Richard Beard: Lazarus Is Dead

It would be too strong to say that Lazarus doesn’t believe in god. At the time this would be like not believing in bread, or the sky. More accurate to suggest that as well as praying he likes to plan. He gets better results that way.

He intends to continue the upward curve of his life by marrying the daughter of a serving member of the Sanhedrin ruling council. In order to achieve this, he needs to demonstrate to Isaiah the transience of his friendship with Jesus, who has only himself to blame. He should have visited Lazarus in Bethany. He shouldn’t have betrayed their ambitions by staying behind in Nazareth, doing what his father did.

Lazarus can almost convince himself that the correct way to behave is to do the opposite of whatever his former friend would advise. He decides to follow standard religious procedure, thereby showing his disdain for new ways of thinking. He will offer lambs for sacrifice at the Temple.

God can then feel free to grant him his wish to marry Saloma, Isaiah’s daughter. At the same time he can cure Lazarus of whatever illness is slowing him down. Or, more accurately, out of gratitude for the sacrifice, god will stop punishing him with illness for the sins he keeps committing.

Isaiah will be impressed. And as a remedy for sickness, there is evidence that sacrifice works. On a previous occasion, when his flu-like symptoms developed into flu, Lazarus offered up a sacrifice and recovered within a week.

They used to play hide-and-seek. It was more fun if Amos did the finding. At the age of four or five Amos would doggedly search in every obvious place, then start again from the beginning. The older boys shouted out ‘Here I am!’ and then pretended they hadn’t said anything, as if the message had descended from the sky.

Lazarus kept score, and at this, like every other game, he won more often than he lost. He even competed at sunsets, sitting beside Jesus on the hill behind the village. The two boys looked out over the plain below, arms up, waiting for the exact moment the sun dipped finally beneath the horizon. They always missed it. It was light, then dark. The plain was a visible blackness, and then it was simply black, and night had stolen in.

This made them late getting home, where Martha and Mary would rush to the gate to scold them. Lazarus didn’t care, because among ten-year-olds in Nazareth he was the brightest star in the sky. In the fresh upland air he grew strong and quick, sharp and solid, ready for the buffeting of the world.

Jesus as a child was unremarkable. This must be so, because from his childhood he leaves behind no significant trace — the gospels contain a solitary reference, in Luke. At the age of twelve Jesus visits Jerusalem with his parents. He gets lost.

Elsewhere there are attempts to fill the gap, notably in the Apocryphal Gospel of Thomas (about 15 °CE). In this imagined childhood Jesus can purify drinking water, as if by magic, and mould clay into twelve living sparrows. He ‘withers’ a child for no good reason, and kills another for barging him in the street. He heals a man who drops an axe on his own foot, and brings a child back to life who falls from a second-floor window.

Thomas validates these miracles by specifying that ‘there were also many other children playing with him’, and these childhood friends presumably act as witnesses. If this were true, then Lazarus must have been one of the watching children, because he and Jesus were always together. That’s how everyone knew they were friends.

Yet the failure to name Lazarus in these stories is not the only reason the Gospel of Thomas is sidelined as Apocryphal, meaning ‘of uncertain authenticity’. Thomas is omitted from the canonical books of the bible because he makes a basic theological mistake, known as the Docetist heresy. If Jesus can perform miracles as a child, then his earthly body only seems to be physical. If he has divine powers from the outset, he is never truly human. He wouldn’t have missed food or sleep. He wouldn’t have needed friends.

The Bethany road to Jerusalem enters the city at the Sheep Gate, close to today’s Lion Gate. Leave the village, walk past the cemetery, down and up the first valley, over the ridge and descend the Mount of Olives to the narrow Kidron stream. About a hundred metres short of the city walls, climb the steep paved approach. On the right-hand side, the road overlooks the pool of Bethesda.

Lazarus trades twelve months a year with the Temple. He therefore looks down at the Bethesda pool on a regular basis. Archaeological findings have since confirmed that the pool is a double rectangular reservoir, with colonnades along five of the eight sides. From his elevated vantage point on the Bethany road, breathing deeply and shading his eyes, Lazarus can pick out the sick and dying gathered in the covered porches. This is where they come when they lose the ability to reason, and their only hope is a miracle cure.

Over the years Lazarus has witnessed some spectacular demons. At Bethesda, contortions can be good entertainment, as is public nakedness and random cursing at the skies. There’s always the chance of seeing the water tremble as an angel passes by, which is the signal for the sick to rush madly towards the water. It is a race, because first into the pool will be cured.

As a divine provision for helping those genuinely in need, this is blatantly unfair. The least sick have the vigour to jump in first, and they are the ones who are healed. Lazarus has always wanted to haul someone forward from the back, but life isn’t like that. The first will be first.

However fragile he feels, Lazarus now makes regular trips to Jerusalem and ensures that Isaiah sees him handing a pair of his finest lambs to the Temple guards, one for the priests and one for god. The lambs are a public apology for being friends with Jesus, and therefore for causing Isaiah and his daughter embarrassment, and Lazarus looks a convincing penitent. He is pale, sometimes shivering. When he leaves the Courtyard of the Priests, he smothers his cough in his hand and wipes his eyes, which water constantly as if he’s crying.

Lazarus endures.

For two months he is a man with a headache and the sweats who sets a solid example, sacrificing a pair of sheep every other day at ruinous prices. Sometimes he offers up a lamb with an eye infection or a scar on the muzzle. An imperfection or two is neither here nor there, whatever the priests say, and the sacrifice is for his own benefit so he’s prepared to take the risk. He lets his hair grow. He doesn’t shave.

Eventually Isaiah approaches him as he leaves the inner Temple.

Lazarus bows low. He coughs, hacks it out from the centre of his chest, his tongue a deep gully to channel the phlegm. He spits to one side, puts his hand to his flitting heart.

‘Your remorse has been most impressive,’ Isaiah says. ‘Almost worthy of a son-in-law. You are a lucky man. I’ve found a way you can make amends.’

Lazarus bites his tongue. He’s doing as much as he can.

‘Be here tomorrow after dawn prayer. The Sanhedrin have new questions about Jesus. Don’t be late.’

2

The priests will want to know if Jesus is capable of performing miracles. The answer is: he wasn’t even best at synagogue.

Not always.

He was the best at laws. Jesus learned by rote from the books of Solomon and Maccabees, and at classes in the Nazareth synagogue he could discuss texts like Daniel 12: 2–3 ( Your dead shall live, their corpses shall rise./O dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy! ).

When it came to scriptural law, Lazarus conceded defeat. The laws bored him. He preferred the lions.

Here they come. Their yellowed teeth are deadly as they stalk their den towards Daniel.

Lazarus was best at stories and heroes, the first with every answer as if he were actually there. Here comes the whale. Throw Jonah over. The bad luck he brings to the ship will sink, but the man himself will live, three days and nights in the belly of the beast.