We have seen up to now that the Bible
clearly teaches that the dead are dead, i.e. they are without
consciousness, waiting for the resurrection. This we recognise is
against the traditional view that believes that though somebody dies “his soul
continues living”. We have however seen, from a multitude of Scriptures, that
this traditional view cannot be correct, as it contradicts Scripture. There are
though a few passages of the Bible that being misunderstood are used by
tradition to support its doctrine of a supposed life immediately after death.
One such passage is the story of the rich man and Lazarus, given in Luke
16:19-31. There we read:
Luke 16:19-31: "There was a certain rich man who
was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day. But there
was a certain beggar named Lazarus, full of sores, who was laid at his gate,
desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table.
Moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. So it was that the beggar died,
and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and
was buried. And being in torments in Hades, he lifted up his eyes and saw
Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. Then he cried and said, ‘Father
Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his
finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.’ But
Abraham said, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good
things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and you are
tormented. ‘And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf
fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those
from there pass to us.’ Then he said, ‘I beg you therefore, father, that you would
send him to my father’s house, ‘for I have five brothers, that he may testify
to them, lest they also come to this place of torment.’ Abraham said to him,
‘They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.’ And he said, ‘No,
father Abraham; but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ But
he said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they
be persuaded though one rise from the dead.’"
Now before we say anything about a
passage, especially one that seems to contradict many other passages, we need
to study its context. To whom did Jesus say this story ? This we can easily
find by looking at the verses that precede the above passage. Starting from
Luke 16:1 we can see that the Lord spoke to His disciples and gave them a
teaching that ended with the following conclusion: “No servant can serve two
masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will
hold to the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and
mammon. ” (Luke 16:13) Now to this the Pharisees that were around
responded as follows: “And the Pharisees also, who were covetous, heard all
these things: and they derided him” (Luke 16:14). Then Jesus moved on and
replied to them:
Luke 16:15-19: “And He said to THEM [the
Pharisees], You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God
knows your hearts. For what is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in
the sight of God. The law and the prophets were until John. Since that time the
kingdom of God has been preached, and everyone is pressing into it. And it is
easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one tittle of the law to
fail. Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery; and
whoever marries her who is divorced from her husband commits adultery. There
was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared
sumptuously every day.”
I have intentionally included verse 19
in the above. Because this is part of the same talk that started in verse 15
and was addressed to “them”, them being the Pharisees. It was to them that
Jesus tell the story of Lazarus and the rich man. He was not giving there a
sermon to the people or a teaching to his disciples (though they were present).
In contrast His eyes were looking at the Pharisees and His words were addressed
to them. It was only after He completed this story that He
turned again to the disciples, for we are reading in Luke 17:1 “then He said to
the disciples….”. In other words, looking in chapter 16 as a whole we can see
that what the Lord said in that chapter was addressed to two different groups
of people: what he said from Luke 16:1 to 13 was addressed to the disciples
with the Pharisees hearing. To this the Pharisees reacted deriding him. Then
from verses 15-31 (which also includes the story we are looking at) He turned
to the Pharisees and addressed them. When He was done with them, He turned
again to the disciples (Luke 17:1).
It was therefore to the Pharisees that
the Lord addressed the Lazarus and the rich man story. Now looking at this
story we may feel very perplexed as there are elements in this that are not
seen elsewhere in the Bible. Let’s see some of them:
i) The
rich man died and went to Hades, where he was apparently tormented. As it
appears from the passage he was still conscious as he could see, feel and
speak. Moreover he had still sympathy and concern for his brothers and he
wanted to warn them. This description of Hades and the state of the dead is in
obvious contradiction with many Scriptures, some of which we give below:
Ecclesiastes 9:4-6, 10: "But for him who is joined to all
the living there is hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion. For the
living KNOW that they will die; BUT THE DEAD KNOW NOTHING, and they have no
more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love,
their hatred, and their envy have now perished; NEVERMORE WILL THEY
HAVE A SHARE IN ANYTHING DONE UNDER THE SUN. ....... Whatever your hand finds
to do, do it with your might FOR THERE IS NO WORK OR DEVICE OR KNOWLEDGE OR
WISDOM IN THE GRAVE (Sheol) WHERE YOU ARE GOING."
