That is only assumed, owing to the prevalent custom in most places on the planet which places dead people into tombs only when they don’t feel uncomfortable about being dead. Now, I have shown that dead meant two different things to Jesus and his original followers. There were the first-time dead as opposed to second-time dead. If the first-timers happened to conquer their little death, they would not be worried about the second-time formalities. The way Jesus proposed to raise those he ‘loved’ from the [first-time] dead was to bring them into an excited state and then bury them in empty tombs for three days as if they were dead. When they emerged, he calmed their psychotic reactions to the ordeal which as a rule were quite severe.

When the news of Lazarus being very uncomfortable playing dead reach Jesus camped nearby (as explained previously), he does not seem worried about the level of stress in his novice. That is what baptism of fire means; that is the way one enters the kingdom. It is for a good purpose. It is necessary for Lazarus to reach a state of delirium in order to experience the psychic phenomena of the Son of Man coming on the clouds. So, Jesus stays around for a couple of days - perhaps he is reminded of the fiasco at Gadarenes. So, if Lazarus entered his baptism alive and excited about his journey then perhaps the question the disciples asked in verse 8 that John would not have wanted to show in his gospel looked something like, why was Lazarus feeling so uncomfortable inside the tomb ?

Jesus, gone for a stroll - apparently Lazarus felt better by then or at least he stopped complaining -, opines that perhaps his charge by now fell asleep, and the disciples intone. The two verses have a crucial importance in the original narrative. It is precisely around Lazarus’ falling asleep in the tomb that the plot thickens. Previously, against Jesus’ wishes, the sisters were talking to Lazarus in the cave. He screamed inside, and that made them nervous about the magic Jesus was performing. Thence their mission to Jesus to put a stop to it. Encouraged by his message, Lazarus stops screaming and after a while responding to his sisters. When the disciples say that sleep would do Lazarus good, it has special significance. We have gone through the causes and effects of sleeplessness at length here . Modern psychiatry basically grew out of the widespread folkloric observation that madness is the dream of the waking man. The companions had insight into the effects of sleeplessness, most of them no doubt having learned the lesson the hard way.
Jesus now (12) expresses his intent of returning to Lazarus, i.e. to move in the direction opposite to the one articulated in verse 7.
With time the sisters grow more uncomfortable and scared. Then panic sets in, when Jesus does not show up on the appointed day. Martha and Mary do not dare to open the tomb. Jesus is just too scary a person who can cast spells. They will not interfere. They conclude their brother is dead for real. That Jesus fails to keep time to extract Lazarus alludes in the original script to a rather loose concept of time that excited pneumatics have. But coming to the village, he learns quickly of the crisis he has on his hands. There are now mourners in Lazarus’ house, hostile Pharisees, who spell trouble whether the man is alive or dead. Jesus tries to separate Mary from them to console her, with an implied promise to extract the sleeper from the tomb when they are gone. But they follow her to the grave, which worries and upsets him. He is worried above all that the panicky sisters may be right and Lazarus has died in the tomb for real. He is upset at the sight of the Judeans. They are hypocrites, phoney deadheads who know nothing. They are clueless about the ways of the kingdom. They think he talks about the afterlife when he raises his disciples from the dead.
Jesus can’t remember where he buried Lazarus. When coming face to face with Mary’s grief he breaks down in tears. He is taunted and challenged by the Pharisees. He has no choice but to bring out Lazarus in their presence. He is deeply shaken by the drama that is unfolding. When the dead man walks he sighs a huge sigh of relief and thanks the Father profusely for the miracle.
That some of the weaker hearts among the spectators believed Jesus performed a real miracle, is quite probably part of the original narrative. Among the Galilean entourage, the confusion Jesus created would have been an amusing proof that the Judeans were generally dull-witted. But unfortunately for Jesus, some of the spectators would be persuaded otherwise. They would sniff out the cave. They discovered the odour of urine and feces and reported the Galilean as a sacrilegious charlatan.

Why was such a story told? First of all, because it most likely happened. I am persuaded by the narrative structure that Lazarus relates to a practice of ritual mock-burials that Jesus instituted which had explosive effects and caused a lot of trouble for him. Second, the account dramatized the difference between the resurrectional beliefs of Jesus and those of the Judean Pharisees, including Martha’s. Jesus buries Lazarus to raise him from the dead into the kingdom. This kind of idea would be profoundly disturbing to the orthodox believers, who would tend to see nefarious magic in it. Their uptight ways, superstition, and murderous hostility to Jesus were mocked and denounced in the original Lazarus.

References:
C.K.Barrett, The Gospel According to John, SPCK, London, 1965
Rudolf Bultmann, The Gospel of John, Westminster Press, Phila., 1971
U.P., 1990
Ernst Haenchen (2), John 2, Fortress Press, Phila.,1984
R. Joseph, ed., Neurotheology, Univ.Press, San Jose, 2003
R.H.Lightfoot, St. John’s Gospel, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1966
John Marsh, Saint John, Penguin,1988
Abraham Maslow, Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences, Penguin, 1984
Michael A. Persinger, Religious and Mystical Experiences As Artifacts Of
Temporal Lobe Function, Perceptual and Motor Skills,
1983, 57, 1255-1262.
http://people.uncw.edu/bergh/par325/L09Hugh J. Schonfield, The Passover Plot, Bantam, N.Y. 1971
Morton Smith, The Secret Gospel, Harper & Row, N.Y., 1973
Sydney Temple, The Core of the Fourth Gospel, Mowbrays, London,1966
G.A. Wells (1), The Historical Evidence for Jesus, Prometheus, Buffalo, 1988