Introduction
The parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus is a favourite among biblical scholars and theologians alike, generating an immense body of secondary literature devoted to many broad and important questions – literary, historical and theological.Footnote 1 The suffering Lazarus at the rich man's gate shares a privileged place with the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan as the most evocative images of the human condition in the parables tradition. In spite of this, one observes in scholarship a decided focus on the afterlife scene of the parable and relatively little concern to understand Lazarus' earthly situation. In this neglect it seems that we have stepped over Lazarus once more on the way to our scholarly banquets. This study does not begin by attempting to solve any grand issues about the parable, instead it aims to understand the intimate details of Lazarus' suffering – what it is that ails him, and what the author means by informing us that ‘even the dogs would come and lick his sores'. By contributing fresh evidence to these seemingly minor details we are compelled to see the entire parable in a new light and to rethink how we answer some of the broader questions.
1. Diagnosing Lazarus
Lazarus has been diagnosed with a host of ailments in scholarship – starving, hungry, paralysed, crippled, lame, blind, covered with weeping sores, suffering from various skin diseases including leprosy, or some combinations of these – generally with little distinction made between what is speculation and what is explicit in the text. Among all these diagnoses, only Lazarus' hunger is clear and specific. The origin of Lazarus as a blind, crippled or lame person derives from his perceived inability to drive away the dogs and, occasionally, the interpretation that he was ‘hurled’ there.Footnote 2 The ubiquitous ascription of impurity conferring skin diseases and weeping ulcers to him derives from the belief that Lazarus is ‘covered with sores’.Footnote 3 This assumption needs especially to be challenged. On the remarkably rare occasions when scholars have commented on the hapax legomenon εἱλκωμένος, always translated ‘covered’ or ‘full of sores’, the only texts used for comparison are the scant examples from the Septuagint.Footnote 4 As of yet, it seems that nobody has consulted ancient medical literature to see how the passive participle of ἑλκόω is used, nor compared the cognate noun ἕλκος, biblically rare but extremely common elsewhere.Footnote 5 When we examine ancient medical literature for occurrences of ἑλκόω and ἕλκος we find that the common translation of Luke 16.20–1 is either completely wrong, or lacks important nuances inherent to these terms.
In classical literature, the word ἕλκος means ‘wound’ or ‘lesion’ in the broadest sense. Unlike ‘sores’ or ‘ulcers’ which imply a subdermal origin or infection or suppuration of some kind, we find that no such connotations are necessary for ἕλκος. In the Hippocratic corpus there are hundreds of references to ἕλκη, and the usage is remarkably varied. In several compositions such as Epidemics, it is clear that ἕλκος does describe skin ulcers and infections that accompany outbreaks of disease (see also De prisca medicina 19.1); however, several other Hippocratic treatises complicate this picture. By far the most important treatise for the proper understanding of ἕλκος is the eponymously titled De ulceribus, or On Wounds. Despite the treatise being precisely on the subject, for reasons unknown, De ulceribus does not appear in the BDAG entry for either ἕλκος or ἑλκόω. It is here that we find the surest evidence that we have been mistaken in assuming Lazarus' ἕλκη are simply ‘sores’ or the result of disease. In the entire treatise, reference to the source of a ἕλκος is either unnamed or explicitly due to injury, whether from weapons, falls or burns (De ulceribus 1, 3, and 13, respectively). These injuries are all described with ἕλκος, and regardless of whether they are infected or not. This treatise also offers explicit confirmation that a state of infection or putrefaction is nowhere implied. After listing a series of ingredients to apply as a salve, the author writes: ‘These things in powder prevent recent wounds (ἑλκέα) from suppurating’ (De ulceribus 6). In other words, as the author explains, to prevent a ἕλκος from becoming a sore, one should apply the prescribed treatment.
Innumerable literary examples can be also be adduced in which ἕλκος describes a ‘wound’. Beginning as early as Homer, we can see that no connotations associated with ‘sores’ are necessary. In the aftermath of a battle, we find that Menelaus, having been grazed by an arrow, was left with a bleeding ἕλκος (Homer, Il. 4.190). Scores of other medical examples appear, for instance, in the Hippocratic treatises Joints (Artic.), and Head Wounds (De capitis vulneribus). In his discussion of the proper method of amputation, the author informs us that when a finger is severed cleanly at one of the joints, ‘ordinary treatment is sufficient for such wounds (ἑλκέων)’ (Artic. 68). To describe the stump of a severed finger as a ‘sore’ or ‘ulcer’ would be inappropriate. At Head Wounds 13 we see ἕλκος appear repeatedly where the treatment of ‘wounds’ is clearly described.
