Falling From the Rich Man’s Table
The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus Through First Century Eyes
A growing number of Christians committed to understanding the perspective of Jesus’ first-century hearers are awakening to the fact that the doctrine of eternal conscious torment (ECT), though long-held, is not the only explanation for Jesus’ preaching on gehenna, weeping and gnashing of teeth, and the outer darkness. One item frequently employed in this debate is Jesus’ parable known as The Rich Man and Lazarus, as it seems to depict a cursed man’s suffering and torture in hell.
Of all the stories Jesus told, this is the only one which uses the names of real persons. It is for this reason that some believe that it is not a parable at all. They maintain that Jesus, by including Abraham and Lazarus, must be relating a real incident — something he personally witnessed, perhaps, in the spiritual realm. Another reason some believe that this is not a parable is because the story is not explicitly predicated by “Jesus told them a parable, saying…”
First, to say to anyone versed in Middle Eastern literature and rhetoric that the style here employed by Jesus cannot be included in the parable genre would be regarded as nonsense. Second, Matthew himself counters, “Jesus told them nothing apart from a parable so that there was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet when he said, ‘I shall open my mouth in parables, I shall utter things that have been hidden since the creation.’” (Mat 13:34)
Two Kinds of Teaching
In fact, the tale possesses all the earmarks of a very popular educative genre from the second temple period known as aggadah or haggadah, meaning “narrative”.
Aggadic literature, though instructive, did not contain legally binding theological and doctrinal items, unlike halakhah (Jewish law) of the same period. Halakhah expressed rules, judgments and precedents on behaviour which was categorized as permissible or forbidden, pure or impure, holy or profane, etc.
Aggadah, on the other hand, investigates and interprets the meaning, the values, and the ideas which undergird religious life. It made use of parable, satire, metaphor, personification, and poetry to teach ethics and morals, speculate about the divine, relate legends and folklore, pass on historical information, interpret dreams, and express messianic faith and longings.
One might say that the relation between aggadah and halakhah is similar to the relation between theory and practice, between idea and application, and, ethically, between character and behavior.
Why Teachers Employed Aggadah
Aggadah was an invention of Middle Eastern Jewry from the time of the Second Temple to the end of the talmudic period. Throughout this period, the Middle East was a meeting ground (or crucible, some might say) for different religions and cultures and often a violent battlefield for opposing political views.
[The Jewish people] confronted by incessant and bitter struggles with a variety of foes from within and without, evolved in the aggadah an ingenious instrument for deriving guidance from the Torah, for educating the people, strengthening their faith, and bolstering their pride and courage. [Aggadic material] often achieves new levels of imagination and originality; frequently striking, engaging, and earthy. (Encyclopaedia Judaica)
The significance of aggadah is in the “telling,” the narration, the wording, the style. Aggadah is that “which draws a person’s heart toward it, just like water, which is essential for life.” (Yoma 75a) “So that one should recognize Him who created the world, and so cling to His ways.” (Sif. Deut. 49) In the words of Leopold Zunz its purpose is “to bring Heaven down to earth and to elevate man to Heaven.”
Hebraic-minded writers like Natan Lawrence decry the fact that many Christian teachers have used the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus as theological grounds for the doctrine of the immortality of the soul.
It is an exegetical leap that just cannot be substantiated once the nature of aggadic literature is understood. Those who make this leap have missed the true meaning of Jesus’ teaching. He is not making a theological statement or halachic declaration on the state of the dead.
What then was Jesus up to? What can we make of this peculiar story?
The Rich Man
Whereas both Abraham and Lazarus are named, the remaining chief character’s identity, and that of his family, remain conspicuously anonymous.* In the passage, we find the following clues:
- He was dressed in purple and fine linen.
- He lived in luxury every day.
- He had five brothers.
- They lived in his father’s house.
- They had Moses and the Prophets.
- But they did not listen to them.
- They would not be convinced even if someone were to rise from the dead.
While, to the modern reader, it is not at all obvious who this individual was, the details are too specific to be representative of all rich men. It is as if Jesus expected the crowd to have known immediately who He was referring to. And, true, there was not any chance of their mistaking it, because only one man in Jewish society fit precisely all seven clues.
As Steven Cox notes in The Rich Man, Lazarus and Abraham, the key to his identity lies with two sources. First, the Torah itself, the five books of Moses’s Law. Second, Josephus, a Jewish historian from the first century and his account of the high priest and his family.
