Steven Carr

Luke's Gospel has a parable about Lazarus, which parable states '"He said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.' "'

In John's Gospel, somebody called Lazarus rises from the dead, and the Jewish leaders are not convinced and try to have Lazarus killed.

Is it a coincidence that both characters are called Lazarus, or is this clear proof that John knows Luke's Gospel?

hatsoff

I don't see it that way, no. Even if we decide that the stories are connected, we should remember, first, we aren't certain Luke predated John; second, Luke may not have been the only source available to John for the story given in Luke's Gospel; and third, the story given in John may have developed independently, before it was written down in his Gospel.

That said, I am unconvinced they really are connected. The only parallel which seems compelling to me is the common use of the name "Lazarus." Arguments from thematic similarities, such as the resurrection of the dead, I always find tenuous at best, especially considering that particular theme is evident in the heart of the Gospel message itself.

Ben C Smith

I certainly think that the parable of Lazarus and the story of the raising of Lazarus are connected in some way. On another thread I once offered the following overlaps:

1. The Lucan parable of Lazarus is the only one in the canonical gospels that names its protagonist; the Johannine story of Lazarus is one of the relatively few healing or raising stories that actually names its recipient.
2. In both the protagonist, named Lazarus, dies.
3. In the parable the rich man requests that Lazarus be sent back from the dead; in the story Lazarus actually comes back from the dead.
4. The Lucan parable asserts that, if one disbelieves Moses, one will disbelieve a resurrection; this is thematically similar to John 5.46.

You are correct that resurrection by itself lies at the heart of the gospel message, and so is a weak parallel on its own; but the resurrection of a guy named Lazarus is not at the heart of the gospel. No single thread binds on its own; it is the combination of several threads that makes a connection between the two stories evident, even if we are not sure exactly what the connection originally was.

Ben.

Solo

The name Lazarus is a Hellenized from of Eleazar which in Hebrew means 'God has helped'. It would not be surprising if it were used by two writers independently of each other in resurrectional symbology. It may be that some story about Lazarus started to circulate in one believer community and travelled to another, to be perhaps discarded, and the name reused for a different scenario.

Luke's parable, if it came from Jesus himself, would attest to an exceptionally sadistic imagination of the man. The plotting of a sore-ridden beggar denied crumbs falling from a rich man's table is bad enough, but the image of the dead rich man pleading to be relieved of his horrific and ceaseless torment by the slightest of degrees, the cooling of his tongue by a drop of water carried on a tip of a finger...with no effect ? Too much, too much.....what was his crime, other than not having a heart to relieve Lazarus ? That he did not credit preaching that sounded flakey to him ? For that the prince of men would have him roasted for eternity ? .....Vengeful things these early Christians, weren't they ?

John's story I take to be a re-write of an older text featuring Jesus burial baptism either by the historical Jesus himself, or by an early Jesus baptist. On a point of fact, in John's story the Jewish leaders 'do credit' Jesus miracle and 'reason' that his success in reviving corpses might provoke the Romans. They decide to sacrifice him to save the nation. But John's Jesus phantasy has a flaw. The reformed text does not bear out the cognitive patterns that lie embedded in the Lazarus tale. He leaves in the crucial dramatic plot of the original tale - which revolves around Jesus (or his baptist) being late in appointment to extract a disciple from a burial cave, Lazarus sisters believing he truly expired in the grave, their initiating funerary mourning, and by their indiscretion forcing a public extraction of the initiate. In the original tale, this makes some Judean Pharisees believe that Jesus (or his baptist) truly brought Lazarus back from the dead but infuriates some of the others who guess that Jesus (or his baptist) was performing some nefarious magic and report it to the authorities.

I don't think the Lazarus tales show any dependence of one gospel on the other. They have a common underlying resurrectional motive, but as I said, IMO that would be given by the name itself and its presumed significance in the gospel compositions.

Jiri