Parable of Hell: Lazarus and the Rich Man

http://www.tidings.org/studies/fables200007.htm
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/secretmark.html

Whatever else is interpreted about the true nature of hell relies much on Jesus' recorded quotation of Isaiah 66 (about a fire in Jerusalem that could not be put out until it had consumed) and on the presumed literalness of the parable about Lazarus and the Rich Man.  In fact, many think that it is not a parable at all but an account of what happened to Jesus' friend Lazarus before he was resurrected.

The writer of the gospel account attributed to Luke writes later (Acts 1-2) that Yochanan the Baptizer's prophecy about the baptism with the Holy Spirit would be fulfilled, at least in part, during the Jewish feast of Shavuʿoth (Pentecost).  He doesn't reference the "with fire" part of the prophecy but curiously the Spirit manifests, not as a dove as with Jesus, but as "tongues of fire" even as speaking with "tongues" first makes its appearance in early Christianity.  

16Yohannan answered and said to them, “Behold, I am baptizing you in water, but he comes after me, who is mightier than I, the straps of whose shoes I am not worthy to loose. He will baptize you in The Spirit of Holiness and in fire,” 17“He who holds a winnowing fan in his hand and purges his threshing floor; the wheat he gathers into his barns and the chaff he will burn in unquenched fire.”*

Many will connect this with Jesus judgment of "the quick and the dead," though the closest Jesus appears to hold a winnowing fan or a threshing fork is when he wields a whip in the Temple, and declares it to be a "house of prayer" that has been converted into a "den of thieves."  Paul the Apostle speaks of a fire that will consume all the works that are not of the Spirit so that in some cases people will pass through with nothing left over.  At some point, we are given to understand, the One who sees the "thoughts and intents of the heart" will separate the corruptible works of the flesh from the eternal works of the Spirit.

An article (here) lists evidence of Jewish traditions that Jesus appears to be riffing on, rather than expounding revelations about the afterlife (quoted here but abridged):

1. The "Bosom of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob" (papyrus Preisigke Sb2034:11), was a specific concept in contemporary popular belief.
2. Jewish martyrs believed that: "After our death in this fashion Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will receive us and all our forefathers will praise us" (4 Maccabees 13:17 in The OT Pseudepigrapha).
3. Other early Jewish works describe paradise as being separated from the fires by a river (not substantially different from the chasm of Luke 16). In one apocryphal work this river could be crossed only in an angelic boat: (Apocalypse of Zephaniah 9:2).
4. The same first century Jewish work also shows the popular belief concerning the role of Abraham as intercessor for those in torment in the fiery part of Hades: "‘Those who beseech the Lord are Abraham and Isaac and Jacob’" (Apoc. Zeph. 11:1-2).
5. In another work, Abraham causes some of the dead to return from Hades to life (Testament of Abraham ‘A’ 18:11).

In the 16th chapter of Luke, there is another parable that appears in context, preceding the parable of Lazarus.  The parable of the unjust steward is about a steward who knows that he hasn't pleased his master so opts instead to please his master's debtors.  Before he is fired, instead of putting the accounts in order, he makes several debt reduction deals in his master's name, so that he will have friends to live with once he is kicked out of his master's house.  Jesus has the master ironically commending his crooked steward:  Whether this is an ironic "Well, you got me good, didn't you?" or an ironic comparison with God who "is not mocked", it doesn't seem that Jesus thought God was pleased with the corruption of the Jewish leaders.  Jesus then ironically advises the listener to "make to yourselves friends of unrighteous mammon so that when you fall on hard times they may receive you into eternal habitations."

When the Jewish religious leaders scoff at the parable, Jesus clarifies, "YOU ARE THEY which justify themselves before men..."  As the crooked steward was more interested in gaining favor with his master's debtors by trading on debt forgiveness than he was in making amends with his master, the Jewish leaders merchandised their religion and were interested in what other men thought of them.  He repeats the injunction that men can't serve both God and Mammon (the personification of idolatry or material goods), as mentioned elsewhere when Jesus says to prefer the accumulation of eternal wealth (spiritual things that will outlast this life) to that of material wealth.

Jesus reference to divorce here in this passage seems to be a reference to them selling bills of divorcement, something Jesus thought of as breaking up homes through hardness of heart.  They were making money instead of reconciling husbands and wives.  Additionally, some gospels make a point of the Temple cashiers taking advantage of the poor in the purchase of sacrificial animals. The Jewish leaders as rogue stewards would appear in parable form again in Luke's gospel.

