Talk:Raising of Lazarus

Lazarus: from parable to ressurection

Lazarus went from being a parable in the Gospel of Luke to being someone presented as a real live person who was resurrected in the Gospel of John, over a century later. I think this information should be referenced in the article.Whig4life (talk) 14:18, 3 May 2018 (UTC)whig

@Whig4life: I did see a Robert M. Price book that mentioned this theory. Are there any stronger sources for this claim? Geographyinitiative (talk) 00:08, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative: Yes, the Gospels themselves.

Corpse decomposition

I think more material about the medical (pre-medical?) understanding of the process of corpse decomposition at the time the Gospel of John was written should be included on this page. For instance, they wouldn't have known about brain death at that time, or would they have? I am under the assumption that the person who wrote/compiled/etc this passage in the Gospel of John would have believed that since people can sometimes go into a comatose situation for a long time, maybe a dead person could also be dead for a few days, maybe even start to rot a litte bit, and then be brought back to life. Perhaps using an ancient medical understanding of death and corpse decomposition, this might have been more plausible than it is using a modern medical perspective. The author's understanding of death itself must have some degree of difference from what a modern society with powerful medical knowledge would understand it. Since the Catholic church is including belief that this event occurred in real human history in its catechism, I think we need more information about how people of that time understood death and corpse decomposition since their understanding certainly must have been different from today's understanding. Geographyinitiative (talk) 00:08, 28 February 2020 (UTC) (modified)

I have never participated in a merge of two pages before, so I am eager to learn about how this will happen. I'm for the merge in concept, but I'm not sure if the merge would mess up someone's original concept of having a page for every miracle or something like that, and I don't have the depth of knowledge about that part of Wikipedia to make a good judgement. Geographyinitiative (talk) 11:35, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

@Sirfurboy: Hello again- sorry to ping you on a somewhat gruesome topic, but I have made some more changes to this page and want to invite your help to remove or point out anything you would see as not up to Wikipedia standard. I have also pointed out that I think we need more of a fleshing out of the historical understanding of corpse decomposition, either on this page or on the Corpse decomposition page itself. I can't find that material. Anyway, thanks for your time. Geographyinitiative (talk) 00:15, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, I have looked at the changes. The reorganization of the interpretation section introduces a criticism heading. I am not sure I agree with that section, but it is not just your material that is the problem. The question is why any interpretation is particularly due when other interpretations are not mentioned. The criticism one is only problematic inasmuch as the criticism itself appears obviously wrongheaded. In the views current at the time, there seems to be no real expectation that Lazarus would have consciously participated in an afterlife before his resurrection. I would expect there is an answer to Ingersoll on those lines, but have not hunted it out. Yet answering that would then raise questions about answering the other interpretations. I wonder if other editors have thoughts on that.

Meanwhile, I am not sure that Corpse decomposition needs a wikilink, but I don't object to it. Yes there is mention of decomposition here, although its not a key detail. Your other edits look good to me. -- Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 09:47, 29 February 2020 (UTC)