Bible Review

See the discussion in Howard Clark Kee, Medicine, Miracle and Magic in New Testament Times (Cambridge: University Press, 1986), pp. 86–94 especially.

These terms are borrowed from Raymond Brown, The Gospel According to John, vol.1 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1996–1970) , p.429.

This interpretation of John’s purpose is exemplified by James P. Martin, “History and Eschatology in the Lazarus Narrative,” Scottish Journal of Theology 17 (1964), pp. 332–343; it is also the conclusion of Sandra Schneider’s “Death in the Community,” Interpretation 41.1 (January 1987).

The names Mary, Martha and Lazarus have all been found on first-century ossuaries, in one case together on a tomb near Bethany. See Jack Finegan, The Archeology of the New Testament (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1992), pp. 360–61 (entry 312). Tradition makes Lazarus out to have been the first Bishop of Marseilles, and martyred under Domition (81–96). His feast day is December 17.

Technically, the site of execution was just outside the walls of Jerusalem. The time and place of his death make it natural for the author of John’s Gospel to refer to Jesus as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” and to present the time of Jesus’ death as coinciding exactly with the slaying of the Passover lambs.

For the psychological difficulty, see John Knox, The Death of Christ (New York: Abingdon, 1958), pp. 52–76.

The “substitutionary” or “satisfaction” understanding of the atonement, as it is commonly known, is first found in fully developed form in Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo? (1097). According to Anselm, humankind (because of our disobedience and sin) owes an infinite debt to God, which Jesus’ sacrificial death pays on our behalf, thereby making reconciliation (at-one-ment) with God possible.