John 11:56

Vv. 56 vividly depicts the restless curiosity of these country people who, assembled in groups in the temple, were discussing with reference to the approaching arrival of Jesus; comp. John 7:12. ῾Εστηκότες, standing, in the attitude of expectation. ῞Οτι does not depend on δοκεῖ; it is more natural to separate the two clauses and to make two distinct questions. The aorist ἔλθῃ may perfectly well refer to an act which is to be accomplished in the immediate future.

To the other grounds which rendered the coming of Jesus improbable, John 11:57 adds a new one, which is more special. It would not have been very difficult for the authorities to discover the place of Jesus' retreat. The edict which is here spoken of was therefore rather a means of intimidating Him and His followers, and of accustoming the people to regard Him as a dangerous and criminal person. It is a new link in the series of hostile measures so well described by St. John from chap. 5 onward; comp. John 5:16; John 5:18; John 7:32; John 9:22; John 11:53; and this is indicated by the καί, also, in the T. R.; perhaps the word was omitted in the Alexandrian text, as not being understood. The chief priests were the authority from which the decree officially emanated; the evangelist adds the Pharisees, because this party was the real author of it. Comp. John 7:45. In the Babylonian Gemara (edited from ancient traditions about 550) the following passage is found: “Tradition reports that on the evening of the Passover Jesus was crucified (hanged), and that this took place after an officer had during forty days publicly proclaimed: This man who by his deception has seduced the people ought to be crucified. Whosoever can allege anything in his defense, let him come forward and speak. But no one found anything to say in his defense. He was hanged therefore on the evening of the Passover” (Lightfoot, Hor. Hebr. et. Talm., p. 490). This remarkable passage may be compared with this of John. In both, we discover, a few weeks before the Passover, a public proclamation on the part of the Sanhedrim, relative to the approaching condemnation of Jesus. On the other hand, the difference between the two accounts is so marked that one of them cannot have arisen from the other.

On the Resurrection of Lazarus.

“This narrative,” says Deutinger, “is distinguished among all the narrations of the fourth Gospel by its peculiar vivacity and its dramatic movement. The characters are drawn by a hand at once firm and delicate. Nowhere is the relation of Christ to His disciples set forth in so life-like a manner; we are initiated by this narrative into that intimate intercourse, that affectionate interchange of feelings and thoughts, which existed between the Master and His own followers; the disciples are described in the most attractive way; we see them in their simple frankness and noble devotion. The Jews themselves, of whom we know scarcely anything in our gospel except their obstinate resistance to the efforts of Jesus, show themselves here in a less unfavorable aspect, as friends of the two afflicted sisters; the man is discovered in the Jew. But above all, how distinct and delicate is the sketching of the character of the two women; with what nicety and what psychological depth is the difference in their conduct described!” In these characteristics of the narrative which are so well summed up by the German writer, we find the first proof of its intrinsic truthfulness: “invented stories are not of this sort.” And especially, it was not thus that invented stories were formed in the second century; we have the proof of this in the Apocryphal narratives.

The reality of the event here related appears also from its connection with the whole course of the previous and subsequent history of Jesus. The evangelist is fully conscious of the consequences of the event which he describes; he distinctly marks them in the course of his narrative: John 11:47 (therefore) and John 11:53 (from that day forth). Comp. John 12:9-11; John 12:17-19. Renan calls the resurrection of Lazarus “a necessary link in the story of the final catastrophe.” The former, therefore, is not a fictitious event, if the latter is not. Finally, this narrative contains with exactness a mass of details which would be in manifest contradiction to the aim of the narrative, provided the latter were composed artificially with the purpose of teaching and illustrating the speculation of the Logos; thus the tears of Jesus, the moral and even physical agitation which is attributed to Him, His prayer for the securing of the miracle, and His thanksgiving for the hearing of the prayer. Nothing can be more truly human than all these features of the story, which are altogether the opposite of the metaphysics of Philo.