Even though the gospel of the beloved disciple has Jesus rampage through the finance booths of the Temple occurring much earlier than the other gospel accounts, a relation can be inferred between the provocation of Lazarus' resurrection and the accusations of Temple corruption.  After Jesus rebukes the corruption of the Jerusalem leadership, he continues the themes of "everlasting habitations" and ephemeral worldy success into a new point: their hardness of heart is such that sending Lazarus back from the dead will not make them repent.

The Synoptic gospel accounts assiduously avoid the resurrection of Lazarus of Bethany, its role in the both the Hosanna entry into Jerusalem and the crucifixion, and any mention of the beloved disciple who becomes conspicuous after Lazarus becomes hated by the Jewish leaders (Lazarus is not mentioned again in the fourth gospel).  If the author of the fourth gospel was trying to be innovative by playing off of the one parable with a named character, it is a wonder that he didn't try harder to maintain other continuities with the other gospels.  It is possible that the other gospels are silent about Lazarus for the same reasons that the author of the fourth gospel remains anonymous.

So the synoptic gospels don't mention one of the most notable miracles of Jesus' ministry, even though the miracle draws the crowds to laud Jesus entering Jerusalem for the feast of Pesach (Pascha in Aramaic) or the Feast of Unleavened Bread.   But they do mention a Lazarus, the one named character of a parable, as one who might come back from the dead.  We don't have any chronology relating this parable to the resurrection of Lazarus to tell us whether it is prophecy (anticipating the event) or Jesus rubbing Lazarus' resurrection in their faces.  In terms of Luke's gospel, it would appear that more time passes between the parable and Jesus' death than passes in the fourth gospel between Lazarus' death and Jesus' death, but not everything squares chronologically between the gospel accounts.  In Luke 11, we are told that the wicked generation that seeks signs will get no sign but the sign of Jonah.  (Was it Jesus or Lazarus that spent three days and three nights in Sheol? Wasn't Jesus raised early on the third day?)

As the tidings.org article explains, Jesus appears to take pains to make the Rich Man in the parable to be the High Priest.  And in the fourth gospel, the high priest and the Jewish leadership decide once and for all after Lazarus' resurrection that Jesus (and possibly Lazarus) must be silenced forever.

Lazarus' resurrected body was a triumph of grace and truth over the power of the corruptible works of men.  The unnamed beloved disciple is seen conspicuously attached to Jesus after the resurrection of Lazarus.  As Jesus reclines at the Passover meal, the disciple sits where he can lean close to Jesus' heart (resting against "his bosom" as the KJV goes) and Lazarus in the parable is comforted "in the bosom" of father Abraham.

In the controversial text (possibly a forgery but uncertain) attributed to Clement of Rome about the redacted verses of Mark, there is a parallel story of a youth whose sister beseeches Jesus (in the fourth gospel Mary approaches Jesus and says "Lord if you had been here my brother would be alive") and he raises up the young man and stays up the following night with him teaching him the mysteries of the kingdom of God.  The young man doesn't want his resurrector to leave him.  The story of Secret Mark refers to the man as "the youth whom Jesus loved."

Even without the controversial text of Secret Mark, we have a curious them of linen shroud wraps and face wrappings.  Both these are mentioned in the fourth gospel in connection to both Jesus and Lazarus.  These are removed from Lazarus after he is revived, and later it is the apparent arrangement of these very same items in Jesus' tomb that causes the beloved disciple to believe before anyone else, even Simon Peter and Mary Magdalene.  Then in the canonical Gospel of Mark we have the curious mention of "a certain young man" who stays with Jesus after everyone else abandons him in Gethsemane.  He is clothed only in a linen sheet, and when the men try to abduct him along with Jesus (who did the leaders discuss killing along with Jesus?) he slips out of the sheet and runs away naked.  The same word for linen sheet is used of the shroud that Joseph of Aremithea uses on the body of Jesus.  In the Secret Mark passage, the resurrected youth confers with Jesus wearing nothing but his linen sheet (σινδονα):

περιβεβλημενος σινδονα (linen) επι γυμνου; και εμεινε συν αυτω την νυκτα εκεινην; εδιδασκε (taught) γαρ αυτον ο ιησους (Jesus) το μυστηριον (mystery) της βασιλειας (kingdom) του θεου (God);

Secret Mark apparently is connecting the "certain young man" of (canonical) Mark to the beloved disciple. Mark's Gospel speaks of Peter following Jesus from Gethsemane (from afar) but doesn't mention the other disciple following as well.  Luke's Gospel speaks of Peter running to the tomb to confirm that it is empty, but doesn't mention that the beloved disciple followed him.  Luke's Gospel mentions only Mary and Martha, neglecting to mention their famous beloved brother.

