Hi all,
First of all, a big thankyou to Dr Bart (if you’re reading) for your content here & elsewhere.
I watched Bart in this YouTube video on “The History of Heaven and Hell”- .
But there’s something I don’t understand. Bart says that this verse presupposes we accept the easter story as true but to my understanding the verse is just talking about resurrection for Lazarus, and not specifically Jesus.
Specifically…
Verse 27: The rich man said, ‘Father, then ·please [I ask/beg you to] send Lazarus to my father’s house. 28 [L For] I have five brothers, and Lazarus could warn them so that they will not come to this place of ·pain [torment].’
Verse 27 seems fairly explicit in talking about it being Lazarus that’s resurrected to warn his brothers about hell.
However in the video, Bart references the last verse (31) to assert it’s probably false as it references the easter story: “But Abraham said to him, ‘If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not ·listen to [L be persuaded/convinced by] someone who comes back from the dead.’”
But to me verse 31 is talking about Lazarus too? I’ve read a few English translated bible versions and they all seem to suggest the same.
My question is: how is Jesus’s resurrection related to this story? The easter story is one of the reasons the parable is dismissed as being false but that doesn’t seem relevant here from what I can see?
Hi Robert, thanks for the welcome 🙂
Given literally another Lazarus had already been raised (by pre-easter Jesus) previously & marvelled at etc, wouldn’t that suggest this Lazaras wants to simply repeat that? I.e. “Oh Lazarus, you’re supposed to be dead but yet here you are warning us about hell – maybe we should behave better so as to not also go to hell”?
Obviously Jesus’s resurrection is a bigger event but there seems to be precedent anyway for using resurrection as a way to convince or impress others regardless. It doesn’t seem to require “The resurrection” (of Jesus) to have occurred for the story in Luke 16 to make sense. That’s what I’m struggling with.
Very interesting about Luke being Jewish!
Thanks,
Sam
Ok, that makes more sense now! I think I had events back-to-front in my head, re: the Lazarus’s. Didn’t realise the story was only in John either.
Going back to Luke 16 though, wouldn’t it be enough to be resurrected to convince someone to change their ways even without previous precedence? If I saw someone who I thought to be dead, suddenly alive, warning me about hell, I’d probably pay attention…
I still can’t help think “the crucifixion” isn’t required for the story in Luke 16 to work.
Sorry if these questions come across like a bible newbie, but well, I am 😂. Replies are super appreciated!
Can you say more about how the Good Samaritan betrays his literary handiwork? In asking, I assume you mean that something about the parable somehow betrays its being a lucan invention, rather than material from a lost pre-lucan source. Or did you mean that–assuming he invented it–it shows that he was good at writing parables?
For what it’s worth, DeBhun’s reconstruction of Marcion’s gospel, arguably an earlier form of Luke, includes neither the parable of the Prodigal Son nor the Good Samaritan. One could argue that this is some evidence that these were added in the manuscript tradition that became the canonical Luke.
The story of Lazarus is included in the reconstruction, in a form that meshes in all relevant details with canonical Luke.
I have ordered Klinghardt’s reconstruction of Marcion, and am interested to see if he includes the Prodigal Son and/or the Good Samaritan
It does, though, serve as a salutary reminder of how little we actually know about the early history of these texts.
I’m often struck by how the role of author, editor, and scribe could overlap pretty freely. An author might release multiple editions of his own work over the course of his life, and all of them might circulate in parallel. A scribe might take all sorts of liberties–adding or excising not just words and phrases but entire periscopes.
It really strikes me that the whole project of text criticism (never-mind higher criticism) might be fundamentally misfounded, insofar as there may very well be no single exemplar to try to reconstruct.
My own “proto-Lukan resolution of the synoptic problem”, equal part surmise, equal part whimsy, is thus-
There was an early minimalist gospel which knew Mark but not Matthew. The unknown person we now call “Luke” took that gospel and added what has come to be recognized as typically Lukan material, first chapters, parables, etc. This author knew Mwtthew and was in fact a response to Matthew.
I dont have any evidence, textual or otherwise, other than there does seem to have been a shorter version of Luke. My speculation does however resolve most of the remaining discontinuities in the text. For example how to square what seems to be an original adoptionist tendency with Lukes version of the virgin birth. For this reason and others the “multiple editions by the same author” view seems iffy to me.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
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