Hello All,
I found this forum through a search I did on Robin Parry after coming across some of his videos on youtube. In one of the videos, he said that he hoped to look at the account of the rich man & Lazarus more closely. I tried sending this post to his e-mail address,but it was returned. After reading through some of the threads here and the level of knowledge in the posts, I don’t know how much of what I have to add has been said before, but I will toss it out anyway. The following text in italics is from an e-mail I sent to someone in response to their contention that the account in Luke is literal and not a parable. The state of man after he dies was also part of the discussion, but I edited that portion since it is a separate, though related topic.
*There are 2 basic parts I would like to address. The first part is whether the account of “The rich man and Lazarus” is a parable or not. Personally, I believe it is a parable, for several reasons. The second part is the state of the dead.
Part 1-
#1. Just because Jesus says “There was a certain man…” does not mean He is speaking about a specific historical situation and not in a parable meant to be applied more broadly. There are many instances Where Jesus says “There was a certain man…”, or even “There was a certain rich man…”, as in Luke 12:16, 16:1 and 16:19. In Luke 12:16 it specifically says Jesus is speaking in a parable. There is also a similar situation in 2 Samuel 12 where there are 2 men put forth by Nathan in a parable for David’s consideration. One was rich, the other poor.
#2. When Abraham is explaining why he can’t send Lazarus over with a few drops of water to dab on the rich man’s tongue, he starts out by reminding the rich man of how he had it good in his life, while Lazarus suffered. Then he mentions the gulf and lists 2 reasons for its existence, the first of which makes no sense to me if this account is to be taken literally. “So that those who want to pass from here to you cannot…”. I can understand the second part about those on the side where the rich man is not being able to cross over to Abraham’s bosom, but why in the heck would any one in their right mind want to leave Abraham’s bosom to go to “the other side” and be tormented?
#3. There are clues that this account is speaking of the exclusive nature of the Jews that Jesus was speaking to. In verses 20 & 21, the combination of “eating crumbs falling from a table” and the mention of dogs, found within the context of a person being in great need reminds me of a situation described in Matt 15:27 & Mark 7:28. Search the words “dogs”, “crumbs” and “table” and three verses come up. Those two verses and Luke 16:21. I noticed this once when I first started trying to decide if Luke 16:19-31 was a parable or not. I then looked at several “chain-reference” study bibles and found that none of them linked the verse in Luke 16 to the ones in Matthew and Mark, even though they shared three elements in common. These same chain reference bibles had cross-references between many verses that had much less in common than these three verses. I wonder why that would be?
#4. Judah had five brothers (Luke 16:28). His tribe was also the kingly tribe (clothed in purple)
For these reasons, I cannot see Luke 16:19-31 as a literal account. The gulf that was mentioned was the gap between Jew and Gentile. The flame that tormented the rich man was envy, much in the same way that Jesus spoke in other places of the children of the kingdom being cast out to wail and gnash their teeth, while outsiders were brought into the kingdom.