Arguably Hippocrates’ most important successor in classical medical literature was Galen, whose voluminous medical writings include several commentaries on various Hippocratic works. Perhaps noticing the broad application in the Hippocratic corpus, in his commentary on the above treatise, On Joints, Galen provides the reader with a definition of ἕλκος: ‘a break of continuity in part of the flesh is a ἕλκος, and in bone is called a fracture’ (Comm. Hipp. Joints 482).Footnote 6 In other words, what a fracture is to a bone, a ἕλκος is to the skin. It is difficult to understate the importance of Galen's comment: a physician and rough contemporary of Luke gives us an explicit medical definition for the term in question. Like the Hippocratic writers whom Galen strives to follow, he understands and employs the term broadly, using it to describe various wounds, whether fresh, healing or putrid, resulting from any number of causes.Footnote 7
The source of some confusion regarding these terms is the standard New Testament lexicon, BDAG, which is in need of some revision here. In the BDAG entry for ἕλκος, we read the following definition: ‘wound … or sore, abscess, ulcer. The latter seems to be implied [in] Lk 16:21, for the narrative indicates that the beggar desires food, not medical attention.’Footnote 8 In other words, BDAG suggests that Lazarus does not need or want medical attention if he has sores instead of wounds. This reasoning is very problematic. We uncover a similar state of affairs with the hapax legomenon εἱλκωμένος, ‘covered in sores.’ While the passive participial use of ἑλκόω is rarer, when we look at a text BDAG cites as evidence that Lazarus is ‘covered in sores’ we find that it indicates otherwise. The word appears three times in quick succession in Oneirocritica, a second-century ce work on the interpretation of dreams by Artermidorus:
A healthy and fleshy forehead is auspicious for all men and signifies candor and manliness, but a forehead that is wounded or diseased (ἡλκωμένον ἤ νοσοῦν) signifies disgrace together with harm. (1.23)
Dreaming that one has full cheeks is auspicious for everyone, but especially for women. Having cheeks that are lean or lacerated (ἡλκωμένας) signifies grief or mourning. Lean cheeks mean grief; lacerated (ἡλκωμένας) cheeks, mourning. For, in times of mourning, men mutilate their cheeks. (1.28)
Breasts are auspicious if they are free from every blemish … but if the breasts are damaged in any way, for example, if they are ulcerated (ἡλκωμένοι), they signify sickness. (1.41)Footnote 9
From these three oracles we are able to grasp clearly the versatility of εἱλκομένος. In the first dream interpretation we witness the author making a crucial distinction, for here ἑλκόω is contrasted with νοσέω. In this contrast ἑλκόω specifically refers to the kinds of wounds that are neither diseased nor the result of a disease. In the second dream interpretation we are told explicitly that the ἕλκη are self-inflicted – wounds received during a mourning ritual of self-mutilation. Only in the final example would the interpretation suggested by BDAG and ubiquitous in scholarship be conceivable.
Further evidence for the passive participle appears in Xenophon's, On the Art of Horsemanship, also cited by BDAG. Herein Xenophon describes the injury that a horse may suffer when the riding equipment is put on incorrectly: ‘If the halter is not easy about the ears, the horse will often rub his head against the manger and may often get sores (ἕλκη) in consequence. Now if there are sore places (ἑλκουμένων) thereabouts the horse is bound to be restive both when he is bridled and when he is rubbed down’ (5.1 (trans. Marchant and Bowersock, LCL)). The injuries appear in the place where the equipment rubs against the horse, causing chaffing or abrasions, and eventually suppuration. This is appropriately translated as ‘sore spots’, and these ἕλκη neither cover the body nor are they caused by disease. As with the noun, examples abound of the verb conveying different meanings in this form: ‘ulcerated’ from disease,Footnote 10 ‘wounded’ from fighting,Footnote 11 or ‘wounded’ neither from violence nor disease.Footnote 12
From the preceding evidence, it is apparent that without clear justification to render the term otherwise, ἕλκη at Luke 16.21 should be translated conservatively, in a way that conveys a break in continuity of the flesh and does not specify disease or mechanical agency, or a state of suppuration. ‘Lesion’ is the most generic term for this definition. ‘Wound’, which pathologically refers to any sharp break in the skin regardless of a state of infection, offers a more colloquial alternative. The most generic term available for εἱλκωμένος to indicate a body afflicted with more than one ‘laceration,’ ‘wound’ or ‘ulcer’ is the archaic ‘lesioned’, or, less precise but in common use, ‘wounded’. To overcome the great inertia of the belief that Lazarus suffers from disease or a skin condition, ‘sore’, ‘ulcer’ and ‘covered with sores’ should be avoided. It may be, in fact, a deliberate choice by the author to select this flexible lemma, which permits the hearer to imagine Lazarus suffering from various kinds of lesions – sores, cuts, abrasions, sunburns, some wounds suppurated, others not – as those people hungry and exposed on the street often do. Lazarus lies there wounded with lesions at the mercy of the dogs.