Psalms 6:5: “For in death there is no remembrance
of you: in the grave (Hebrew: Sheol, Hades in Septuagint) who will give you
thanks?”
Psalms 31:17: “let them be silent in the grave
(Hebrew: Sheol, Hades in Septuagint)”.
Psalms 115:17: “The dead do not praise the LORD, nor
any who go down into silence. [Septuagint: go down into Hades i.e. Hades =
silence]”
Psalms 30:9: “What profit is there in my blood, when
I go down to the pit? Will the dust praise you? Will it declare your truth?
Isaiah 38:18-19: “For the grave [Sheol] cannot praise
you, death can not celebrate you: they that go down into the pit cannot hope
for your truth. The living, the living, he shall praise you, as I do this day:
the father shall make known your truth to the children. ” (NKJV-KJV)
As it is obvious from the above, Sheol
(in Hebrew) or Hades (in Greek) is a place of silence and non-consciousness.
There is no tormenting or refreshing there. There are no feelings of sympathy
and there is no knowledge there. There are really more than 70 occurrences of the words Sheol and Hades in the
Bibleand
nowhere do we see in them the characteristics we see in the above story. Really
in our story we see the rich man in Hades, speaking, feeling, having sympathy
and being tormented. Why is that? Before we see the why, let’s also see some
other points of this story. Let’s focus on the poor Lazarus.
ii) So for
poor Lazarus we read:
Luke 16:22: “And it came to pass, that the beggar
died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom”
Once again this sentence contains
strange references, unprecedented in the Bible. Indeed, there is no other
Biblical reference to “Abraham’s bosom” and to angels bringing people there.
There are as we said more than 70 occurrences of the words Sheol and Hades in the
Bible that
define Hades, literally the grave, as the place that all dead – without
distinction – go. But we never read of an “Abraham’s bosom” there, nor do we
read that the poor or the just go to a different place than the rich or the
unjust. Why is Jesus making such references that have no parallel in the
Scripture and in fact contradict it in many points?
The answer can be found by going back
to the context: to whom was Jesus addressing this story? As we saw this was not
intended to be a general teaching on the dead but it was addressed specifically
to the Pharisees that scorned him because he was teaching that there is no way
to work both God and money. This audience we read were “lovers of money”,
“covetous” and they “were justifying themselves among men”. The Pharisees had,
as we can read in other places in the Scripture, traditions that didn’t have
anything to do with the Word of God. They believed things that were foreign to
Scripture and made the Word of God of no effect. Mark 7:1-13 give us some
insight on how far from the Bible this sect was:
Mark 7:1-13: “Then the Pharisees and some of the
scribes came together to Him, having come from Jerusalem. Now when they saw
some of His disciples eat bread with defiled, that is, with unwashed hands,
they found fault. For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they
wash theirhands in a special way, holding the tradition of the elders. When
they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are
many other things which they have received and hold, like the washing of cups,
pitchers, copper vessels, and couches. Then the Pharisees and scribes asked
Him, "Why do Your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the
elders, but eat bread with unwashed hands?" He answered and said to them,
"Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written: ‘This
people honours Me with their lips, But their heart is far from Me. And in vain
they worship Me, Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’
"For laying aside the commandment of God, you hold the tradition of
men––the washing of pitchers and cups, and many other such things you
do." He said to them, "All too well you reject the commandment of
God, that you may keep your tradition. "For Moses said, ‘Honor your father
and your mother’; and, ‘He who curses father or mother, let him be put to
death.’ "But you say, ‘If a man says to his father or mother,
"Whatever profit you might have received from me is Corban" ––’(that
is, a gift to God), "then you no longer let him do anything for his father
or his mother, "making the word of God of no effect through your
tradition which you have handed down. And many such things you do."”
The last phrase “and many such things
you do” shows that the above were not the only instances where the Pharisees
were clearly deviating from Scripture. In fact, as it happens many times today,
they had replaced the Word of God with their traditions. In fact, as it happens
many times today, they had replaced the Word of God with their traditions.