Objection is made, 1. That such a miracle is absolutely inconceivable, especially if we explain the words: by this time he stinketh, in the sense of dissolution already begun. Herein perhaps lies what has led some interpreters, who are defenders of the reality of the miracle (Weiss, Keil) to find in these words only a logical supposition on Martha's part. “The bond between the soul and the body,” says Weiss, “was not yet finally broken so as to allow the beginning of dissolution.” Reuss does not admit this method of cheapening the miracle. “The odor of the decaying body” seems to him to be an essential feature of the narrative which was designed to illustrate the declaration: “I am the resurrection and the life.” And he is the one who is right. When we shall know thoroughly what life is and what death is, we shall be able to decide what is suited to this domain and what is not. While waiting for this, we must say: He who has created the organic cell within the inorganic matter is not incapable of re-establishing life within the inanimate substance.

Objectors allege, 2. The omission of this miracle in the Synoptics. But in the Synoptics themselves are there not many differences of the same kind? Has not each one of them preserved elements of the highest interest which are omitted in the others? They are collections of particular anecdotes, of isolated or orally transmitted events. The formation of these collections was affected by accidental circumstances of which we are ignorant. Thus Luke alone has preserved for us the account of the resurrection of the young man of Nain. It is to be observed, moreover, that the three Synoptical narratives are divided into two great cycles: the events of the prophetic ministry of Jesus in Galilee, and those of the week of the Passion in Jerusalem; they only glance at the intermediate sojourn in Peraea. Now the resurrection of Lazarus belongs to this epoch of transition and for this reason it may easily have lost its place in the general tradition. Luke himself, says Hase, “has only his fragmentary story respecting the two sisters (John 10:38 ff.), the prelude of this one, while ignorant of what belongs to their persons and their abode” (p. 512).

Finally, the fact which can more particularly explain the omission of this incident in the Apostolic tradition, from which, for the most part, our Synoptic narratives came, is the hesitation which might have been felt either to open to the view of the public an interior life so sacred as that of the family beloved by Jesus, or of exposing the members of that family themselves to the vengeance of the rulers, who at the time of the first preaching of the Gospel were still the masters of the country. Comp. John 12:10, where they deliberate as to putting Lazarus to death at the same time with Jesus. The case stood thus until the destruction of Jerusalem and the fall of the Sanhedrim. This is the reason why John, when these events were once consummated, could feel free to draw forth this scene from the silence into which it had fallen since the day of Pentecost. Meyer, Weiss and others object that the Synoptical authors, writing probably at a time when the members of the Bethany family were already dead, would not have allowed themselves to be stopped by this consideration. But they forget that the omission was occasioned in the oral tradition from the earliest times of the Church, and that it had passed quite naturally into the written redaction of the primitive proclamation of the Gospel story, that is to say, into our Synoptic Gospels.

Moreover, the explanations which have been attempted in order to eliminate this miracle from the circle of the authentic facts of the life of Jesus, present, none of them, any degree of probability whatever.

1. The so-called natural explanation of Paulus, Gabler and A. Schweizer. In consequence of the message of John 11:3, Jesus judged the malady to be by no means dangerous; then, after having received notice again (Paulus reckons as many as four messages), He comes to see that the matter is a mere lethargy. Having reached the sepulchre, He observed in the supposed deceased person some signs of life; whereupon He gave thanks (John 11:41-42) and called Lazarus forth. The latter revived by the coolness of the sepulchre, by the odor of the perfumes, and at the moment of the opening of the tomb, by the warmth of the external air, rose up in full life. Thus Paulus and Gabler. According to A. Schweizer, the confidence of Jesus in the cure of His friend was founded only on His faith in the divine aid promised in a general way to His cause; and the pretended miracle was only the happy coincidence of this religious confidence with the circumstance that Lazarus was not really dead. This explanation has not been judged more severely by any one than by Strauss and Baur. The former has shown, in opposition to Paulus and Gabler, that the expressions by which Jesus announces the resurrection of Lazarus are too positive to be only conjectures founded upon uncertain symptoms, and that the meaning of the entire narrative, in the thought of the narrator, is and can be only that which every reader finds in it: the resurrection of Lazarus, who was dead, by the miraculous power of Jesus. As to the manner in which Schweizer treats our Gospel in general and this passage in particular, the following is Baur's judgment: “Destitute of all feeling for the unity of the whole, he tears our Gospel to shreds, that he may eliminate as superstitious interpolations all things of which he does not succeed in giving a shallow rationalistic explanation, and may leave all which he allows to remain to the marvellous action of chance.” These last words are especially applicable to the opinion of Schweizer respecting this miracle.

