Who was Lazarus?

The short answer

Lazarus lived in Bethany, a village near Jerusalem, with his sisters Martha and Mary. John’s Gospel says Jesus loved him. He died, and four days later Jesus called him out of his tomb alive.

What the record says

John begins the story with the family:

Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus.

John 11:5

When Lazarus fell sick, his sisters sent word. “Lord, behold, he for whom you have great affection is sick” (John 11:3). Jesus stayed where he was two more days (John 11:6). When he reached Bethany, Lazarus had been in the tomb four days (John 11:17). “Jesus wept” (John 11:35). He had the stone taken away, prayed, and called Lazarus by name in a loud voice.

He who was dead came out, bound hand and foot with wrappings, and his face was wrapped around with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Free him, and let him go.”

John 11:44

Not long after, Lazarus sat at the table at a supper for Jesus in Bethany (John 12:2). Crowds came to see him, and the chief priests “conspired to put Lazarus to death also” (John 12:10). The Gospels don’t say what happened to him after that.

Only John tells this story. Luke has a parable about a poor beggar named Lazarus (Luke 16:20), but that’s a story Jesus told, not this man.

How the novels tell it

Third Day is a novel. In the novel he goes by Yeshua, the name his family would have called him. The two first meet as boys in Son of Man. Lazarus is Yeshua’s age, and when Yeshua stays behind at the Temple at twelve, Lazarus pulls him into the house at Bethany in time for supper (chapter four, “The Temple”). In chapter two of Third Day, “Lazarus,” a runner brings the sisters’ message to Philadelphia. The one he loves is sick. Lazarus has already died the day the runner left. Yeshua stays two more days, then goes. Martha meets him on the road. Mary falls at his feet, and he weeps. They roll the stone away and he calls Lazarus by name. Nothing moves. Then the wrapped body bends at the waist and stands, and most of the crowd runs. Martha pulls the cloth from her brother’s face.

Lazarus blinked at her. “Why are we in the garden?”

That night men from Jerusalem come to the gate for the grave cloth, calling it proof of a fraud. Lazarus opens the gate himself and holds out his wrists, still marked red where the linen bound them.