By Helaine Burch
Appendix I:
The Rich Man and Lazarus
It cannot be without significance that the entire premise
of the story of The Rich Man and Lazarus is in total disagreement with the
testimony of the Old Testament Scriptures which come before it. It is certain
that there is a reason why the Lord utilized such conflicting ideas here, and
when the Pharisees are examined more closely, a plausible reason appears.
According to the historian Josephus, who was
himself a member of the sect from the age of 19, the Pharisees believed in the
immortality of the soul and a conscious intermediate state between death and resurrection.
“They…believe that souls have an immortal vigor in them, and that under the
earth there will be rewards and punishments, according as they have lived
virtuously or viciously in this life; and the latter are to be detained in an
everlasting prison, but that the former shall have power to revive and live
again”[1].
Now when we recognize that concepts like “Abraham’s
Bosom” and consciousness after death were established traditions of these Jews
in New Testament times, the close parallels suggest that Jesus Christ was
simply echoing their tradition when he spoke to them that day - and echoing for
a specific purpose. When we are aware of the Pharisees’ detailed views
concerning (what they called) “The Hereafter”, and the contradiction of such
ideas by the Old Testament Scriptures, it becomes somewhat easier to perceive
the Rich Man and Lazarus as something more strategic than it initially appears.
The Lord did not actually promulgate eternal existence and conscious punishment
in a plain, straightforward, or formal manner here. Rather, he only used them
within a cryptic story, or parable and he did not proceed to explain the story,
thereby establishing its basis in fact. This ambiguity allows doubt as to
whether the Rich Man and Lazarus was truly intended to depict an after-death
reality…but more importantly, it also permits us to view the story as the Lord’s
very artful and deliberate method of indicting the Pharisees with their own erroneous
beliefs.
Going back to the text, we have seen that when members
of the sect derided the Lord in Luke
16.14, he responded to their ridicule with a sharp condemnation of their
self-righteousness. In a move which was intended to “put them in their place”
on more than one count, he rapidly changed subjects and condemned them a second
time for their doctrine on divorce. Then, following that, the lord changed the
subject yet again, and began a third condemnation of the Pharisees, this time
in regard to their doctrine concerning the dead. He phrased his indictment as a
story involving the fictional characters of The Rich Man and Lazarus,
resourcefully working in all the false components of the Pharisaic teaching.
Jesus Christ, then, was already in the midst of condemning these men for erroneous
practices when he began to utter his tale; he merely continued his attack by
the use of a clever maneuver that was intended to further accuse those
Pharisees who were listening that day.
That Jesus Christ was capable of such irony is
demonstrated by his sarcastic remark after The Unjust Steward was completed [Luke 16.9]. These words were not
intended as actual advice, and neither was his story to the Pharisees intended
as actual instruction for his disciples that day. Both are examples of the Lord’s
skill in the use of words and language, while The Rich Man and Lazarus had the
particular design of a shrewd parody of the Pharisaic beliefs…Those who listened
to the Lord in his own day were doubtless aware of the distinctive Pharisaic
doctrine, and therefore recognized his cutting irony toward the “vipers” who
sat “in Moses’ seat”.
And indeed, sectarianism within Judaism reveals
that not all of the Jews were in agreement as to how the Holy Scriptures were
to be understood. All three of the major sects of Christ’s time departed from
the Scriptures as differences arose regarding numerous aspects of the law,
worship, and doctrine. The Sadducees did not believe in resurrection or eternal
life of any kind, and therefore did not favor the concept of an immortal soul…The
Essenes and the Pharisees, however, both favored the immortality of the soul, a
belief that had grown and undergone development among the Jews during the intertestamental
period. Most unfortunate, however, is the strong likelihood that the true
origin of the belief came in part from the immensely popular teachings of the
Greek philosopher Plato (428/7 – 348/7 B.C.). In Plato’s writing can be found
many dramatic ideas of inherent immortality, but in the Bible itself the words “immortal”
and “soul” are never put together in order to describe mankind. In the end, one
has only to look back to the Jewish and Greek converts to the early church in
order to understand how the doctrine of the immortal soul entered into the
Christian faith.