On the basis of the "certain young man" in the gospel traditionally attributed to Mark, some think that the beloved disciple and the Gethsemane youth were both John Mark who later traveled with Paul, but that the disciple's σινδονα is a priestly wrap that is later procured by Joseph of Arimathea for Jesus burial.  It seems more likely that Lazarus publicized his resurrection by walking around in the very σινδονα that he was buried in, one which by all rights should have had an unwashable stench of decay but which did not.  He was recognized in the dark of Gethsemane by his unusual garb, so, unlike Jesus, he didn't need Judas Iscariot to point him out to the captors.

Before Lazarus dies, his sisters send a message to Jesus, "The one you love is sick."  There aren't many that are described as someone that Jesus is particularly fond of or close to.   Thereafter, Lazarus is no longer referred to and there is only "the disciple whom Jesus loved."  So it may be that Lazarus was entrusted with both the care of the mother of Jesus and with revealing the mystery of the kingdom of God in the last gospel account at the end of the first century A.D. (likely at the Apostle John's "Johannine community" in Ephesus).

Note that third and fourth gospels mention Mary and Martha, whereas the first two ('Matthew' and 'Mark') do not but recall a parallel incident of an unnamed woman of Bethany who, like Mary, prophetically anoints Jesus for burial, but in the house of a former leper named Simon.  It isn't clear whether or not Simon is Lazarus.

wealth and righteousness
the rich man whom jesus loved


Later when Lasees

The fourth

Lazarus


Lazarus would seem to

Simon the Leper vs. John Mark vs. the resurrected youth
divorce and corruption
wealth and righteousness

Even though the gospel of the beloved disciple has Jesus rampage through the finance booths of the Temple occurring much earlier than the other gospel accounts, a relation can be inferred between the provocation of Lazarus' resurrection and the accusations of Temple corruption.


περιβεβλημενος σινδονα επι γυμνου; και εμεινε συν αυτω την νυκτα εκεινην; εδιδασκε γαρ αυτον ο ιησους το μυστηριον της βασιλειας του θεου;

ϝ peribeblhmenov sindona epi gumnou? kai

1.  peribeblhmenov sindona epi gumnou? kai
2. emeine sun autw thn nukta ekeinhn? edidaske gar auton o
3. ihsouv to musthrion thv basileiav tou qeou?

A 1st century foreshadowing of the indulgences that provoked the Protestant Reformation in the


http://shroudstory.com/2013/03/20/was-the-shroud-of-turin-a-tablecloth/

https://bible.org/seriespage/does-christ-commend-crook-or-sting-luke-161-13

 I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings. 10 “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. 11 So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? 12 And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own? 13 “No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.”

http://theshroudofturin.blogspot.com/2008_06_01_archive.html
http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/n74part5.pdf
http://shroudstory.com/2013/03/20/was-the-shroud-of-turin-a-tablecloth/

http://creationevolutiondesign.blogspot.com/2007/05/bogus-shroud-of-turin-1.html

ϝ

The Parable of Hell

The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus. ¹⁵ He said to them, "You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your hearts. What is highly valued among men is detestable in God's sight.

http://www.tidings.org/studies/fables200007.htm
http://www.christadelphia.org/pamphlet/p_lazarus.htm#10


http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+3%3A10-14&version=NIV



Christians should act similarly, but not the same. We, like the unjust steward, are stewards. We do not own anything, but we are given custody of certain resources by God for a time. We need to understand that our Lord’s return is at hand (or that our death will come), and that we cannot take money with us. Money will not last, but we will last for all eternity. The way we can use money so that it will last forever is to “make friends” of men, who will gratefully receive us in heaven. https://bible.org/seriespage/does-christ-commend-crook-or-sting-luke-161-13

And lo, Jesus spoke unto them and said:
A priest, a rabbi, and Micah the Samaritan walk into a bar.  The priest orders some wine and says, I drink to Moses who gave us the Torah.  The people in the bar say, "Hear, hear."   The rabbi orders some wine and says, I drink to the Torah, which is man's way to God."  The people in the bar say, "Hear, hear." Micah the Samaritan says, "I'd like to buy some bread and wine for the poor beggar in the corner there."  The beggar stands up and is revealed to be the Angel of the Lord, who says to Micah, "Come with me, Micah.  You will dine at your Father's house tonight."

