![]() John plays with epithets and allusions to underscore that Lazarus’ story foreshadows Jesus’ death and resurrection in a variety of ways (p 170). Jesus raises Lazarus to life, and the authorities plot to take both their lives. Grief and censure turn to an expression of gratitude-the anointing of feet-that in turn comes to signify a funerary rite. ![]() The principal action is a reversal-the dead one lives-but to the simplicity of this reversal, John adds the complexity of emotion, allusion, report, reaction, and counterreaction. Jo-Ann Brant, in her Paideia commentary, observes: The narrative itself is vivid and compelling, full of arresting detail and emotion. However, the signs are quite clearly depicted as partial revelations which point forward to ultimate reality, and it makes more sense to see each of these seven pointing forward to the eighth, the reality of Jesus’ resurrection, which (if ‘seven’ signifies this age, with its seven days of creation and rest) depict this as the beginning of the new age to come. There is some debate here, because they are not each explicitly identified in the narrative as a ‘sign’, so some readers see the feeding of the 5,000 and the walking on the water as one, combined, sign, making Jesus’ own resurrection the seventh. Healing the man blind from birth in John 9:1-7.Healing the paralytic at Bethesda in John 5:1-15. ![]()
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