2. Lazarus and the Dogs
A sharp contrast in perspectives on how the dogs function in the narrative is best conveyed by two quotations: ‘That the dogs have mercy upon him and lick his sores simply goes to show how desperately and dependently he waits upon men, upon his fellowmen inside’, and ‘[t]he rich man allowed the sores of Lazarus to be disgustingly licked by the tongues of ravaging dogs.’ The former, by Karl Barth, is representative of a popular homiletic interpretation.Footnote 13 This interpretation is consistently refuted by biblical scholars who prefer the latter, here given by John Paul Heil.Footnote 14 A few standard works are worth citing to show that Professor Heil's view is merely illustrative of the ubiquitous understanding in scholarship. The ABD claims, ‘Today we commonly speak of the dog as “man's best friend.” In the Bible, however the dog is always spoken of in contempt.’Footnote 15 Similarly the TDNT says of Lazarus, ‘this is hardly a reference to the sympathy of animals in contrast to the heartlessness of men. It is rather a sign of supreme wretchedness of the poor beggar; he has to endure even contact with these unclean animals.’Footnote 16 Likewise was Jülicher, the father of modern parables research, convinced that these were bad dogs:
In the licking of wounds by the dogs one would like to find an expression of their commiseration. It would act as a dramatic highpoint if even irrational animals were trying to ease the pain of a suffering person. But the Hebrew did not take dogs to be companions or friends of humans – he numbers them along with the wild animals like foxes and pigs.Footnote 17
Since Jülicher in the nineteenth century, scholarly opinion has not budged on the matter. In this case, however, it is the popular homiletic interpretation that is correct, and the ‘scholarly’ interpretation that is wrong.Footnote 18 The pervasive negative views concerning dogs fall on their face for a few important reasons.Footnote 19 First, while dogs are used in negative epithets and presented negatively in several passages, it is patently false that they are never viewed positively in the Bible.Footnote 20 Second, dogs are nowhere to be found among the animals defined as unclean in the Bible.Footnote 21 Third, the frequent claim that dogs were perceived to be vile animals then in contrast to modern sensibilities is simply wrong.Footnote 22
2.1 Human–Canine Reciprocity in the Ancient Mediterranean World
Dogs appear to have functioned as companions for humans in the region by the fourth millennium bce at the latest, with hunting dogs appearing already in the Epic of Gilgamesh and on several Assyrian and Egyptian reliefs.Footnote 23 In the Levant, domesticated dogs may already appear in the destruction layers of Jericho as early as 7000 bce, and excavations at Ashkelon have unearthed hundreds of ritually buried domestic dogs.Footnote 24 While there are biblical examples of dogs being cast in a negative light, if they ever were viewed as unclean, by the Persian period they had clearly shed some taboo.Footnote 25 If Isa 56.10–11 is not an allusion to guard dogs of some property, then it certainly makes reference to them being used for tending flocks. Likewise, dogs are mentioned positively in Job 30.1 where they clearly function as sheep dogs. In neither case is the reader expected to be scandalised by these semi-domesticated dogs. By the time we reach Tobit, the author gladly depicts a pet dog exiting the Jewish home with Tobias to tag along on the adventure to Media, probably serving alongside the angel Raphael as Tobias's co-guardian (Tob 6.2; 11.4).Footnote 26
In the New Testament, domesticated dogs are the central metaphor in the story of the Syro-Phoenecian woman (Mark 7.27–30 // Matt 15.26–8). In this story a woman begs Jesus to expel a demon from her ailing daughter. After Jesus’ initial refusal, ‘It is not good to take the bread from the children and feed it to the dogs’, he is won over by the woman's retort, ‘Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the table of their master.’ This is not evidence for Jewish domestic use of dogs per se, since these are the words of a Syro-Phoenecian, but it does signal that Jesus was familiar enough with the domestic presence of dogs beneath dining tables for the metaphor to persuade him.Footnote 27 The Mishnah likewise confirms domestic use of dogs, ruling on when an owner is culpable for their pet's bite (B. Qam. 5.3) and the chaining of a house dog (B. Qam. 7.7); it even records a debate on domestication: ‘(Rabbi Jose:) “The dog is categorised as a wild animal.” Rabbi Meir said, “a kind of cattle”’ (Kil. 8.6).Footnote 28
