Lazarus

About Lazarus

Lazarus (Heb. Elʿāzār Eleazar "God (has) helped") is the name of two separate men mentioned in the New Testament. The more famous one is Lazarus of Bethany, the subject of the miracle recounted only in the Gospel of John, in which Jesus raises him from the dead. The other appears uniquely in Jesus' parable of Lazarus and Dives.

In allusion to John's account of the resurrection of Lazarus, the name is often used to connote apparent restoration to life. For example, in the scientific term "Lazarus taxon", which denotes organisms that reappear in the fossil record after a period of apparent extinction. The Lazarus phenomenon refers to an event in which a person spontaneously returns to life (the heart starts beating again) after resuscitation has been given up. There are also numerous literary uses of the term.

In the Gospel of Luke 16:19–31, Jesus tells of one Lazarus, a beggar who lay outside the gate of a rich man, whom later tradition has given the name Dives— from the Latin for 'rich'— who dressed in fine clothing and dined sumptuously every day, but gave nothing to Lazarus. Both men died, and the beggar received his reward in the Hereafter, in Abraham's bosom at the everlasting banquet, while the rich man craved a drop of water from Lazarus' finger to cool his tongue, as he was tormented with fire. Lazarus is the only person in a New Testament parable given a name; the rich man of the parable has been named Dives by tradition, although the name does not appear in Luke.