Lazarus of Bethany

Sixth-century mosaic of the Raising of Lazarus, church of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, Italy.

The Raising of Lazarus, Oil on canvas, c. 1517–1519, Sebastiano del Piombo (National Gallery, London)

The biblical narrative of the raising of Lazarus is found in chapter 11 of the Gospel of John.[11] A certain Eleazer (whence Lazarus) is introduced as a follower of Jesus who lives in the town of Bethany near Jerusalem.[12] He is identified as the brother of the sisters Mary and Martha. The sisters send word to Jesus that Lazarus, "he whom thou lovest," is ill.[13] Jesus tells his followers: "This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God's glory so that God's Son may be glorified through it." Instead of immediately traveling to Bethany, according to the narrator, Jesus intentionally remains where he is for two more days before beginning the journey. The disciples are afraid of returning to Judea, but Jesus says: "Our friend Lazarus is asleep, but I am going to awaken him." When the apostles misunderstand, he clarifies, "Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe."

When Jesus arrives in Bethany, he finds that Lazarus is dead and has already been in his tomb for four days. He meets first with Martha and Mary in turn. Martha laments that Jesus did not arrive soon enough to heal her brother ("if you had been here, my brother would not have died") and Jesus replies with the well-known statement, "I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die".[14] Martha affirms that she does truly believe and states, "Yes, Lord. I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who has to come into the world." Later the narrator here gives the famous simple phrase, "Jesus wept".[15]

In the presence of a crowd of Jewish mourners, Jesus comes to the tomb. Jesus asks for the stone of the tomb to be removed, but Martha interjects that there will be a smell. Jesus responds, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?" Over the objections of Martha, Jesus has them roll the stone away from the entrance to the tomb and says a prayer. They take the stone away then Jesus looks up and says: "Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me." He then calls Lazarus to come out ("Come forth") and Lazarus does so, still wrapped in his grave-cloths. Jesus then calls for someone to remove the grave-cloths, and let him go.

The narrative ends with the statement that many of the witnesses to this event "believed in him." Others are said to report the events to the religious authorities in Jerusalem.

The Gospel of John mentions Lazarus again in chapter 12. Six days before the Passover on which Jesus is crucified, Jesus returns to Bethany and Lazarus attends a supper that Martha, his sister, serves.[16] Jesus and Lazarus together attract the attention of many Jews and the narrator states that the chief priests consider having Lazarus put to death because so many people are believing in Jesus on account of this miracle.[17]

The miracle of the raising of Lazarus, the longest coherent narrative in John aside from the Passion, is the culmination of John's "signs". It explains the crowds seeking Jesus on Palm Sunday, and leads directly to the decision of Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin to kill Jesus.

It is notable that at John 11:11, after being told by his disciples to fear those who would kill him, and after the parable about living in darkness, Jesus references his own parable and states that Lazarus sleeps, and that He will go "wake him up". The disciples thought Jesus meant Lazarus was actually sleeping in verse 12. Then, in verse 14, Jesus speaks plainly and tells them that "Lazarus has died". This is to be clear that Lazarus has died in the flesh, and is not sleeping or unconscious.

A resurrection story that is very similar is also found in the controversial Secret Gospel of Mark, although the young man is not named there specifically. Some scholars believe that the Secret Mark version represents an earlier form of the canonical story found in John.[18]

The miracle of the raising of Lazarus is the climax of John's "signs". It explains the crowds seeking Jesus on Palm Sunday, and leads directly to the decision of Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin to plan to kill Jesus. Theologians Moloney and Harrington view the raising of Lazarus as a "pivotal miracle" which starts the chain of events that leads to the Crucifixion of Jesus. They consider it as a "resurrection that will lead to death", in that the raising of Lazarus will lead to the death of Jesus, the Son of God, in Jerusalem which will reveal the Glory of God.[19]

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that the miracle performed by Jesus returned Lazarus to ordinary earthly life as with the son of the widow of Nain and Jairus' daughter and that Lazarus and the others who were raised from the dead would later die again.[20] The Russian Orthodox Church's Catechism of St. Philaret writes that among the miracles performed by Jesus was the raising of Lazarus from the dead on the fourth day after Lazarus' death.[21] In the Southern Baptist Convention's 2014 resolution On The Sufficiency Of Scripture Regarding The Afterlife, the raising of Lazarus is noted among the Bible's, "explicit accounts of persons raised from the dead", and comments on those raisings that, "in God’s perfect revelatory wisdom, He has not given us any report of their individual experience in the afterlife".[22]

