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SONIA HALLIDAY PHOTO LIBRARY / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

GATHERED AT THE GRAVESIDE. This 12th-century fresco from the Asinou Church in Cyprus depicts Jesus’s raising of Lazarus from the dead as described in John 11. Kneeling at Jesus’s feet in supplication are Lazarus’s two sisters, Mary and Martha. But how many sisters did Lazarus actually have? There is substantial early manuscript evidence that an old stratum of the story, in which there was only one sister, was later adapted to incorporate a second.