Friday, May 21, 2010

100% authentic guess (John 11:43-44)

Lazarus come out
I drew this picture based on memories from Sunday School pictures and Bible movies. After a little bit of research, I found that the reputed tomb of Lazarus is in al-Eizariya outside of Jerusalem. Boy, was my picture wrong. The entrance to the tomb is at street level with a couple dozen stairs to an antechamber. From there a few more steps lead down into the actual tomb which is a little larger than two square meters. The tomb itself contains three arcosolia (An arcosolium is an arched recesses in the wall where the body would be placed. This makes me wonder if Lazarus was sharing the tomb with a couple other corpses at the time, or if the other two were saved for Mary and Martha in which case it's a good thing Lazarus went first.) Tradition states that Jesus was to the right of the entrance at street level when he called out to Lazarus. Of course, another tradition states that Jesus was in the antechamber when he called out. So much for tradition. Along the same lines, a lot of the art depictions of the story look accurate compared to this reputed location (it seems the art I remember was not one of them), but since most were created during the Renaissance, the art is based on how the tomb looked after it was reinforced by the Crusaders. Their masonry obscures almost all of the original rock face. So I guess in the end, my picture is about as accurate as all the other ones.


If you start a crazy tradition just to confuse future generations:

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