John Calvin notes that, "not only did Christ give a remarkable proof of his Divine power in raising Lazarus, but he likewise placed before our eyes a lively image of our future resurrection."[23] French Protestant minister Jakob Abbadie wrote that Jesus had intentionally delayed his return to Bethany for, "four days, that it might not be said, he [Lazarus] was not really dead."[24] In 2008, Pope Benedict XVI said that the Gospel story of the raising of Lazarus, "shows Christ's absolute power over life and death and reveals His nature as true man and true God" and that "Jesus' lordship over death does not prevent him from showing sincere compassion over the pain of this separation."[25]

Matthew Poole and others saw Lazarus' ability to move despite having his hands and feet wrapped together as a second miracle, but Charles Ellicott disputed that Lazarus' movement would have been restricted by his burial garments.[26][27]

New Testament scholars have sought to explain how the story of Lazarus was probably composed.

New Testament 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 composed by seeking to explain its apparent relationships with the older textual traditions of the Synoptic Gospels (Mark, Matthew, and Luke). The author of John seems to have combined elements from several – apparently originally unrelated – stories into a single narrative. These include the unnamed woman's head-anointing of Jesus in Bethany (Mark 14, Matthew 26), the sinful woman's feet-anointing (and hair-wiping) of Jesus in Galilee (Luke 7; these first two may have a common origin, the Lukan account likely being derived from Mark), Jesus' visit to Martha and Mary in the unnamed Galilean village (Luke 10), Jesus' parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16), and possibly others involving Jesus' miraculous raising of the dead (the raising of Jairus' daughter and the raising of the son of the widow of Nain). Meanwhile, other elements were removed or replaced; for example, Simon the Leper/Simon the Pharisee was replaced by Lazarus as the host of the feast in Jesus' honour, and Bethany in Judea was chosen as the setting, while most elements of John's narrative correspond to traditions that the Synoptics set in Galilee. Scholars pay particular attention to verse John 11:2 (and verse John 11:1), which may represent an effort by the author or a later redactor to stress a connection between these stories that is, however, not found in the older canonical gospels.[28][29][30][31] They further note that the actual anointing will not be narrated until verse 12:3, and that neither Mary, nor Martha, nor the village of these sisters, nor any anointing is mentioned in the Gospel of John before this point, suggesting that the author (or redactor) assumes the readers already have knowledge of these characters, this location and this event, and wants to tell them that these were connected (which he apparently knew the readers did not commonly know/believe yet) long before giving the readers more details.[32][28] Elser and Piper (2006) posited that verse 11:2 is evidence that the author of the Gospel of John deliberately mixed up several traditions in an 'audacious attempt (...) to rework the collective memory of the Christ-movement.' The author did not strive to give a historically accurate account of what had happened, but instead, for theological purposes, combined various existing narratives in order to construct Lazarus, Mary and Martha of Bethany as a prototypical Christian family, whose example is to be followed by Christians.[28]

Earlier commentators include deist Lysander Spooner, who wrote in 1836 that it was unusual that the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) do not mention the miracle of the raising of Lazarus, which seems as if it could have been a demonstration of the miraculous powers of Jesus. The Synoptic Gospels do include passages concerning the activities of the sisters of Lazarus but fail to mention their brother's resurrection. Spooner wrote that this seemed to indicate that the author of the Gospel of John, "was actually dishonest, or that he took up, believed and recorded a flying story, which an occurrence of some kind had given rise to, but which was without any foundation in truth."[33] In 1892, agnostic speaker Robert G. Ingersoll found the narrative historically implausible, writing that, if Lazarus had in fact died, potentially participating in an afterlife, and then subsequently had been resurrected, the experiences Lazarus could have shared with others would likely have been more interesting than everything else in the New Testament, would have drawn widespread attention to Lazarus during his lifetime and might have made him less afraid than others that did not have his experience when Lazarus approached death for a second time.[34] Exegesis in the Interpreter's Bible (1953) comparing the raising of Lazarus to other resurrections in the Bible comments that, "The difference between revival immediately after death, and resurrection after four days, is so great as to raise doubts about the historicity of this story, especially in view of the unimaginable details in vs. 44. Yet there are features in this story which have the marks of verisimilitude."[35]