This would have been very much in character with both the style and content of Jesus's speeches.   Of, course, there is a sense of humor and irony.  It doesn't have to be literally true, even if there is a Samaritan named Micah.  The point of the story is gained without literalism

The Divorce Rate Is Absurd

I think people put more emphasis in picking the "right" person from the start than making a good relationship, and I think this as much as anything is probably why people don't stay together at all.

Easter Sunday: Communist Jesus vs. Real Jesus

or Jesus told me to vote for a Caesar that would take your money and give it to me

WWJD? He'd have you vote for Progressive Caesar.

Been noticing a lot of memes about what a communist Jesus was and how he thought everyone should be communist.

This got me thinking about, among other things, the shift in thinking over Christianity's first century from a communal bunch of disciples waiting for the Second Coming to more independent Christian households looking to occupy themselves as the salt of the earth.  The statement "For while we were yet with you, we gave you this rule and charge: If anyone will not work, neither let him eat"* has such a realist, capitalist character to it.

Another distinction: Obama's
kingdom IS of this world.

It is only in the early years of Christianity that there is the general expectation that converts will give up their worldly goods to the community of believers--an expectation so irresistible that new converts lie about the goods they elect to keep to themselves.  The emphasis on helping the unfortunate and vulnerable becomes a more general injunction to not "be so heavenly that one is no earthly good" (as the modern saying goes).

A related meme I saw recently was one showing the Pope flying in his private airplane and comparing him to Christ who supposedly would have been toting around the poor with him in his private airplane.  Jesus did travel by private boat, and while we don't know that he never took "the poor" with him, we are given the impression that he often sought conclusion and often traveled with only his inner circle of disciples with him.

Jesus irritates Judah Iscariot at some point by accepting a lavish gift from an acolyte.  Judah maintains that the gift could have helped so many poor people, and Jesus claims (in so many words) that the wasteful misuse of wealth was inspired by the Holy Spirit.  The narrative indicates that like an infamous televangelist Judah was planning to misuse the funds himself.

Jesus routinely lives by the hospitality of others.  It would appear that Lazarus and his sisters own property and not only entertain Jesus but large groups of his followers.  How much the travels of Jesus and his companions are funded by the businesses of his followers we don't know.  Some of his inner circle abandon their fishing businesses in Galilee and we don't know how well those businesses ran themselves.  It should be said that Jesus probably spent many a night on the ground and was likely at least as accustomed to poverty as to opulence.  He has a reputation as a party-er, as he didn't seem to avoid feasts where there were wine, women, and song.

Given the interaction between Iscariot and Jesus, and the repeated reminders in the gospel narratives that the apostles were often missing the point of what Jesus was saying, it could make one wonder whether the idea that Jesus wanted them to live as a commune until his return was as mistaken an assumption as the idea that he was returning to them in the same generation.

But there is an interesting tension in people's thoughts about the person of Jesus, specifically with those who are looking for grounds to reject organized religion or traditional religion.  Many of those who do, it seems, will gravitate to Jewish Jesus or to New Age Jesus, that is, to a story of Jesus as merely a Jewish reformer in the spirit of Gamliel or a story of Jesus as a Hindu guru who is trying to convey New Age truths to backward monotheists.  Some people, inexplicably, assent to both narratives in  some vague conceptual fog, allowing them to criticize Saul of Tarsus for being too Jewish (in his morés about gender roles) and for being too anti-Jewish (in his supposed expanded concept of grace beyond what Reformer Jesus intended).

This is all a thought-provoking backdrop, I think, to the cultural battle over whether Christianity means entrusting the government with our Christian duties (as Elizabeth Warren seems to believe).  Is the Mosaic  respect for property rights (thou shalt not covet, thou shalt not steal) something unbecoming to modern Christians, making libertarianism (along with the republicanism of the Federalist Papers) antithetical to Christianity?  Or is both libertarianism and Christianity in accord with voluntary support for the poor?  Are they not both antithetical to involuntary support for the poor?  The only act of coercion attributed to Jesus is the commercialization and merchandizing of spirituality in the Temple.  In this he does not seem to be railing against either commerce or capitalism but against a Temple-trader monopoly that allowed people to be charged/taxed with exorbitant fees to fulfill their religious obligations, and against the profanity of it being allowed in the Temple itself?