Their teaching were not teachings coming from the Scripture but traditions with
no base on the Bible and in fact traditions that were blatantly contradicting
the Bible. Now why do I say all these things about the Pharisees? The reason is
simple: because though the “bosom of Abraham” and the other strange things that
appear in the rich man and Lazarus story do not appear anywhere else in the
Bible, and in fact contradict other references in the Bible, they do appear in
the traditions the Pharisees believed. Here is what the Catholic encyclopedia tells us about the beliefs of the
Jews of the 1st century.
Note:
In the Holy
Bible, the expression "the Bosom of Abraham" is found only in two
verses of St. Luke's Gospel (16:22-23). It occurs in the parable of the Rich
Man and Lazarus the imagery of which is plainly drawn from the popular
representations of the unseen world of the dead which were current in Our
Lord's time. According to the Jewish conceptions of that day, the souls of the
dead were gathered into a general tarrying-place the Sheol of the Old Testament
literature, and the Hades of the New Testament writings (cf. Luke 16:22; in the
Greek 16:23). A local discrimination, however, existed among them, according to
their deeds during their mortal life. In the unseen world of the dead the souls
of the righteous occupied an abode or compartment of their own which was
distinctly separated by a wall or a chasm from the abode or compartment to
which the souls of the wicked were consigned. The latter was a place of
torments usually spoken of as Gehenna (cf. Matthew 5:29, 30; 18:9; Mark 9:42
sqq. in the Latin Vulgate) — the other, a place of bliss and security known
under the names of "Paradise" (cf. Luke 23:43) and "the Bosom of
Abraham" (Luke 16:22-23). And it is in harmony with these Jewish
conceptions that Our Lord pictured the terrible fate of the selfish Rich Man,
and on the contrary, the glorious reward of the patient Lazarus. In the next
life Dives found himself in Gehenna, condemned to the most excruciating
torments, whereas Lazarus was carried by the angels into "the Bosom of
Abraham", where the righteous dead shared in the repose and felicity of
Abraham "the father of the faithful". But while commentators
generally agree upon the meaning of the figurative expression "the Bosom
of Abraham", as designating the blissful abode of the righteous souls
after death, they are at variance with regard to the manner in which the phrase
itself originated. Up to the time of Maldonatus (A.D. 1583), its origin was
traced back to the universal custom of parents to take up into their arms, or
place upon their knees, their children when they are fatigued, or return home, and
to make them rest by their side during the night (cf. 2 Samuel 12:2; 1 Kings
3:20; 17:19; Luke 11:7 sqq.), thus causing them to enjoy rest and security in
the bosom of a loving parent. After the same manner was Abraham supposed to act
towards his children after the fatigues and troubles of the present life, hence
the metaphorical expression "to be in Abraham's Bosom" as meaning to
be in repose and happiness with him. But according to Maldonatus (In Lucam,
xvi, 22), whose theory has since been accepted by many scholars, the metaphor
"to be in Abraham's Bosom" is derived from the custom of reclining on
couches at table which prevailed among the Jews during and before the time of
Christ. As at a feast each guest leaned on his left elbow so as to leave his
right arm at liberty, and as two or more lay on the same couch, the head of one
man was near the breast of the man who lay behind, and he was therefore said
"to lie in the bosom" of the other. It was also considered by the
Jews of old a mark of special honour and favour for one to be allowed to lie in
the bosom of the master of the feast (cf. John 13:23). And it is by this
illustration that they pictured the next world. They conceived of the reward of
the righteous dead as a sharing in a banquet given by Abraham, "the father
of the faithful" (cf. Matthew 8:11 sqq.), and of the highest form of that
reward as lying in "Abraham's Bosom". Since the coming of Our Lord,
"the Bosom of Abraham" gradually ceased to designate a place of imperfect
happiness, and it has become synonymous with Heaven itself. In their writings
the Fathers of the Church mean by that expression sometimes the abode of the
righteous dead before they were admitted to the Beatific Vision after the death
of the Saviour, sometimes Heaven, into which the just of the New Law are
immediately introduced upon their demise. When in her liturgy the Church
solemnly prays that the angels may carry the soul of one of her departed
children to "Abraham's Bosom", she employs the expression to
designate Heaven and its endless bliss in company with the faithful of both
Testaments, and in particular with Abraham, the father of them all. This
passage of the expression "the Bosom of Abraham" from an imperfect
and limited sense to one higher and fuller is a most natural one, and is in
full harmony with the general character of the New Testament dispensation as a
complement and fulfilment of the Old Testament revelation.