In the Jefferson Bible (1804), which removes supernatural events from the Bible while attempting to retain information about the life and morals of Jesus, Thomas Jefferson chose not to include the raising of Lazarus.[36] In The God Delusion (2006), biologist and outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins wrote that, in principle, the question of whether or not Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead has a strictly scientific answer, whether or not that answer can be discovered in practice.[37]

Reputed tomb of Lazarus in al-Eizariya

The reputed first tomb of Lazarus is in the Leitrim (generally believed to be the biblical Bethany) and continues to be a place of pilgrimage to this day. Several Christian churches have existed at the site over the centuries. Since the 16th century, the site of the tomb has been occupied by the al-Uzair Mosque. The adjacent Roman Catholic Church of Saint Lazarus, designed by Antonio Barluzzi and built between 1952 and 1955 under the auspices of the Franciscan Order, stands upon the site of several much older ones. In 1965, a Greek Orthodox church was built just west of the tomb.

The entrance to the tomb today is via a flight of uneven rock-cut steps from the street. As it was described in 1896, there were twenty-four steps from the then-modern street level, leading to a square chamber serving as a place of prayer, from which more steps led to a lower chamber believed to be the tomb of Lazarus.[38] The same description applies today.[39][40]

The first mention of a church at Bethany is in the late 4th century, but both the historian Eusebius of Caesarea[41] (c. 330) and the Bordeaux pilgrim do mention the tomb of Lazarus. In 390 Jerome mentions a church dedicated to Saint Lazarus, called the Lazarium. This is confirmed by the pilgrim Egeria in about the year 410. Therefore, the church is thought to have been built between 333 and 390.[42] The present-day gardens contain the remnants of a mosaic floor from the 4th-century church.[43] The Lazarium was destroyed by an earthquake in the 6th century, and was replaced by a larger church. This church survived intact until the Crusader era.

In 1143 the existing structure and lands were purchased by King Fulk and Queen Melisende of Jerusalem and a large Benedictine convent dedicated to Mary and Martha was built near the tomb of Lazarus. After the fall of Jerusalem in 1187, the convent was deserted and fell into ruin with only the tomb and barrel vaulting surviving. By 1384, a simple mosque had been built on the site.[40] In the 16th century, the Ottomans built the larger al-Uzair Mosque to serve the town's (now Muslim) inhabitants and named it in honor of the town's patron saint, Lazarus of Bethany.[43]

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913, there were scholars who questioned the reputed site of the ancient village (though this was discounted by the Encyclopedia's author):

Some believe that the present village of Bethany does not occupy the site of the ancient village; but that it grew up around the traditional cave which they suppose to have been at some distance from the house of Martha and Mary in the village; Zanecchia (La Palestine d'aujourd'hui, 1899, I, 445ff.) places the site of the ancient village of Bethany higher up on the southeastern slope of the Mount of Olives, not far from the accepted site of Bethphage, and near that of the Ascension. It is quite certain that the present village formed about the traditional tomb of Lazarus, which is in a cave in the village. The identification of this cave as the tomb of Lazarus is merely possible; it has no strong intrinsic or extrinsic authority. The site of the ancient village may not precisely coincide with the present one, but there is every reason to believe that it was in this general location."[44]

Church of Saint Lazarus, Larnaca

According to Eastern Orthodox Church tradition, sometime after the Resurrection of Christ, Lazarus was forced to flee Judea because of rumoured plots on his life and came to Cyprus. There he was appointed by Barnabas and Paul the Apostle as the first bishop of Kition (present-day Larnaka). He lived there for thirty more years,[45] and on his death was buried there for the second and last time.[46]

Further establishing the apostolic nature of Lazarus' appointment was the story that the bishop's omophorion was presented to Lazarus by the Virgin Mary, who had woven it herself. Such apostolic connections were central to the claims to autocephaly made by the bishops of Kition—subject to the patriarch of Jerusalem—during the period 325–431. The church of Kition was declared self-governing in 431 AD at the Third Ecumenical Council.[47]

According to tradition, Lazarus never smiled during the thirty years after his resurrection, worried by the sight of unredeemed souls he had seen during his four-day stay in Hell. The only exception was, when he saw someone stealing a pot, he smilingly said: "the clay steals the clay."[1][46]

In 890, a tomb was found in Larnaca bearing the inscription "Lazarus the friend of Christ". Emperor Leo VI of Byzantium had Lazarus' remains transferred to Constantinople in 898. The transfer was apostrophized by Arethas, bishop of Caesarea, and is commemorated by the Eastern Orthodox Church each year on October 17.

