Lazarus is Dead

by Richard Beard

  Descriptions of his decomposed body are simply wrong—Lazarus as a skeleton, with a green head, or his body riddled with worms, he ‘stynke as dog in dyke’. Before his death, yes—afterwards, no. Lazarus does not return half dead in an advanced state of decay, a golem in the shadow of Jesus.

  If he did, the bible might have said so.

  The other extreme is equally unlikely. In An Epistle (1888), Robert Browning reports that Lazarus was ‘As much, indeed, beyond the common health / As he were made and put aside to show’. Yet Lazarus cannot come back as an impeccable human specimen. He is a man like any other, at least as far as this is possible for someone who has suffered, died, been entombed for four days, and now finds himself blinded by the Bethany sunshine.

  Nevertheless, the covered noses need explaining. In many of the surviving records there are witnesses to the raised Lazarus who immediately hold their noses. He doesn’t smell—Martha has made sure of that. The covered nose is therefore less a reaction to an odour, more to a resurrection. This action, faithfully noted across the centuries, is a judgement.

  Look again at that painting by the three Limbourg brothers from the fifteenth century, a contribution to the Très Riches Heures entitled The Raising of Lazarus. One of the onlookers pulls his tunic across his nose while holding out his other hand palm forward. He is resisting the evidence that Lazarus is back from the dead. When bystanders cover their noses, they’re saying that Lazarus is not true. He should smell like the dead. He cannot be believed.

  There is another consistent oddity in these illustrations. In the Limbourg image, the two men nearest to Lazarus bow down before him. From Rembrandt through Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld to Gustave Doré, there are immediate eyewitnesses who prostrate themselves at the sight of Lazarus raised.

  At a rough count, from the artistic evidence of the centuries, about half kneel down before Jesus. The other half bow low to Lazarus.

  The raising of Lazarus is the seventh and decisive miracle in the Book of John. Immediately, something new is seen to begin.

  ‘A large crowd of Jews found out that Jesus was there [in Bethany] and came, not only because of him but also to see Lazarus’ (John 12:9).

  They see Lazarus carried aloft, half conscious, manhandled from the tombs to the village. Alongside the weeping there is cheering and applause.

  Lazarus raises a limp hand to acknowledge the acclaim. He suffered and was buried and on the fourth day he rose again with glory to . . . to what? The questions can wait. He is receiving, finally, the attention he deserves.

  ‘Leave him be!’ Absalom shouts, shoving people away, taking charge. They carry Lazarus across the square and down to the village mikveh. ‘He must cleanse himself after contact with the dead!’

  ‘Ask him!’

  ‘Afterwards! Ask him when he’s clean!’

  Lazarus is suddenly alone in the cave of the mikveh. In the half-dark he tumbles into the water, floats, makes himself sit. The silence beneath the rocks feels like a space between life and death.

  He watches the strips of linen soak from his body. He swivels his eyes left, then right. They are working; he can see without pain. He cautiously pushes the middle finger of his right hand against his upper front incisor. The tooth is solid in his head. He scrapes the length of his tongue along the sharpness of his fingernail.

  The oil from the myrrh and aloes separates as globules of fat on the water. Lazarus peels himself free and, sitting naked in the water, he examines his body. He checks the tops of his shoulders, the backs of his hands. There is no visible scarring from the rashes or the pox, and when he breathes deeply with relief, no sharp ache in his lungs.

  His fingernails need cutting. He inspects the groins between his toes. He is thinner, but then he’s been ill—checking his hips and behind his knees he sees no other evidence that dying has aged him.

  He washes vigorously, beaks his nose into his armpits. He sniffs at his chest, the crook of his elbow, then cups his hand in front of his mouth. Not even his breath smells. He is confident that this is so.

  An echo. He looks towards the entrance. Nobody there.

  Lazarus lies back and sinks his mouth beneath the water line. He blows out bubbles of air. Only his eyes and nose break the surface, and above him on the roof of the cave blisters of water threaten but do not fall.

  He is hungry.

  The shuffle of a footstep. Lazarus cocks his head, his ears out of the water. A single drip from the stone ceiling, then silence. No one would dare, he thinks, no one would dare intrude on the untouchable friend of Jesus.

