A Story the Synoptics Do Not Tell

Matthew, Mark and Luke never mention Lazarus of Bethany or his raising, a silence scholars find harder to explain away here than with Cana, given the story's scale, its setting near Jerusalem and the causal role John gives it in provoking the crucifixion. Raymond Brown's Anchor Bible commentary treats the episode as John's climactic sign, deliberately built to embody Jesus's "I am the resurrection and the life" discourse, and situates it within John's broader tendency to compose narrative around theological statements.

Rudolf Bultmann and later historical critics working in that tradition read the Synoptics' total silence as evidence that the story is a Johannine theological composition rather than an independently remembered event, since a miracle of this magnitude, so close to Jerusalem and so consequential to the plot against Jesus, would be a strange thing for Mark, generally considered the earliest gospel, to omit if it had reached him. Other scholars argue the Synoptics' silence reflects their own selective sources and Galilee-centered focus rather than counting as evidence against the story, since all three gospels are compressed accounts that leave out a great deal. The disagreement between these readings has not been resolved, and probably cannot be from the text alone.