LAZARUS BIBLE STORY SUMMARY SKIN
LAZARUS BIBLE STORY SUMMARY FULL

'He enables Jesus to identify the ideal period to be dead before coming back … Jesus pays attention. He grieves first and disbelieves in God and leaves home first.' This is why Jesus must leave his friend in limbo for four days. In the history of their friendship, Lazarus always goes first.

LAZARUS BIBLE STORY SUMMARY FULL

Lazarus also has a favourite harlot, though in Beard's narrative he does not function as Jesus's alter ego so much as a canary in the scriptural coal mine: 'Christians rarely appreciate the full extent of the advance work performed by Lazarus. Beard acknowledges Pullman's book, making reference to the fact that the scoundrel Christ has sex with a diseased prostitute. In Philip Pullman's work of biblical fiction, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, Jesus is imagined as having an evil twin. Jesus weeps, though Beard wants to know, if the Messiah is so upset, why the delay? By the time he makes the short journey to Bethany it is too late. Martha sends word of her brother's plight, but according to John's gospel, 'when he heard that Lazarus was sick he stayed where he was two more days'. By the time Jesus arrives in Jerusalem, his old friend is at death's door.

LAZARUS BIBLE STORY SUMMARY SKIN

His skin begins to rot, he smells putrid. Yet he feels his career has stalled, living in the insignificant village of Bethany with his unmarried sisters Martha and Mary, while Jesus has begun to make a name for himself with reports of water being turned to wine and baptisms in the river Jordan.Īnd since the miracles began, Lazarus has been unwell. He makes a good income by 'underpaying the shepherds and overcharging the priests', and earns more than enough to underwrite a handsome tomb. Lazarus has not lived the life of a prophet, but become a sheep trader to the temple. Yet since that time, the two friends' paths have diverged. He could run faster and swim further and climb higher than any boy in Nazareth, and he knew by heart the heroes from scripture responsible for making yesterday become today.' It was common knowledge that he'd been reprieved from the massacre of the innocents and around the time of his birth a star had shone brightly in the sky.

Lazarus and Jesus fell out of the same olive tree, one after the other, and had very similar bruises.' Yet of the two, the local rabbis had Lazarus marked down as the one most likely to succeed: 'Lazarus felt he was special.

What is it about his special fondness for Lazarus that causes him, for the first and apparently only time, to weep? Was there something suspicious about the relationship that prompted the first three gospel writers to omit it altogether? Did Lazarus have something to hide?īeard traces the story back to Jesus and Lazarus's childhood in Nazareth, when they seemed to be inseparable: 'There were accidents. Jesus has disciples, but not many friends.

Beard's novel amplifies a small but significant detail: Lazarus is described as Jesus's friend.

Lazarus bible story summary