Purple and Fine Linen
In Exodus 28 we find extremely detailed instructions given for making the high priest’s garments:
Make sacred garments for your brother Aaron to give him dignity and honor… These are the garments they are to make: a breastpiece, an ephod, a robe, a woven tunic, a turban and a sash. They are to make these sacred garments for your brother Aaron and his sons, so they may serve me as priests. Have them use gold, and blue, purple and scarlet yarn, and fine linen.
The Don of Jerusalem
Regarding wealth and family, Josephus writes:
Now the report goes, that this elder Annas proved a most fortunate man; for he had five sons, who had all performed the office of a high priest to God, and he had himself enjoyed that dignity a long time formerly, which had never happened to any other of our high priests… (Antiquities, 20.9.1)
Historical records show that from AD 17 to 63, Annas, the venerable old Sadducee, enjoyed considerable influence and power ruling over the Jewish high priesthood for decades as son after son was installed by the Roman procurators, with Caiaphas, his son-in-law, serving the longest at 18 years. Talk about a dynasty!
You Have Moses
The Sadducees held to the written form of Moses’ Law, the Torah, and a strict, literal interpretation besides.
But Do Not Listen
In John chapter 5, we see Jesus answering Jewish leaders (possibly agents of the Sanhedrin) who were rebuking Him for healing a man on the Sabbath.
These very works I am doing testify about Me that the Father has sent Me… You don’t have His word living in you, because you don’t believe the One He sent. You pore over the Scriptures because you think you have eternal life in them, yet they testify about Me. And you are not willing to come to Me so that you may have life.
Taking all of this into account, Jesus’ Jewish audience could not have failed to understand that the rich man referred to was none other than the current Jewish high priest — Caiaphas.
If so, this story no longer resides in the realm of theology, but that of dramatic satire (satirical drama?). As mentioned, Jesus is not intending it to form “divine doctrines of the church”, but is employing aggadah to play on falsely held beliefs.
But what falsely held beliefs, and whose?
Insiders vs. Outsiders
Kenneth Bailey, in his ground-breaking work, Finding the Lost Cultural Keys to Luke 15, describes the sharp caste-like division that existed in Jewish society between one group, called the haberim, and another, the ‘am ha-’aretz:
The haberim were societies of scrupulous Jews who pledged themselves to the study and strict observance of the law. Special emphasis was given to the Sabbath, the rules of ceremonial purity, and tithing… To join such a society one needed only take a pledge in the presence of three members. What then of those who were not members?
The haberim lived in an apparent perpetual state of hostility with the ’am ha-’aretz (the people of the land). These latter were those who (in the eyes of the former) did not keep the law in a precise fashion. Intense hostility between these two groups is reflected all through the tradition. The ’am ha-’aretz were consistently seen by the haberim as impious slackers in religious matters. Any contact with them was defiling for the haber (associate). The Babylonian Talmud records the depth of this hostility:
“Our Rabbis taught: Let a man always sell all he has and marry the daughter of a scholar…. but let him not marry the daughter of an ’am ha-arez, because they are detestable and their wives are vermin, and of their daughters it is said, Cursed be he that lieth with any manner of beast….”
Rabbi Eleazar said: An ’am ha-arez, it is permitted to stab him [even] on the Day of Atonement which falls on the Sabbath….
Included in the haberim category would have been at least two of the sects that dominated Jewish life in the first century — the Pharisees and Sadducees, gatekeepers of the Old Covenant Law.
The Pharisees believed that in the afterlife, those who had been destitute and ill must have been cursed by God and were therefore deserving of torment, while the “righteous” haberim by default go to Abraham’s Vale awaiting a future resurrection.†
The Sadducees, on the other hand, did not believe in an individual’s soul surviving into the afterlife, and thus put no weight in a resurrection. Instead, their hopes and dreams depended on the survival and prosperity of their biological progeny and the continuation of the priestly family line.
In this parable, then, Jesus would seem to be masterfully twisting the knife into both of these beliefs.