  His beating heart slows. He lies back and relaxes his neck, lets his head slip under, his mouth, his nose. He stays like this for several seconds, testing himself for special underwater powers retrieved from the life hereafter. His face slips out and he takes a breath, then he shuts his eyes and submerges again.

  A hand closes over his nose and forces his head to the bottom.

  3.

  1.

  What do we know?

  In the twenty-first century after the events described, the bible can be seen as unreliable, even fictional. In any quest for the historical Lazarus, however, the Christian New Testament remains an invaluable resource.

  ‘So the chief priests made plans to kill Lazarus as well, for on account of him many of the Jews were going over to Jesus and putting their faith in him’ (John 12:10–11).

  Not everyone is ready to bow down before Lazarus, whatever he may have experienced.

  The Sanhedrin want him dead, and this information has endured for two thousand years. The chief priests ‘made plans’, but they couldn’t know that the time and place were not in favour of plan makers.

  The possible death of Lazarus, so soon after his resurrection, offends our notion of what a god would allow. This accounts for the imaginative difficulty of trying to recreate a convincing murder.

  ‘Lazarus started to scream,’ Kazantzakis writes in The Last Temptation. He has decided that Barabbas, a well-known criminal, will be the murderer. ‘Barabbas seized him by the Adam’s apple, but was immediately overcome with fright. He had caught hold of something exceedingly soft, like cotton. No—softer, like air. His fingernails went in and came out again without drawing a single drop of blood.’

  Kazantzakis is mystified. He has Barabbas, an amateur assassin, grab Lazarus by the arm: the arm comes off in his hand. Barabbas can’t get his knife through Lazarus’s throat, which resists him like a ‘tuft of wool’. Finally, ‘he seized him [Lazarus] at both ends and twisted him and gave him a snap. His vertebrae uncoupled and he separated at the middle into two pieces.’

  This is not a realist portrayal grounded in contemporary fact. The implausibility in the detail suggests that the San­hedrin-planned murder of Lazarus must have failed. The story doesn”t ring true. The slaying of Lazarus, so soon after he returned from the dead, is incompatible with our instinct for what should happen next.

  No, Lazarus wasn’t killed in obedience to orders issued by the Sanhedrin. Not straight away.

  2.

  He releases the rising silver of his final wasted breath. His eyes widen, his cheeks swell. This time Lazarus will die.

  The hand snatches his hair and yanks him upwards. Lazarus bursts from the water and gulps a tremendous draught of life.

  The hand pushes him under again.

  But think of his two poor sisters, who have suffered enough. God is making an effort to communicate his presence on earth at this time, and not exclusively through anguish and affliction.

  The hand pulls him out again. Lazarus heaves in air and blinks, flails, gains his footing in the pool.

  ‘That’s the second time I’ve saved you,’ Yanav says. He is up to his waist in the water, and holds Lazarus away from him by the hair. ‘Don’t do anything stupid.’

  Lazarus lashes out towards Yanav’s face. Yanav snaps his head back and lets Lazarus go. The water surges against the edge of the pool and rebounds against them.

  ‘I wanted
to see if you’d fight for it. You like being alive, don’t you?’

  Lazarus shakes drops of water from the ends of his fingertips. He raises his fist. ‘You’re lucky I don’t kill you.’

  ‘I wanted to know if you’d scare. Come on, I brought you some clothes.’

  As Lazarus dresses, Yanav wrings out his hems. He has seen Lazarus weaken and die, but the privileges of a healer rarely last long. The intimacy fades as soon as his patients are well.

  ‘I’m all ears. Tell me how the two of you did it.’

  Lazarus cinches his belt and looks up. ‘That’s a very good question.’

  ‘What’s the answer?’

  ‘You just tried to drown me. You won’t be the first to know.’

  Immediately outside the cave about two hundred people are jostling for position. Isaiah is at the front, standing slightly ahead of Absalom. There is no way past them. Yanav has followed Lazarus into the light.

  ‘Incredible,’ Isaiah says. The crowd allows him to speak—he is a member of the Sanhedrin council. ‘Such a wonderful surprise. Congratulations. This is extraordinary.’