The classical world for its part informs us already in the Odyssey that Odysseus’ faithful dog, Argos, died of joy upon recognising the scent of his long-lost master (Homer, Od. 17.290–327). In this same passage we learn of the different domestic roles for which dogs were bred, including table dogs bred for beauty (17.306–17). There is abundant evidence among Greek and Roman literary and iconographic sources across the centuries for dogs as pets, and present at the tables of the wealthy.Footnote 29 Luke's first-century contemporary, Columella, gushes: ‘What human being more clearly or so vociferously gives warning of the presence of a wild beast or of a thief as does the dog by its barking? What servant is more attached to his master than is a dog? What companion more faithful? What guardian more incorruptible? What more wakeful night-watchman can be found? Lastly, what more steadfast avenger or defender?’ (Rust. 7.12.1 (trans. Forster, LCL)).Footnote 30 In the Jewish world then, as in Greco-Roman culture, it seems that wild dogs could be viewed negatively, while domesticated dogs were not. Even so, wild dogs were not ‘unclean’ in the sense of a Reinheitsgebot, instead, as in the classical conception, they were ‘unclean’ in the sense of unkempt or unpleasant. We can safely say, then, that the dogs in the parable are worth a second look.
As with Lazarus’ ailment, scholars have seldom taken the opportunity to look outside the Bible for how dogs licking him might be perceived by Luke's audience.Footnote 31 When we turn to the classical material concerning dogs, we quickly find that they are celebrated precisely for their skill as healers and that they have a lengthy pedigree serving in medical roles, specifically through the act of licking.
2.2 Saliva as Medicine
The use of saliva in ancient medicine as a healing agent is well known, and was evidently a tool in Jesus’ repertoire (Mark 7.33; 8.23; John 9.6).Footnote 32 So too would its curative power have been recognised by the audiences of the Gospels.Footnote 33 The belief in the curative power of saliva was not limited to the popular class, but endorsed by two of Luke's contemporaries, the most renowned physicians of the first and second centuries ce. We find that both Pliny the Elder and Galen list numerous medical applications for saliva, specifically as a cure for skin ulcerations:
Let us therefore believe that lichens too and leprous sores are kept in check by continual application of fasting saliva … Sensation in any numbed limb is restored by spitting into the bosom, or if the upper eyelids are touched with saliva. (Pliny, Natural History 28.7.37–8 (trans. Rackham, LCL)).
And you may observe the extent of the alteration which occurs to food in the mouth if you will chew some corn and then apply it to an unripe (undigested) boil: you will see it rapidly transmuting – in fact entirely digesting – the boil, though it cannot do anything of the kind if you mix it with water. And do not let this surprise you; this phlegm (saliva) in the mouth is also a cure for lichens. (Galen, On the Natural Faculties 3.7.163 (trans. Brock, LCL))Footnote 34
With respect to skin abnormalities, the power of human saliva as a treatment was by no means exotic but appears almost peculiar to ἕλκη. Were one to write a prescription for a poor man in the ancient world to treat these symptoms, the application of saliva to the affected parts would probably be it.Footnote 35
With specific reference to dogs in a medical context the evidence is stronger still. Beginning with the aforementioned Argos, the pet of Odysseus, dogs became celebrated for their medical discernment and efficacy as healers. It was precisely the example of Argos, able to recognise his master's scent from experience, that served as evidence for medical empiricists that experience is the best diagnostic means (e.g. Sextus Empiricus, Pyr. 1.68). The second-century physician and philosopher Sextus Empiricus goes on to claim that dogs, by reason of their medical expertise, are virtuous and perfect in their capacity of internal reasoning (ἡ τελειότης τοῦ ἐνδιαθέτου λόγου). Dogs are such good physicians that Sextus claims they observe by their very nature the prescriptions of Hippocrates. In nearly the same breath Sextus notes a particular medical skill that is characteristic of the dog:
Moreover, the dog is capable of comprehending and assuaging his own sufferings; for when a thorn has got stuck in his foot he hastens to remove it by rubbing his foot on the ground and by using his teeth. And if he has a wound (ἕλκος) anywhere, because dirty wounds (ἕλκη) are hard to cure whereas clean ones heal easily, the dog gently licks off the pus that has gathered. Nay more, the dog admirably observes the prescription of Hippocrates: rest being what cures the foot, whenever he gets his foot hurt he lifts it up and keeps it as far as possible free from pressure. (Sextus Empiricus, Pyr. 1.70–1 (trans. Bury, LCL))
