WHAT ABOUT THE PARABLE OF THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS? And -- a certain man was rich, and was clothed in purple and fine linen, making merry sumptuously every day, and there was a certain poor man, by name Lazarus, who was laid at his porch, full of sores, and desiring to be filled from the crumbs that are falling from the table of the rich man; yea, also the dogs, coming, were licking his sores. And it came to pass, that the poor man died, and that he was carried away by the messengers to the bosom of Abraham -- and the rich man also died, and was buried; and in the hades having lifted up his eyes, being in torments, he doth see Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom, and having cried, he said, Father Abraham, deal kindly with me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and may cool my tongue, because I am distressed in this flame. And Abraham said, Child, remember that thou did receive -- thou -- thy good things in thy life, and Lazarus in like manner the evil things, and now he is comforted, and thou art distressed; and besides all these things, between us and you a great chasm is fixed, so that they who are willing to go over from hence unto you are not able, nor do they from thence to us pass through. And he said, I pray thee, then, father, that thou mayest send him to the house of my father, for I have five brothers, so that he may thoroughly testify to them, that they also may not come to this place of torment. Abraham saith to him, They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them; and he said, No, father Abraham, but if any one from the dead may go unto them, they will reform. And he said to him, If Moses and the prophets they do not hear, neither if one may rise out of the dead will they be persuaded. Luke 16:19-31. This story is often cited by fire and brimstone Christians as evidence that God will send all unbelievers to eternal conscious torment. From this parable, Gods character as a eternal torturer has been set in Calvinistic concrete. But there is a problem with this interpretation. First, there is no clear consensus as to what the primary purpose is of this story. Some believe it to be a literal and historical account of two actual mens journey into the afterlife. Others consider it a fictional parable making a major non-Hell related point, namely exposing Israels religious pride and hypocrisy. Still others believe that Jesus was using a well known Jewish myth of the day to make a broad satirical point to the Pharisees and/or Sadducees. Most Christians consider that this is a parable, and thus is non-historical. Parables are frequently allegorical, and thus have symbolic meanings which are non-literal and are referring to other dynamics. Theologians Tom Wright and Joachim Jeremias both treat it as a parable. The story has much in common with other well known parables, both in language and content such as the reversal of fortunes, the use of antithesis, and the concern for the poor. John Lightfoot (1602 – 1675) treated the parable as a parody of Pharisee belief concerning the Bosom of Abraham. There is a clear connection between Abraham saying the rich mans family would not believe EVEN IF Lazarus was raised from the dead to warn them AND the Jewish priests failure to believe in the resurrection of Christ. Any one may see, how Christ points at the infidelity of the Jews, even after that himself shall have risen again. From whence it is easy to judge what was the design and intention of this parable (From the Talmud and Hebraica, Volume 3). E. W. Bullinger in the Companion Bible cited Lightfoots comment above, but also expanded it to include a further coincidence, the priests lack of belief in the resurrection of the historical Lazarus (John 12:10). Additionally, Bullinger considered that the lack of specific reference by Luke to the story as being a parable was because it contains a parody of the then well known Jewish myth of Abrahams Bosom. Jesus then, under this reading, was using one of their own extra-Biblical myths to expose their own hypocrisy: It is not called a parable because it cites a notable example of the Pharisees tradition which had been brought from Babylon. See many other examples in Lightfoot vol.xii. pp.159-68 (Companion Bible, p.1488). We have in fact one of the cases where the background to the teaching is more probably found in non-biblical sources. I. Howard Marshall, The New International Greek Testament Commentary: The Gospel of Luke, p. 634. Some scholars, such as G. B. Caird, Joachim Jeremias, I. Howard Marshall, and Hugo Gressmann, suggest the basic storyline of The Rich Man and Lazarus was derived from Jewish stories that had developed from an Egyptian folk tale about Si-Osiris. Martin Luther, by contrast, believed this story was a parable of the conscience. He taught that the parable was about about rich and poor in this life and the details of the afterlife were not to be taken literally: Therefore we conclude that the bosom of Abraham signifies nothing else than the Word of God,.... the hell here mentioned cannot be the true hell that will begin on the day of judgment. For the