“In the Holy Bible, the expression
"the Bosom of Abraham" is found only in two verses of St. Luke's Gospel
(16:22-23). It occurs in the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus the
imagery of which is plainly drawn from the popular representations of the
unseen world of the dead which were current in Our Lord's time. According to
the Jewish conceptions of that day, the souls of the dead were gathered
into a general tarrying-place the Sheol of the Old Testament literature, and
the Hades of the New Testament writings (cf. Luke 16:22; in the Greek 16:23). A
local discrimination, however, existed among them, according to their deeds
during their mortal life. In the unseen world of the dead the souls of the
righteous occupied an abode or compartment of their own which was distinctly
separated by a wall or a chasm from the abode or compartment to which the souls
of the wicked were consigned. The latter was a place of torments … -- the
other, a place of bliss and security known under the names of
"Paradise" and "the Bosom of Abraham" ”
See in the above the emphasis to the “Jewish conceptions of that day”. We
are not speaking here about Scripture based traditions that originate from God
but “traditions of that day”, “popular representations of the unseen world”.
The Bosom of Abraham, the just being in it, the angels bringing them there, the
punishment of the unjust, the chaos between these two places and the other
points we read above as the view of the Pharisees, have no parallel in any
other part of the Scripture except the story of the rich man and the Lazarus.
In other words: WHAT THE LORD USED IN THIS STORY, SPEAKING TO THE PHARISEES,
WAS WHAT THE PHARISSES THEMSELVES BELIEVED TO BE HAPPENING AFTER DEATH. He used
their own story to pass his own message. We can understand the Lord’s point in
the conclusion given in the last sentence of the above story:
Luke 16:31: “If they do not hear Moses and the
prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.”
Obviously the rich man hadn’t heard,
which is to say hadn’t followed, the Moses and the prophets, the Word of God,
and ended up tormented. He was an unjust rich and his richness didn’t help him
to avoid getting the tormenting share. On the other hand the poor man, though
he was poor he was a man that followed the Word of God, the Moses and the
prophets, and because of this ended up in Abraham’s bosom. And this is exactly
what the Lord wanted to tell to these Pharisees. In Luke 16:13 he told the
disciples “you cannot serve God and mammon”. Then Luke 16:14 tells us: “Now the
Pharisees, who were lovers of money, also heard all these things, and they
derided Him”. These people were lovers of money and they were not keeping the
Word of God, the Moses and the prophets. In fact as we read elsewhere they were
making the Word of God of no effect. Yet, they thought that somehow they would
be saved – which according to their (false) traditions meant that after death
they would go to the “Bosom of Abraham”. Then the Lord, using their own
weapons, their very own traditions, turns to them and gives them a story where
the poor ended up in the Bosom of Abraham because he kept the Word of God but
the rich and unjust – like they were – ended up in torment. The riches were not
sufficient to save him from this. Only keeping the Word of God could do this.
It is a teaching to covetous Pharisees that in short tells them: “don’t think
that riches will save you. What will save you is to follow the Word of God (the
Moses and the prophets)”. To tell them this, the Lord used one of the most
effective ways: their own language i.e. the language of their traditions about
salvation and condemnation.
To conclude, the Lord didn’t intend
with this story to give a sermon on what happens in the afterlife, as many have
taken His words to mean, ignoring the context and the Pharisees beliefs that
elsewhere the Lord judged severely saying that they bring the Word of God to no
effect. What the Lord did, was addressing the Pharisees, using their very own
beliefs about the afterlife to tell them that what matters is not riches but
keeping the Word of God. He used their own framework, their own beliefs about
afterlife, to add his own conclusion. He could choose another framework to say
the same thing. But few will doubt that the most effective way to speak to
somebody is using a language that is familiar to him. And this is what the Lord
did: he spoke to them using their picture of the afterlife as a framework,
adding to it the message He wanted. It is very sad that many have taken this
framework, these wrong Pharisaic beliefs, and turn them into a doctrine about
the dead. This is indeed a doctrine but a Pharisaic one. We hope that this
article will help the reader to draw his own conclusions.
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