  Isaiah narrows his eyes as if to see through Lazarus to the other side. Lazarus bangs his heart with his fist.

  ‘Solid as the day I was born. Yanav inspected me thoroughly. I’m all in one piece.’

  ‘He’s a lucky man,’ Yanav says. ‘Alive and healthy.’

  ‘Thank you. I am. I think.’

  Lazarus looks over Isaiah’s head towards the village. Passover sunlight makes the flat white houses float and tremble, and that’s where he wants to be, reunited with his friend. Separating the two of them, a shimmering mass of people, examining every movement Lazarus makes. He kneels and picks up a stone. It is smooth, warmed by the sun, and he lifts it and lowers it. Lazarus weighs the warm stone in his hand. He drops the stone and it lands in the sand with a thump. He has control over objects, and he feels alive. Possibilities open up again, destinations are within his range. He feels he wants to run.

  Isaiah coughs into his hand, and the hand stays close to his face, fingers hovering near his cheek.

  ‘Contact with the dead carries a strict tariff,’ he says. ‘Full ritual washing and seven days’ absence from the Temple. The Sanhedrin will want to speak with you. There’s no obvious precedent.’

  ‘What was it like?’ Absalom asks. He cuts across Isaiah but his voice remains gentle, full of hope. The ends of his long eyebrows quiver. ‘Did you see anyone we know?’

  There is too much that Lazarus doesn’t understand. He looks around for evidence of the presence of god. On a nearby rock a lizard lifts one leg, then another, unconvinced of the solidity beneath its feet. Jesus will be able to explain. Jesus is in Bethany and all Lazarus need do is ask.

  3.

  ‘Jesus is sleeping,’ Peter says. He takes this opportunity to show Lazarus that no one is as close to Jesus as he is. ‘What he did today wasn’t easy. For anybody.’

  ‘This time yesterday I was dead. I have some questions.’

  In the Book of John, Lazarus has a nonspeaking role. His questions remain unasked, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t try.

  After the miracle, Jesus and his disciples are invited into the house of Lazarus, Martha and Mary. Jesus withdraws to the upper room, and Peter keeps Lazarus away from the stairs. In his own house, which is full of strange men with tics and nervous twitches. Life has repeatedly surprised the disciples, and they haven’t fully recovered.

  Lazarus wonders if he smells. It’s the way they look at him, their hands fluttering close to their noses. The disciples have abandoned their families and walked from the Galilee, so how is it that Lazarus receives special attention without even leaving home?

  ‘Tell us what it was like.’

  ‘Let me speak with Jesus.’

  Peter does not move from the foot of the stairs, big hands loose by his sides. Unlike the others he doesn’t twitch, which is why they call him the rock. He is a stone, this man, and his large impassive face is stone, but he wishes that Jesus, just once, had called him friend.

  ‘Please,’ Lazarus says. ‘We have some catching up to do.’

  ‘Do you want to thank him?’

  ‘I don’t know. What counts as good behaviour after a resurrection?’

  Lazarus is already impatient with their limited outlook. Perhaps he’ll thank Jesus warmly for all he’s done. But, now he thinks about it, he might also suggest that Jesus could have come earlier, or stopped him from falling sick in the first place. It seems churlish to complain, but every first word he imagines saying is ‘but’.

  The bible is therefore accurate, up to a point, about the initial silence of Lazarus. On this particular subject, and for a while there will be no other, he isn’t sure where to start.

  Four days is too long. A piece of Martha’s heart stays buried with Lazarus in the tomb. Maybe Jesus thought she’d be good at death, that after her mother and father and Amos she’d learned how to cope. He was wrong. She mashes chickpeas with oil in a bowl, bunches her skirts to move to the fire, kneels and fusses with embers. Out of habit she tosses on sprigs of rosemary, for the smell. It is better to keep active, and not to look too closely at Lazarus.

  He takes a scoop from the cooking bowl with his finger. Martha slaps his hand. At a practical level, they can’t afford to feed thirteen strangers. Or they can, but they’ll have to sell the only remaining flask of nard. And Mary will need to help. She’s at the top of the stairs, sitting, waiting, doing absolutely nothing. Jesus might wake up, she thinks, and choose her for a vital errand.