corpse of the rich man is without doubt not in hell, but buried in the earth; it must however be a place where the soul can be and has no peace, and it cannot be corporeal. Therefore it seems to me, this hell is the conscience, which is without faith and without the Word of God, in which the soul is buried and held until the day of judgment, when they are cast down body and soul into the true and real hell. (Church Postil 1522-23) Still another alternative explanation of the parable is a satirical parable against the Sadducees. One writer to identify the Sadducees as the target was Johann Nepomuk Sepp. The arguments in favour of identification of the Rich Man as the Sadducees are (1) the wearing of purple and fine linen, priestly dress, (2) the reference to five brothers in my fathers house as an allusion to Caiaphas father-in-law Annas, and his five sons who also served as high priests according to Josephus, (3) Abrahams statement in the parable that they would not believe even if he raised Lazarus, and THEN the fulfillment that when Jesus did in fact raise an actual man named Lazarus of Bethany. The Sadducees not only did not believe, but attempted to have Lazarus killed again: So the chief priests made plans to put Lazarus to death as well (John 12:10). This last interpretation had wide circulation in France during the 1860-90s as a result of having been included in the notes of the pictorial Bible of Abbé Drioux. Simon Perry has argued that the Lazarus of the parable (an abbreviated transcript of Eleazer) refers to Eleazer of Damascus, Abrahams servant. In Genesis 15 - a foundational covenant text familiar to any 1st century Jew - God says to Abraham this man will not be your heir (Gen 15:4). Perry argues that this is why Lazarus is outside the gates of Abrahams perceived descendent. By inviting Lazarus to Abrahams bosom, Jesus is redefining the nature of the covenant. It also explains why the rich man assumes Lazarus is Abrahams servant. However, my favorite interpretation of this passage is below: In the parable, Christ is confronting the religious leaders’ bad theology. They were lovers of money (Luke 16:14). They believed that being rich and healthy was a sign that God was on your side. If you were poor and sick then God was not with you. In the parable, the rich man, whom all the Pharisees thought was the best Jew with great rewards waiting for him in heaven, found himself in torment in Hell. The poor sick man, who was, in the mind of the Pharisees, a bad Jew, was ushered by the angels to Abraham’s side or bosom. The idea is not ontological (dealing with a physical place), but relational. To be at one’s side or bosom represented the closest place of fellowship one could have with another. The one who the Pharisees believed was not a good child of Abraham winds up at the closest place of fellowship that there is—Abraham’s bosom. Christ was being rhetorical. The rich man is unnamed and forgotten forever. Lazarus’ name means God helps. The rich man dies and is buried. The poor man dies and is carried by the angels. The rich man goes to hell, far away from Abraham (Luke 16:23). The poor man goes to Abraham’s side, in heaven. C Michael Patton, The Myth of Abrahams Bosom. Thus, this parable is not about Hell. It is about hypocrisy. It is about the poor in spirit thriving in the afterlife while the prideful wither. It is about the first being last and the last being first. Jesus adopted a well known myth used by the hypocrites in order to expose them in their own emotional language. Jesus, as Shakespeare said, spiritually hoisted them with their own petard. In other words, Jesus invaded their own false mythology and blew it up by recasting them as the villains in the story. That Abrahams Bosom is mythological, non-Biblical and non-historical is pretty obvious. Where else in the Bible is there any warrant for saying that heaven is Abrahams bosom? If heaven is Abrahams bosom, then what happened to the righteous departed who died in the ages before Abraham ? What about Abel, Seth, Enoch and Noah? Where did they go? Could Abrahams Bosom preexist Abraham himself? Very doubtful. Add to the mix that this parable predates the Cross, predates Jesus descent into Hell, predates Jesus subsequent rescue of Hells lost souls when He led captivity captive as described in Ephesians 4:8-10, and, finally, that Lazarus displays no element of saving faith or the rich man the absence of saving faith------ then this story theologically splinters as we try to use it to form a theology of eternal conscious torment at the hand of God. Surely, the sole fact of being rich does not doom one to eternal misery, just as the sole fact of poverty does not commend one to eternal joy. No, there is another dynamic the Lord wants us to see in this parable. Time and time again in the parables preceding this one, Jesus is exposing the religious leadership as being prideful, hypocritical and unbelieving in the resurrection power of God. Those rich in the ways of the world are often poor in the ways of God. That is the point of the parable.
Posted on: Wed, 28 May 2014 14:30:19 +0000
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