But what explanations do these two critics oppose to this of their predecessors?

2. The mythical explanation of Strauss. The Old Testament related resurrections of dead persons effected by mere prophets; the Christian legend could do no less than ascribe to the Messiah miracles of the same kind. But is it really to be admitted that the legend succeeded in producing a narrative so admirably shaded and in creating personages so finely drawn? “One cannot understand,” says Renan justly, “how a popular creation should have come to take its place in a framework of recollections which are so personal as those which are connected with the relations of Jesus to the family of Bethany.” Moreover, legend idealizes; how could it ever have invented a Christ moved even to the inmost depths of His being and shedding tears before the tomb of the friend whom He was going to raise to life? Then is not Baur right as against Strauss, when he says: “If a mythical tradition of this sort had really been spread abroad in the Church, it would not have failed to enter, with so many other similar ones, into the Synoptic narrative. It is contrary to all probability that so important a miracle, to which was attributed a decisive influence on the final catastrophe, should have remained a local legend restricted to a very limited circle.” Notwithstanding these difficulties, Reville “feels no embarrassment” in explaining the history of Lazarus by the mythical process. The legend meant to represent by Lazarus the Jewish proletariat (comp. Luke 16:20), which Jesus rescues from its spiritual death by loving it and weeping over it. “He bent over this tomb (Israelitish pauperism!) crying out to Lazarus; Come forth, and come to me! and Lazarus came forth pale...tottering.” We may not discuss such fancies. Renan judges them no less severely than ourselves: “Expedients of theologians at their wits' end,” he says, “saving themselves by allegory, myth, symbol” (p. 508). There is, above all, one circumstance which ought to prevent any serious critic from attributing to this narrative a legendary origin. Myths of this sort are fictions isolated from one another; but we have seen how the story of the resurrection of Lazarus belongs thoroughly within the organism of the fourth Gospel. The work of John is evidently of one cast. With regard to such an evangelist, criticism is irresistibly driven to this dilemma: historian or artist? It is the merit of Baur to have understood this situation, and, since by reason of his dogmatic premises he could not admit the first alternative, to have frankly declared himself in favor of the second.

3. The speculative explanation of Baur, according to which our narrative is a fictitious representation designed to give a body to the metaphysical thesis formulated in John 11:25: “ I am the resurrection and the life. ” This explanation suits the idea which Baur forms of our Gospel, which, according to him, is altogether only a composition of an ideal character. But is it compatible with the simplicity, the candor, the prosaic character, and if we may be allowed the expression, the common-place of the whole narrative? From the one end to the other, the situations are described for their own sake and without the least tendency to idealize (comp. for example, the end of the chapter: the sojourn at Ephraim, the proclamation of the Sanhedrim, the conversations of the pilgrims to Jerusalem). Still more, the narrative offers features which are completely anti-rational and anti-speculative. We have shown this: this Jesus who groans and weeps is the opposite of a metaphysical creation. The very offense which these features of the narrative cause to Baur's mind, prove this. The products of the intellect are transparent to the intellect. The more mysterious and unexpected these features are, the more is it manifest that they were drawn from reality. The feeling is impressed on every reader that the author himself seriously believes in the reality of the fact which he relates, and that he does not think of inventing. When Plato comes to clothe his elevated doctrines with the brilliant veil of myths, we feel that he himself hovers above his creation, that his mind has freely chosen this form of teaching and plays with it. Here, on the contrary, the author is himself under the sway of the fact related; his heart is penetrated by it, his entire personality is laid hold of. If he created, he must be regarded as the first dupe of his own fiction.

