Endnote 14 – The Raising of Lazarus

The fresco from cubiculum O of the Via Latina Catacomb undoubtedly depicts Jesus raising Lazarus. However, the cubiculum C image, with its empty booth, may not be Lazarus. Noting that images of the Exodus and the entry into the Promised Land appear above the empty booth and on the adjacent wall, art historian William Tronzo suggests that the scene in cubiculum C should be identified as Joshua leading the Israelites into the Promised Land. He identifies the empty booth as either the Ark of the Covenant or as the Temple itself, symbolizing Jerusalem. He notes that although the scene was modeled on the image of the raising of Lazarus in cubiculum O, any early Christian viewer would have immediately recognized the empty booth as a variation from the usual depiction of Lazarus’s tomb and would have concluded that this depicted a different scene. (See Tronzo, The Via Latina Catacomb [University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 1986], pp. 53–56, 66–67.) Both cubicula show images of Moses leading the Israelites through the Red Sea. Perhaps some conflation of the Lazarus, Moses and Joshua stories is suggested. Early Christian writers understood the stories of Joshua crossing the Jordan into the Promised Land and Moses and the Israelites crossing the Red Sea as related to Christian baptism (see, for example, 1 Corinthians 10:1–5; Tertullian, On Baptism 3, 5, 8.9; Clement of Alexandria, Eclogues of the Prophets 5–6). The Lazarus story, with its themes of rebirth and forgiveness from sin, also might refer to baptism.