In recompense to Larnaca, Emperor Leo had the Church of St. Lazarus, which still exists today, erected over Lazarus' tomb. The marble sarcophagus can be seen inside the church under the Holy of Holies.

After the sacking of Constantinople by the Franks during the Fourth Crusade in 1204, the Crusaders carried the saint's relics to Marseille, France as part of the booty of war. From there, "later on, they disappeared and up to the present day they have not been traced."[46]

In the 16th century, a Russian monk from the Monastery of Pskov visited St. Lazarus's tomb in Larnaca and took with him a small piece of the relics. Perhaps that piece led to the erection of the St. Lazarus chapel at the Pskov Monastery (Spaso-Eleazar Monastery, Pskov),[note 1] where it is kept today.[48]

On November 23, 1972, human remains in a marble sarcophagus were discovered under the altar, during renovation works in the church of Church of St. Lazarus at Larnaka, and were identified as part of the saint's relics.[49][note 2]

In June 2012 the Church of Cyprus gave a part of the holy relics of St. Lazarus to a delegation of the Russian Orthodox Church, led by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, after a four-day visit to Cyprus. The relics were brought to Moscow and were given to Archbishop Arseniy of Istra, who took them to the Zachatievsky monastery (Conception Convent), where they were put up for veneration.[51]

Autun Cathedral (Cathédrale Saint-Lazare d'Autun), Autun, France, also said to be built over the tomb of Lazarus

In the West, according to an alternative medieval tradition (centered in Provence), Lazarus, Mary, and Martha were "put out to sea by the Jews hostile to Christianity in a vessel without sails, oars, or helm, and after a miraculous voyage landed in Provence at a place called today the Saintes-Maries."[52] The family is then said to separate and go in different parts of southeastern Gaul to preach; Lazarus goes to Marseille. Converting many people to Christianity there, he becomes the first Bishop of Marseille. During the persecution of Domitian, he is imprisoned and beheaded in a cave beneath the prison Saint-Lazare. His body is later translated to Autun, where he is buried in the Autun Cathedral, dedicated to Lazarus as Saint Lazare. However, the inhabitants of Marseille claim to be in possession of his head which they still venerate.[52]

Pilgrims also visit another purported tomb of Lazarus at the Vézelay Abbey in Burgundy.[53] In the Abbey of the Trinity at Vendôme, a phylactery was said to contain a tear shed by Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus.

The Golden Legend, compiled in the 13th century, records the Provençal tradition. It also records a grand lifestyle imagined for Lazarus and his sisters (note that therein Lazarus' sister Mary is conflated with Mary Magdalene):

Mary Magdalene had her surname of Magdalo, a castle, and was born of right noble lineage and parents, which were descended of the lineage of kings. And her father was named Cyrus, and her mother Eucharis. She with her brother Lazarus, and her sister Martha, possessed the castle of Magdalo, which is two miles from Nazareth, and Bethany, the castle which is nigh to Jerusalem, and also a great part of Jerusalem, which, all these things they departed among them. In such wise that Mary had the castle Magdalo, whereof she had her name Magdalene. And Lazarus had the part of the city of Jerusalem, and Martha had to her part Bethany. And when Mary gave herself to all delights of the body, and Lazarus entended all to knighthood, Martha, which was wise, governed nobly her brother's part and also her sister's, and also her own, and administered to knights, and her servants, and to poor men, such necessities as they needed. Nevertheless, after the ascension of our Lord, they sold all these things.[54]

The 15th-century poet Georges Chastellain draws on the tradition of the unsmiling Lazarus:[55] "He whom God raised, doing him such grace, the thief, Mary's brother, thereafter had naught but misery and painful thoughts, fearing what he should have to pass". (Le pas de la mort, VI[56]).