There is a conflict in many Christians between the reality of being community members providing for their families and the austerity suggested by Christ in abandoning familial responsibilities for the cause, between trusting fully in grace and the perfection of "go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven", between the simplicity of penitence and the implication that heaven will reject the one that doesn't loudly and proudly claim Jesus as his spiritual leader.  Between the gospel spoken of by Paul in his letter to the Galatians and the hard gospel described in John MacArthur's The Gospel According to Jesus.  Between the burden that is easy and light and the small gate to the narrow road.

Ironic anti-capitalist
merchandizing of spirituality
Also, buy the baseball cap

And what about Jesus' death?  I don't think it makes much sense to most people, Christian or not, that God would require a man, perfect or otherwise, to suffer an agonizing death before being willing and able to forgive transgressions.   Perhaps it is something that we can only understand imperfectly, if at all.  If it is unlikely that the Apostles were willing to die terrible deaths themselves for a man whose resurrection was faked, maybe the man that survived crucifixion might be a little on the inscrutable side.  I don't think people have tried that hard to understand the nature of the "good news" that Jesus taught before he died for our sins.  What basis for forgiveness did he teach?  How did he say people could be put right with their Creator?  What specifically was the good news?

But it seems more than a little insipid to say that he simply said that people should all be nice to each other and that this is the crux and gist of his message.  (And at least as insipid--and irresponsible--to suggest that his message was essentially that people are obligated to trust in a worldly empire that defines and enforces a right to other people's money.  Are we to no longer make distinction between what is Caesar's to take and what is God's?  "Render unto Caesar that which is God's, because Caesar is God's man"?

All of this makes me wonder whether it is neither the case that Jesus was simply a wise teacher, nor that Christendom (or the New Age movement, for that matter) has well understood the spiritual life offered by Jesus.  It's a deeper mystery that shouldn't be exploited -- not for the financial gain of "ministers," not for the opportunism of "altruistic" politicians, and not for the self-righteous glory of social reformers.

Anti-capitalist propaganda equating supply side economics
with a celebration of wealth and a lack of concern for the poor.

Obama-Satan in Bible Miniseries

Funny:  Obama-Satan in Bible Miniseries

Ender's Game

Looking forward to the Ender's Game movie.  Read the book first!!!!

Red Dragon

I like Edward Norton as an actor.  However, I think a good actor can be miscast.  It is not a reasonable expectation that a good actor can fit seamlessly into any part, even if one takes gender and looks out of the equations.

I don't think Norton was the right choice for Red Dragon.  Now there were possibly some directorial and script choices that could have helped communicate how the character is going over the edge and being overtaken by his unique ability.  I think the previous adaptation of Harris' book, Manhunter, did a better job of communicating this point.  The re-make however did a better job thrilling the audience with vile disgustingness. (It is a word; I just used it.)  The re-make seemed to mainly communicate this through trauma:  Will Graham has gotten so close to serial killers that he almost dies.  In

The opening scene where Will Graham figures out Lecter:  You know this will happen at the outset.  The film didn't do a good job giving the impression that Graham's unique abilities led him to a gestalt.  You see him open a cookbook and it's like "Lecter is obsessed with gourmet, the killer is also obsessed with gourmet."  It needed something more to not seem like a random leap, even if it gave the film a slower start.  There is a drawback to the obsession with immediate box office profit over making a good film.  But in long-term thinking, I don't think the film did that well in either box office or rentals over all.  It is a modest success at best (i.e. it probably didn't lose money) and not a critical success.

As one critic said:

Where Mann and Demme steered the hokum away from dull genre generalities, Ratner's point-and-film literalness churns out a thriller by rote, shorn of the psychological dogfighting that distinguished the first two films.

The mechanical nature of the film regardless, I didn't think of Norton's performance as mechanical but just not the character that was needed.  And it is up to casting and directing to match the performance with the role.  Norton is capable of presenting a character with a dark side, but it didn't come across in this film.  Even if that had been the case (which would have been an improvement) I still feel like Father Brian Finn (Keeping the Faith) has become a detective.