[The story] also contains other aberrations which tend
to flag it as a condemnation of the Pharisees, rather than as a warning of
their possible future fate in hell. According to the story, judgment of persons
is obviously given immediately upon death, and then torments are applied
without delay. (For in order to determine which side of the gulf each soul
should be sent to, and who is worthy of “comfort” and “torments”, judgment
would have to be executed first in order to make such an assessment.) But other
portions of scripture repeatedly teach that there is to be a future “day of judgment” (1 John 4.17; 2 Peter 3.7), and this is
surely to be after resurrection, as Revelation 20.4 and 20.12 describe. It is also notable that
the idea of punishment before the day of judgment is not mentioned in other
(more straightforward) scripture, and in fact, the opposite is true [2 Peter 2.9]. Discrepancies such as
these tend to confirm the likelihood that the Lord was using the Pharisees
beliefs to make his condemnation of them more biting, for such teachings of
immediate “rewards and punishments” “under the earth” were certainly theirs [Josephus,
Ant. Book 18, Ch. 1, 3].
And faith is an issue here, as well, because if The
Rich Man and Lazarus truly teaches a factual scenario for man, then it also
appears to oppose all that the Lord Jesus Christ has said about faith as the
basis of salvation [Rom 5.17]…The
poor man is “comforted” after death in Abraham’s Bosom [because] he suffered a
life of poverty (Luke 16.25);
nothing is said about whether he was a God fearing man of faith or not. [The
Rich Man] failed to do a good work, but again, there is no mention about
whether or not he was a man who had faith in God…Faith appears to be a
non-existent issue, leaving us to question whether this scenario and this story
are even loosely based on the facts of Scripture.
[Furthermore], if sheol/hades is truly a spiritual
realm where the people of God were once housed prior to the ascension of
Christ, it is questionable what kind of comfort they actually would have
experienced there if they were made to reside in plain view of the unsaved…As
the Lord’s story illustrates, unsaved family and friends would have undergone a
terrorizing suffering within visible distance and earshot of the saved, and
would have called out to them continually for merciful favors and relief. If this
– or anything like it – is what God has elsewhere referred to as the “sleep” of
death (Deuteronomy 31.16; John 11.11),
then such slumber must have been characterized by a nightmare of the most
horrible magnitude for the early peoples of God. It may indeed be no
coincidence that the term “Abraham’s Bosom” occurs only once in the entire
Bible, and this while the Lord is actively engaged in a criticism of Israel’s “blind
guides”. This view of an afterlife belongs to the tradition of men…
The fact that [the story] deviates so greatly from
the body of Scripture surrounding it should be a testimony in itself that it is not teaching, but false doctrine held up to the
faces of those who invented it. This
may be a bitter pill for some to swallow, but those searching for the truth
will find confidence when they begin to embrace all of the teachings of the
Bible – both Old Testament and New Testament, from beginning to end.
Coming as it does, after the parable of the Unjust
Steward and after the Lord’s direct criticism of the Pharisees, it seems to
give an example of how the Pharisees themselves were unjust stewards – not with
material goods, but with the word of God, which had been entrusted to them as
the spiritual leaders of their people. That the Pharisees had not been wholly
faithful to God’s word is evident by the Scriptures, and their doctrine
concerning the death state was the Lord’s case in point. His inclusion of a
prophetic note makes it all the more interesting: for when a real Lazarus would
rise from the dead some time later [John 11 only], the event would fail to
persuade the nation of the authenticity of Jesus Christ, just as “Abraham”
predicted that the raising of the fictional Lazarus would not convince the rich
man’s brothers.
Thus, after condemning the Pharisees with their own
beliefs, he tells the disciples that it is better to be dead than to be found
guilty of placing doctrinal stumbling-blocks in front of other people [Luke
17.1-2]. These are harsh words, but they demonstrate to us how strongly God
feels about those who teach from the wisdom of oral tradition which contradicts
the word of God.
[1] Antiquities of the Jews, Book 18,
Chapter 1, 3; see Berakhot, The Talmud of
Babylonia, Ch. 3; Midrash Rabbah Ruth,
Ch. 3; Lamentations Rabbah, Ch. 1; Exodus Rabbah, Ch. 31; Ecclesiastes Rabbah, Ch. 12.
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