![]() ![]() Many of the religious leaders of the day hated Him, and remained unconvinced even after Jesus actually raised a friend named Lazarus from the dead. The primary audience is the Pharisees (v14), who were worried that Jesus was compromising the religious fabric of Israel.Read the story in the context of the rest of the Bible, and the meaning isn’t hard to discern: I’ve heard preachers declare it to be an allegory, but they never seem to explain it. ![]() But most of those same people never get around to explaining it. To read the story literally creates a number of logical problems: Lazarus ends up living in Abraham’s chest, the rich man’s ghost (if one assumes, as many do, that this is a spectral story) has a physical tongue that can be cooled with water, and the residents of heaven are capable of conversing with the denizens of hell over a “great gulf.”Įxcept for a handful of Christians who would like to build a working theory of the afterlife out of the words of this story, the tale is widely accepted as an allegory - a parable. The remainder of the story clearly uses allegorical language. "There was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day.” (Luke 16:19) The parable of the rich man and Lazarus begins the same way: "There was a certain rich man….” (The parable of the unjust steward, Luke 16:1) ![]() “A certain man had two sons….” (The parable of the prodigal son, Luke 15:11) “A certain man gave a great supper….” (The parable of the great supper, Luke 14:16) “ A certain man had a fig tree….” (The parable of the barren fig tree, Luke 13:6) In fact, the story comes immediately after Jesus tells a number of parables that all begin with the same kind of language: ![]()
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