The Eastern Orthodox Church and Byzantine Catholic Church commemorate Lazarus on Lazarus Saturday,[1] the day before Palm Sunday, which is a moveable feast day. This day, together with Palm Sunday, hold a unique position in the church year, as days of joy and triumph between the penitence of Great Lent and the mourning of Holy Week.[58] During the preceding week, the hymns in the Lenten Triodion track the sickness and then the death of Lazarus, and Christ's journey from beyond Jordan to Bethany. The scripture readings and hymns for Lazarus Saturday focus on the resurrection of Lazarus as a foreshadowing of the Resurrection of Christ, and a promise of the General Resurrection. The Gospel narrative is interpreted in the hymns as illustrating the two natures of Christ: his humanity in asking, "Where have ye laid him?",[59] and his divinity by commanding Lazarus to come forth from the dead.[60]

Many of the resurrectional hymns of the normal Sunday service which are omitted on Palm Sunday are chanted on Lazarus Saturday. During the Divine Liturgy, the Baptismal Hymn, "As many as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ",[61] is sung in place of the Trisagion. Although the forty days of Great Lent end on the day before Lazarus Saturday, the day is still observed as a fast; however, it is somewhat mitigated. In Russia, it is traditional to eat caviar on Lazarus Saturday.

Lazarus is also commemorated on the liturgical calendar of the Eastern Orthodox Church on the fixed feast day of March 17,[2][note 3] while the translation of his relics from Cyprus to Constantinople in the year 898 AD[63] is observed on October 17.[3][62][note 4]

On the General Roman Calendar, Lazarus is celebrated, together with his sister Mary of Bethany and their sister Martha, on a memorial on July 29.[64][65] Earlier editions of the Roman Martyrology placed him among the saints of December 17.[66]

In Cuba, the celebration of San Lázaro on December 17 is a major festival. The date is celebrated with a pilgrimage to a chapel housing an image of Saint Lazarus, one of Cuba's most sacred icons, in the village of El Rincon, outside Havana.[67]

Lazarus is commemorated in the Calendars of some Anglican provinces. In the Church of England his feast is kept on 29 July under the title "Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, Companions of Our Lord", and has the status of a lesser festival,[68] and as such is provided with proper lectionary readings and collect.

Lazarus is commemorated in the Calendar of Saints of the Lutheran Church on 29 July together with Mary and Martha.

The Military and Hospitaller Order of St. Lazarus of Jerusalem (OSLJ) is a religious/military order of chivalry which originated in a leper hospital founded by Knights Hospitaller in the twelfth century by Crusaders of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. Sufferers of leprosy regarded the beggar Lazarus (of Luke 16:19-31) as their patron saint and usually dedicated their hospices to him.[72]

Ṭabarī, i, 187, 731, 739

Ibn al-At̲h̲īr, i, 122, 123

T̲h̲aʿlabī, Ḳiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ, Cairo 1325/1907-8, ii, 307. On the name Elʿazar, Eliezer, ʿĀzar, see S. Fraenkel, in ZDMG, lvi (1902) 71-3

J. Horovitz, in Hebrew Union College Annual, ii (1925), 157, 161

idem, Koranische Untersuchungen, Berlin 1926, 12, 85, 86.

In the 1851 novel Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, after writing his will and testament for the fourth time, Ishmael remarks that, "all the days I should now live would be as good as the days that Lazarus lived after his resurrection; a supplementary clean gain of so many months or weeks as the case might be."[77][78]

In Fyodor Dostoevsky's 1866 novel Crime and Punishment the murderer Raskolnikov asks the prostitute Sonia to read him this section of the Gospel.[79]

In two short stories written by Mark Twain and posthumously published in 1972, a lawyer argues that Lazarus' heirs had an indisputable claim to any property the resurrected Lazarus had owned before his death.[80][78]

Many works of literature from the 20th century allude to Lazarus, including Truman Capote's short story "A Tree of Night" in A Tree of Night and Other Stories (1945) and John Knowles's novel A Separate Peace (1959). Allusions in 20th-century poetry occur in works such as Leonid Andreyev's book-length poem Lazarus (1906),[81][82] T.S. Eliot's poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1915), Edwin Arlington Robinson's poem "Lazarus" (1920),[83] and Sylvia Plath's poem "Lady Lazarus" published in her posthumous anthology Ariel (1965). An allusion to Lazarus also appears in the memoir Witness (1952) by Whittaker Chambers (who acknowledged the influence of Dostoevsky's works), which opens its first chapter, "In 1937, I began, like Lazarus, the impossible return."[84]

Science fiction allusions to Lazarus occur in Robert A. Heinlein's Lazarus Long novels (1941–1987), Walter M. Miller Jr.'s A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960), and Frank Herbert's The Lazarus Effect (1983).