To the Pharisees, who’s very name meant separated ones, this Messiah was continuing to preach the radical idea that in the Age to Come, the fate of the haberim (the so-called “disciples of the wise”) and ‘am ha-’aretz (among whom were notorious tax collectors and sinners ) would be shockingly reversed. Those who heeded Messiah by faith, would be on the inside of the fast-approaching covenant kingdom (now at hand), while those who did not would be outside—the outer darkness —and subject to all of Jesus’ dire prophecies against that wicked generation (see Mat. 23-24 and Luke 19). This echoes the theme of so many of Jesus’ parables, including those of the previous chapter, which began with the religious elite observing Jesus’ social ties and murmuring,
This man welcomes sinners and eats with them. (Luke 15:2)
To the Sadducees, Jesus, in including Lazarus as a character, could have been saying see, there is grounds for the resurrection. And, if the Rich Man was indeed Caiaphas, the fact that he was a Sadducee and did not believe in the afterlife would not have made a difference to the parable’s impact. The fact remained that everyone in Jewish society would have believed the high priest to be, above all people, immune to such an unthinkable outcome.
Stan Tyra makes the salient point that, in this sense, the story is about heaven and hell, just “not the heaven and hell you thought were geographical locations.”
Let me say matter-of-factly, that this abyss was created by the rich man, not God. It was there long before death exposed it. That abyss is the separation and exclusion that smug entitlement creates. Even from a place of torment, the rich man wants the poor man to serve him. He wants to be in control, give the order and someone respond. Until now, he never even noticed Lazarus or if he did, he just ignored him, probably day after day.
Notice this hell was not created by God for not believing in God. It was created by an entitled man who ignored and rejected his brother. Don’t let the words “rich man” make you think only monetarily. This story is far bigger and deeper than the obvious. It’s about withholding from your brother and sister in need. The withholding of mercy, love, compassion, forgiveness, and kindness. It’s devoting myself only to those who are like me and pretend to validate me and will in some way return the favor of my hospitality.
Entitled religious people, don’t want the “poor” in their presence for it confronts them with the lovelessness in their hearts.
The Theologian’s Abuse
For someone to use this parable to support a doctrine that says sinners are destined to suffer eternal conscious torment in the fire of God’s wrath is untenable. Even if one did use it that way, not understanding the purpose of the story, all one could possibly prove was that wealthy Jewish haberim go there. To say that anybody else ends up in that state — Gentiles, LGBTQx’s, Muslim jihadists, etc.— is strictly conjecture and falls outside the scope of Jesus’ account.
Other factors indicate that this parable cannot be literal.
- Caiaphas had not literally died and descended to Hades. He was still very much alive, at least up to Acts 4:6.
- Although, in the story, Abraham refuses to raise Lazarus, in reality Jesus did raise Lazarus.
- The expired are not literally awake in either Abraham’s vales or a place of torment. Jesus says in John 11:11 that Lazarus “slept.” The Psalms speak of Sheol (Hades in Greek) as a place of silence.
- We know from Hebrews 11:13, 39–40 that Abraham is not literally presiding over the underworld. He is also dead, awaiting the resurrection.
In fact, the only thing literal about the parable is verse 31.
But he said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should arise from the dead.’”
For, in John 12:10, we find just how unpersuaded the Rich Man and his family were.
A large crowd of Judaeans… came, not only on account of Jesus, but also that they might see Lazarus whom he had raised from the dead. And the chief priests conspired to kill Lazarus also, because on his account many Judaeans were going over to Jesus and having faith in him.
So, one might say that this story is a fictional satire ending with a literal prophecy!
* Some think Jesus’ friend from Bethany by the same name may have been present during the parable’s telling. Though it seems the family was well-to-do, could Mary and Martha’s brother have been a black sheep, something of a mendicant in the family? He is notably absent when the sisters first host Jesus in their home. Whatever the case, the name Lazarus adds flavour to the tale, meaning, “God has helped.”
† According to noted scholar David Bentley Hart, “κόλπος (kolpos) can mean ‘bosom’ or ‘womb’, but also a great many other things, among them ‘pocket’ or ‘fold’, or ‘hidden places’ or ‘inward parts’ or ‘bay’ or ‘valley’. In the next verse, the noun shifts into the plural, which encourages me to translate the phrase ‘vales’. That the place of peace set apart for the righteous in the realm of the dead (Hades) might be depicted as a place of sheltering valleys seems to make perfect sense.” Though found nowhere in the OT, the idea of the abode of the dead featuring vales was a common Jewish belief in the cultural Hellenization of the 1st century, likely developed at some point during the inter-testamental period.
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Thank you for reading. Besides being a neo-‘am ha-’aretz, I’m a graphic designer and Bible instructor who believes in the power of fellowship over the written word. May the peace of Jesus rest on you today.
