Jaguar Prince

The biting end of Luke's parable on the contrasted destinies of the rich man and Lazarus is full of exegetical wonders.

What strikes me is the fact that what we would call an "apparition" of Lazarus to the rich man's relatives is here described with exactly the same terms used by the Gospel authors to describe Jesus' corporeal resurrection: Lazarus' hoped for impromptu visit would be a "rising" (from the dead). Abraham employs the Greek verb "anistemi", the same verb as in Mark 16:9, where it is applied to the Messiah! Apparently, for 1st century Jews, there was no significant distinction between a ghost and a resurrected person, which irresistibly leads us to the question: how should Jesus' "resurrection" be viewed?

Note also how easily Herod speaks of resurrection when he exclaims in Matt 14:2, "This man Jesus is John the Baptist risen (egeiro) from the dead!" But Jesus had been born almost at the same time as the Baptist! This shows that the concept of "being raised" or "rising from the dead" was quite common at the time, both in the minds of the people and in life as they perceived it, which shows that Mark's claim that the disciples were at a loss when Jesus spoke of his future resurrection ( Mk 9:10) is simply preposterous. But then he had to explain their state of unpreparedness and unbelief at any price...

The second wonder is the fact that Jesus makes light of resurrections, which would naturally include his own! This is quite in line with other declarations of him such as the statement in Mark that there would be no sign for his adulterous generation and his exasperated remarks in John 4:48 that "unless you see miracles, you will not believe". This agrees also with the genuine end of the Gospel of Mark, which doesn't describe any apparitions, but only speaks of an empty tomb and of an enigmatic young man clothed in white.

Interestingly enough, in the apparition stories in Luke, we note that Jesus has to argue strenuously from scripture in order to make it possible for the unsuspecting pilgrims on the road to Emmaus to recognize him. It is as if mere physical presence were simply not sufficient! What we seem to have here is a devaluation of the sensuous aspect of the resurrection: belief in scripture must precede contact with bodily reality, yeah even conditions it!

But of course, the Lukan narrative is not so much a description of what really happened to the disciples as a course in epistemic theology addressed to those who could never be the direct witnesses of the resurrection: the new converts of the church who had to be content with faith.