  Martha sweeps, straightens, reorders the universe while keeping an eye on her pots. Her response to miracles is to stay firmly in the world she knows.

  ‘Slow down,’ Lazarus says. ‘Stop working. Talk to me.’

  He balances on one leg and pulls the other knee towards his chest. He loves what his muscles can do. Peter crosses his arms. Lazarus wobbles and sniffs his armpit. ‘Was I really dead?’

  ‘You were dead. We all cried. Jesus arrived in the village. He cried too.’

  ‘But you’re sure I was dead?’

  ‘It was horrible.’ At last Martha stands still, hands bunched around the handle of her broom. ‘He hasn’t even said sorry.’

  ‘I don’t think he has to apologise.’

  ‘There are so many of them. We can afford one more meal, and then that’s it. Tell him.’

  ‘Martha. I’m a rich man. Let them stay, if that’s what they want. I can feed Jesus and his disciples for weeks.’

  ‘You don’t understand anything, do you?’ Martha reaches out her hand and touches his cheek, her mind adding up the cost of the mourners, Yanav, the herbs, the perfume. ‘Nothing was too good for you, Lazarus, as long as you didn’t die.’

  Lazarus presses her hand to his cheek. He wants to reassure her, to remind her of the miracle.

  ‘I died and came back to life.’

  ‘Yes,’ Martha says. ‘But what for?’

  Resurrection builds an appetite. However little we know about the resurrected, they are uniformly hungry. The daughter of Jairus is twelve years old. She is brought back to life and Jesus completes his miracle with two clear instructions: ‘He gave strict orders not to let anyone know about this, and told them to give her something to eat’ (Mark 5:43).

  Jesus himself, when the moment comes, is constantly eating after his return from the dead. In the Gospel of Luke he eats with the travellers he meets on the road to Emmaus—‘he was at the table with them’ (Luke 24:30)—and in the painting Christ at Emmaus (1598), Caravaggio spreads this table with roast chicken, bread, apples, pears, grapes and a pomegranate.

  After the Emmaus meal, Jesus returns to Jerusalem and appears to the disciples. ‘“Do you have anything to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it’ (Luke 24:41–43). In John he appears to the disciples on the shore of Lake Galilee. ‘Come and have breakfast’ (John 21:12) and no one speaks until the fish and bread are finished. />
  Lazarus too is hungry. In the bible his only recorded act after leaving the tomb is to eat dinner in the Bethany house. ‘Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with [Jesus]’ (John 12:2).

  This is his opportunity to talk, but first he has to eat. He is famished, and as he chews and swallows he organises the questions in his mind: why did you leave me so long? Will I ever remember what happened? What now is the plan?

  Lazarus tries not to anticipate the answers, but with Jesus the old habits return, and he is used to leaping ahead. He and Jesus, best of childhood friends from Nazareth, will pick up where they left off, arm-in-arm, invincible. Lazarus had been with Jesus in Bethlehem at the beginning, he was there in Egypt and in Nazareth, and now in Bethany near Jerusalem he is the final and conclusive sign: he and Jesus are destined for glory.

  Lazarus asks Peter, with all due respect, if he’ll give up his place next to Jesus. Peter hesitates, but makes way.

  Jesus turns towards Lazarus. His eyes smile sadly. He puts his hand on his old friend’s shoulder. Lazarus blinks. He wonders if his questions are stupid. He blinks twice. He opens his mouth to speak and Mary comes in with the nard.

  What happens next is known widely. Mary interrupts the dinner, at last finding her role in the story. Everyone has to move and furniture must be shifted so that she can kneel at the feet of Jesus. She uncorks the flask of nard, pours out the perfumed oil and washes his feet with her hair.

  Sometimes, Mary wants to say, words are not enough.

  4.

  1.

  Lazarus spends the night after his resurrection on the roof, under the stars. His house is full, and he is acting on a strong craving for open spaces.

  He does not immediately sleep. He regrets not speaking with Jesus, to confirm his conviction of being brought back for a purpose. Now Peter has reclaimed him, at least until the morning, and Lazarus lies awake wondering if a resurrection can wear out, wear off. He gazes at the stars and breathes the clean night air slowly in, slowly out.