Lazarus is Dead Read Online Free PDF Page B

same time he can cure Lazarus of whatever illness is slowing him down. Or, more accurately, out of gratitude for the sacrifice, god will stop punishing him with illness for the sins he keeps committing.
    Isaiah will be impressed. And as a remedy for sickness, there is evidence that sacrifice works. On a previous occasion, when his flu-like symptoms developed into flu, Lazarus offered up a sacrifice and recovered within a week.
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    They used to play hide-and-seek. It was more fun if Amos did the finding. At the age of four or five Amos would doggedly search in every obvious place, then start again from the beginning. The older boys shouted out ‘Here I am!’ and then pretended they hadn’t said anything, as if the message had descended from the sky.
    Lazarus kept score, and at this, like every other game, he won more often than he lost. He even competed at sunsets, sitting beside Jesus on the hill behind the village. The two boys looked out over the plain below, arms up, waiting for the exact moment the sun dipped finally beneath the horizon. They always missed it. It was light, then dark. The plain was a visible blackness, and then it was simply black, and night had stolen in.
    This made them late getting home, where Martha and Mary would rush to the gate to scold them. Lazarus didn’t care, because among ten-year-olds in Nazareth he was the brightest star in the sky. In the fresh upland air he grew strong and quick, sharp and solid, ready for the buffeting of the world.
    Jesus as a child was unremarkable. This must be so, because from his childhood he leaves behind no significant trace—the gospels contain a solitary reference, in Luke. At the age of twelve Jesus visits Jerusalem with his parents. He gets lost.
    Elsewhere there are attempts to fill the gap, notably in the Apocryphal Gospel of Thomas (about 150 CE ). In this imagined childhood Jesus can purify drinking water, as if by magic, and mould clay into twelve living sparrows. He ‘withers’ a child for no good reason, and kills another for barging into him in the street. He heals a man who drops an axe on his own foot, and brings a child back to life who falls from a second-floor window.
    Thomas validates these miracles by specifying that ‘there were also many other children playing with him’, and these childhood friends presumably act as witnesses. If this were true, then Lazarus must have been one of the watching children, because he and Jesus were always together. That’s how everyone knew they were friends.
    Yet the failure to name Lazarus in these stories is not the only reason the Gospel of Thomas is sidelined as Apocryphal, meaning ‘of uncertain authenticity’. Thomas is omitted from the canonical books of the bible because he makes a basic theological mistake, known as the Docetist heresy. If Jesus can perform miracles as a child, then his earthly body only
seems
to be physical. If he has divine powers from the outset, he is never truly human. He wouldn’t have missed food or sleep. He wouldn’t have needed friends.
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    The Bethany road to Jerusalem enters the city at the Sheep Gate, close to today’s Lion Gate. Leave the village, walk past the cemetery, down and up the first valley, over the ridge and descend the Mount of Olives to the narrow Kidron Stream. About a hundred metres short of the city walls, climb the steep paved approach. On the right-hand side, the road overlooks the pool of Bethesda.
    Lazarus trades twelve months a year with the Temple. He therefore looks down at the Bethesda pool on a regular basis. Archaeological findings have since confirmed that the pool is a double rectangular reservoir, with colonnades along five of the eight sides. From his elevated vantage point on the Bethany road, breathing deeply and shading his eyes, Lazarus can pick out the sick and dying gathered in the covered porches. This is where they come when they lose the ability to reason, and their only