The Story Of Lazarus

We take the New Testament on faith, but don't you wonder sometimes if there's a reasonable explanation for the miracles described by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John?

Take, for example, the story of Lazarus.

Few know that Lazarus had a bad gambling addiction that cost him his seat on the Gallilee Board of Trade. He even tried to forge his wife's name on a second mortgage to get his hands on more cash to pay off the Roman Legion, a precursor to the Cosa Nostra.

Naturally, the Lazarus clan assumed the worst when he suddenly disappeared and seemed to drop off the face of the earth, like he was dead and entombed. The wife had him declared legally dead so that she could collect survivor's benefits to put matzah on the table.

Imagine everyone's surprise after thirty years go by and Laz's childhood pal Jesus raises him from the dead. Sure it could be thirty years. There's not much specificity in the the Bible when it comes to time and dates.

Technically, it wasn't a tomb that held the body of Lazarus, but a jail cell. The story was changed to protect the family's good name.

After thirty years on the run, Lazarus was tripped up by changing times.

When he first went into hiding, he bought phony documents to mask his identity. Thirty years later, the fear of identity theft altered the landscape and what worked three decades earlier wasn't an option anymore.

Lazarus went to renew his chariot driver's license, still under his false identity, and it came up as questionable. So the authorities questioned him, and the whole thirty year episode came to an abrupt end.

At any rate, that's the way the story would be written if it was taken from the life of Gerald Jones, a former resident of Highland Park, Illinois, and current guest of the Henderson, Nevada, police department.

If it's true that the Chicago Outfit is still waiting on past due payments on his debt obligations, he might prefer to remain behind bars and not be bailed out by old friends acting out of charity.