4. The more recent crities turn in general towards another mode of explanation. Weisse had already expressed the idea that our narrative might be merely a parable related by Jesus and that tradition had transformed it into a real fact. The idea reappears at the present day in Keim, Schenkel, Holtzmann, etc. It is the parable of the beggar Lazarus (Luke 16), which has given occasion to our narrative; the author of our Gospel drew from it the theme of his representation. Renan imagines a similar comparison. He explained originally the resurrection of Lazarus by a pious fraud, to which Jesus Himself was not a stranger. “The friends of Jesus desired a great miracle which should make a strong impression upon the unbelief of Jerusalem....Lazarus, yet pale from his sickness, had himself wrapped with bandages like a dead person and shut up in his family tomb...Jesus desired once more to see him whom He had loved...” The rest is easily understood. Renan excuses Jesus: “In that impure city of Jerusalem, He was no longer Himself....In despair, driven to extremity...He yielded to the torrent. He submitted to the miracles which public opinion demanded of Him, rather than performed them.” “No enemy of the Son of man,” says Hase rightly, “has ever declared anything worse against Jesus, than that which this romantic well- wisher has here said.” At present, Renan, yielding the general feeling of reprobation which this explanation aroused, thinks that in a conversation of Mary and Martha with Jesus, they told Him how the resurrection of a dead person would be necessary to bring the triumph of His cause and that Jesus answered them: “If Lazarus himself were to come back to life, they would not believe it.”

This saying became afterwards the subject of singular mistakes....The supposition in fact was changed...; tradition attributed to Mary and Martha a sick brother whom Jesus had caused to go forth from the tomb. In a word, the misapprehension from which our narrative springs resembles one of those cock-and-bull stories which are so frequent in the little towns of the East (13th ed., pp. 372-374). For a complete refutation, we will only call attention to the point that the narrative is of a fact which is just the opposite of the idea expressed by the saying which is said to have furnished the text for it. The idea of Weisse is wrecked against difficulties which are no less serious. There is nothing in common between the parable of Luke 16 and our narrative except the name of Lazarus, “very common among the Jews” (Hase). The entire parable has as its starting-point the poverty and complete destitution of Lazarus. In the story of John, on the contrary, the brother of Martha and Mary is surrounded by friends, cared for, in the enjoyment of consideration and competence. There, Abraham refuses to allow Lazarus to leave Hades and reappear here on earth. Here, Lazarus returns to the earth and is restored to his sisters and friends. The result of this return to life is that many Jews, until now unbelieving, “believe on Jesus,” a point which is directly contradictory to the last words of Jesus in the parable. So Reuss concludes the discussion by saying: “It must be acknowledged that all the attempts to set aside the miracle are arbitrary. No explanation of all those which have been proposed bears in itself a character of probability and simplicity such that one is tempted to substitute it for the traditional form of the narrative.”

We add further one general observation: In its first phase, the apostolic preaching confined itself to proclaiming this great fact: Jesus is risen. This was the foundation on which the apostles built up the Church. The detailed scenes of Jesus' ministry might indeed play a part in the particular conversations, but the great official proclamation did not place anything beside the death and resurrection of the Messiah, the facts on which rested the salvation of the world. Any particular miracle was a fact too accidental and secondary compared with these, to have the importance attached to it which we, from our historical and critical point of view, are tempted to give to the mention or the omission of it. We have one of the most striking examples of this in the silence of the three Synoptics and of John himself respecting one of the most important and most undeniable facts of the evangelical history: that of the appearance of Jesus to the five hundred brethren, mentioned by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:6.

After this let one argue, if he will, from the silence of one, two, or even three evangelical writings against the reality of a fact of the evangelical history! Spinoza, according to the testimony of Bayle, is said to have declared to his friends, “that if he could have persuaded himself of the resurrection of Lazarus, he would have dashed in pieces his own system and embraced without repugnance the common faith of Christians.” Let the reader take up anew the narrative of John and read it again without any preconceived opinion...the conviction to which the pantheistic philosopher could not come will form itself spontaneously within him; and on the testimony of this narrative, every feature of which bears the stamp of truth, he will simply accept a fact which criticism endeavors in vain to do away by means of a series of attempts of which every one is the denial of the one that preceded it.