Lazarus

The raising of Lazarus in John (John 11:1–44) It also appears in a fragment of an extended version of the Gospel of Mark known as the Secret Gospel of Mark. A Lazarus is mentioned in the Gospel of Luke in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, in which both characters die, and the former begs for the latter to comfort him from his torments in hell or death.

He is identified as the brother of the sisters Mary and Martha. The sisters send word to Jesus that Lazarus is ill.

Scholars try to establish how John's narrative of the raising of Lazarus and the subsequent feet-anointing of Jesus by Mary of Bethany (John 11:1–12:11,17) was an attempt to explain some of the older text of the Synoptic Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke.

Meyer's NT Commentary

John 11:1 f.[68] This stay of Jesus in retirement, however, is terminated by the sickness of Lazarus (δέ).

Simplicity of the style of the narrative: But there was a certain one sick, (namely) Lazarus of Bethany, of the town, etc: ἀπὸ (John 7:42; Matthew 2:1; Matthew 27:57) and ἘΚ both denote the same relation (John 1:46 f.), that of derivation; hence it is the less allowable to regard the two sisters and the brother as Galileans, and Mary as the Magdalene (Hengstenberg).[69] That Lazarus lived also in Bethany, and was lying ill there, is plain from the course of the narrative. For change of preposition, without any change of relation, comp. John 1:45; Romans 3:30; 2 Corinthians 3:11; Galatians 2:16; Ephesians 1:7; Philemon 1:5; Kühner, II. p. 219