From the international best-selling author of The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon comes a dazzling new work of historical fiction, retelling the story of the Passion from the point of view of Lazarus. According to the New Testament, Jesus resurrected his friend, but the Gospel of John omits details of how he achieved this miracle and whether he had any special purpose in doing so. The acclaimed novelist Richard Zimler takes up the tale and recreates the story of the Passion from Lazarus' point of view. Restored to physical health, he has difficulty picking up his former existence; his experience of death has left him fragile and disoriented, and he has sensed nothing of an afterlife. Meanwhile he has become something of a local celebrity, even though he and Jesus are increasingly reviled by the Temple's high priests. As he turns more and more to Jesus for guidance, while observing his friend's growing mystical powers and influence through his spiritual activities, he finds their lives becoming dangerously entwined, which tests to the limit their friendship and affection. In this compelling work of fiction the author places Jesus in the historical context of ancient Jewish practice and tradition; he is at once a charismatic rabbi and a political activist who uses his awareness of a transcendent reality—culminating in the Kingdom of Heaven—to try to bring justice to his people and a broader compassion for humankind. With The Gospel According to Lazarus, Richard Zimler brings the familiar story vividly to life and finds fresh meaning in the Passion and Crucifixion.

The raising of Lazarus in John's Gospel is one of the most dramatic and poignant episodes in scripture. This title offers a compelling new reading of the story of Lazarus, which calls us all to pursue a life of peace.

"Accidentally cursed with immortality, Wanda B. Lazarus freewheels through the ages in her quest to become the Tenth Muse. A furiously funny feminist take on the myth of the Wandering Jew."--Back cover.

This story of Jesus’s childhood best friend is “a thrilling meta-novel” and one of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of the Year (Maria Semple, author of Where’d You Go, Bernadette). Like most successful men in their early thirties, Lazarus has plans that don’t involve dying. He is busy organizing his sisters, his business, and his women. Life is mostly good until far away in Galilee, without warning, his childhood best friend, Jesus, turns water into wine. Immediately, Lazarus falls ill. And with each subsequent miracle his health deteriorates: a nasty cough develops into an alarming array of afflictions unresponsive to the usual remedies. His sisters think Jesus can help, but the two men haven’t spoken for years. Lazarus is willing to try anything to make himself well, anything, that is, except ask Jesus for help. Lazarus dies. Jesus weeps. Lazarus rises. This part we all know. But Lazarus is about to discover that returning from the dead isn’t easy at all . . . An ingeniously funny and moving novel disguised as biography, Lazarus Is Dead recounts the story of a great friendship lost and regained that unabashedly turns convention on its head. Richard Beard draws on biblical sources, historical detail, art, and contemporary literature to cast a spell that remains unbroken until the final pages of this story about second chances. “Beard’s take on Lazarus is nothing less than astonishing—and he respects the reader by taking religion and religious questions seriously.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Thoroughly entertaining . . . a brilliant, genre-bending retelling and subversion of one of the oldest, most sensational stories in the western canon.” —Sunday Business Post (Ireland) “Clever and original . . . keeps the reader guessing until the death—and beyond.” —The Financial Times

The NIV is the world's best-selling modern translation, with over 150 million copies in print since its first full publication in 1978. This highly accurate and smooth-reading version of the Bible in modern English has the largest library of printed and electronic support material of any modern translation.

The story of Jesus and the Beloved Disciple is a beautiful and intriguing love story, well worth being treated as serious literature and appearing between covers of its own. For this version of the story, editor Tobias Skinner has chosen to believe, for reasons set forth in the preface, that it was Lazarus who first wrote this version of the gospel. Who would be more inclined to write of Jesus as God in the flesh, as the incarnation of Logos, as infallible, as a worker of miracles-something the author of this gospel does far more often than the authors of the other three-than a man who believes Jesus saved him from death and who is so comfortable in his love relationship with Jesus that he can confidently and repeatedly refer to himself as "the disciple whom Jesus loved," and at the end as "the disciple whom Jesus sincerely loved"? Skinner here presents a readable alternative text for this ancient story of love.