In the 2010 book The Big Questions: A Short Introduction to Philosophy written by American professors of philosophy Kathleen Higgins and Robert C. Solomon, at the end of Chapter 5, The Search for Truth, readers are asked to consider: "Could a scientist give an adequate account of the biblical story of the raising of Lazarus?"[85]

Lazarus Is Dead (2011) by Richard Beard is an innovative novel that was described by the Sunday Business Post as "no ordinary novel: it is a brilliant, genre-bending retelling and subversion of one of the oldest, most sensational stories in the western canon."

John Derhak's The Bones of Lazarus (2012), is a darkly funny, fast-paced, supernatural thriller that traces intersecting lives on a war-torn, resource rich, Caribbean island. The plot revolves around the premise that Lazarus of Bethany, upon his resurrection by Christ, becomes an immortal creature of Judgment, seeking the hearts and souls of the wicked throughout time.

Richard Zimler's bestselling novel The Gospel According to Lazarus (2019 in English) is written from the perspective of Lazarus himself. The book presents Yeshua ben Yosef (Jesus' Hebrew name) as an early Jewish mystic and explores the deep friendship between Lazarus and Yeshua, who - within the fictional setting - have been best friends since childhood.The themes of the book include how we cope with a loss of faith, the terrible sacrifices we make for those we love, the transcendent meaning of Yeshua's mission, and how we go on after suffering a shattering trauma. The Observer review summarized the novel as "A very human tale of rivalry, betrayal, power-grabbing and sacrifice.... Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this brave and engaging novel...is that Zimler manages to make the best-known narrative in western culture a page-turner."[86]

In music, a popular retelling of the biblical Lazarus story from the point of view of Lazarus in heaven is the 1984 gospel story-song "Lazarus Come Forth" by Contemporary Christian Music artist Carman.[87][88] A modern reinterpretation of the story is the title track to the album Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! by the Australian alternative band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Several other bands have composed songs titled "Lazarus" in allusion to the resurrection story, including Porcupine Tree, Conor Oberst, Circa Survive, Chimaira, moe., Wes King, Placebo, and David Bowie (written while he was terminally ill).[89]

Lazarus is sometimes referenced in political figures returning to power in unlikely circumstances. When John Howard lost the leadership of the Liberal Party of Australia, he rated his chances of regaining it as "Lazarus with a triple bypass".[90] Howard did regain the leadership and went on to become Prime Minister of Australia. Former President of Haiti, Jean Bertrand Aristide, was termed the "Haitian Lazarus" by journalist Amy Wilentz, in her description of his return to Haiti from exile and the political significance of this event.[91]

The scientific term "Lazarus taxon", which denotes organisms that reappear in the fossil record after a period of apparent extinction. "Lazarus syndrome" refers to an event in which a person spontaneously returns to life (the heart starts beating again) after resuscitation has been given up. The Lazarus sign is a reflex which can occur in a brain-dead person, thus giving the appearance that they have returned to life.

The Commodore Amiga's operating system's disk repair program Diskdoctor occasionally renames a disk "Lazarus" if it feels it has done a particularly good job of rescuing damaged files.[92]

Lazarus is also the name of an integrated development environment for the Free Pascal language, termed such as it was the revival of an earlier project called Megido.

In the 2014 science fiction film Interstellar, the name Lazarus is given to the space program which aims to expand humanity's reach to a distant world to prevent its extinction.

In the start of BioWare's sci-fi RPG Mass Effect 2, the player character Commander Shepard is brought to life by a reconstruction effort known as the Lazarus Project.

The video game Doom features hellish energy which can be released in waves referred to in-game as Lazarus waves to create Revenants, a form of demon created from dead, cybernetically-enhanced soldiers.

Also in the video game Diablo (1996) by Blizzard North the Archbishop Lazarus is a character in the game Mythology who for unknown reasons destroys the Soulstone and resurrects the demon lord Diablo.[93]

In 2K's video game BioShock, the 'Lazarus Vector' is a genetic vector used to bring a forest back to life after it is poisoned by the game's antagonist.

The first episode of the fourth season of Supernatural is titled Lazarus Rising in reference to Lazarus due to Dean being brought back to life by the angel Castiel.

Season 4 of the TV series Preacher parodies Starbucks Coffee as "Lazarus Coffee".

Lazarus Churchyard is a British comic character created in 1991 by Warren Ellis. The character is a suicidal immortal living in a dystopian future.

DC comics references the story of Lazarus with the "Lazarus pits" used to restore life and vitality, or even grant immortality to those who bathe in their waters.