Remarkably, Sextus is not alone in associating dogs with a foundational medical figure and observing their ability to treat wounds. Aelian (170–ca. 222 ce) says:
A dog burdened with a full stomach knows of a herb that grows on dry stone walls, and if he eats it he vomits all that is paining him … so he restores his health without any need of medical assistance. Further, he voids a quantity of black bile which if retained causes madness, a troublesome disease in dogs. And when infected by worms dogs eat the awns of corn, according to Aristotle [Hist. An. 612a.31]. When wounded they have their tongue as a medicine, and with their tongue they lick around the wounded place and restore it to a healthy condition; bandages, compresses and the compounding of medicines they scorn. (Nat. an. 8.9 (trans. adapted from Scholfield, LCL))Footnote 36
Just as Sextus, Aelian notes a prestigious medical lineage found in Aristotle's observation of the dog's ability to treat sickness. So too does Aelian indicate the dog's ability to treat wounds, describing the tongue and licking explicitly as a medicine. These two sources reveal a different paradigm with which to understand the act of the dogs in the parable.
2.3 Dogs Healing People
The dog's healing powers breach the porous boundary into the miraculous and the magical. Independent of the world of the physicians,Footnote 37 in the cult of the healing god Asclepius, dogs were often the means of affecting cures for temple visitors. Sacred dogs appear in our earliest evidence of the Asclepian cult.Footnote 38 Like the sacred snakes, dogs roamed the Asclepian temples and conveyed the power of the deity by their touch. The famed Epidaurian tablets (second half of the fourth century bce) record the following cures:
Lyson of Hermione, a blind boy. While wide-awake he had his eyes cured by one of the dogs in the Temple and went away healed … A dog cured a boy from Aegina. He had a growth on the neck. When he had come to the god, one of the sacred dogs healed him – while he was awake – with its tongue and made him well. (IG iv 2/1.121.20, 122.26)Footnote 39
As a combination of the miraculous with the magical and medicinal we must also take note of a story in Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius of Tyana (ca. 217 ce). This account of a first-century figure often compared with Jesus contains a story about a boy who goes mad after a bite from a rabid dog. After locating and calming the dog, Apollonius gathered a crowd, and then ‘told the dog to lick around the bite, so that the boy's wounder should also be his doctor. Immediately the boy turned to greet his father, recognised his mother, spoke to his friends, and took a drink from the Cydnus’ (Philostratus, Vit. Apoll. 6.43 (trans. adapted from Jones, LCL)).Footnote 40
Last but not least, we ought to note that the interpretation of the early Church seems to disagree with the current scholarly consensus: from Jerome in the West, ‘“Even the dogs would come and lick his sores.” What no man deigned to bathe and touch, gentle beasts lick’,Footnote 41 to Cyril of Alexandria in the East:
Yes, it says that even the dogs licked his sores, and did not injure him, yet sympathized with him and cared for him. Animals relieve their own sufferings with their tongues, as they remove what pains them and gently soothe the sores. The rich man was crueler than the dogs because he felt no sympathy or compassion for him but was completely unmerciful. (Commentary on Luke 3 (trans. A. Just Jr, ACCS NT iii.261))
Cyril does not merely provide another testimony about the positive portrayal of the dogs, but also gives confirmation that early Christian readers shared the medicinal understanding of a dog's lick, and that they too applied it to the dogs in this parable.Footnote 42 The diverse sources explored here, whether medical treatises, accounts of miraculous healings, philosophical writings or Church Fathers, speak with one accord: a dog's lick is salubrious.
3. Re-evaluations and Conclusions
The results of this study controvert the scholarly consensus with respect to what ails Lazarus, how dogs were perceived in the ancient world, and the role they play in this parable. The best evidence for the role of the dogs and the meaning of ἕλκος is found not in the Hebrew Bible, but in Luke's Hellenistic world. It is by no means clear that Lazarus is unclean in any cultic sense, suffering from either ‘unclean’ dogs or levitical sores. The continued appeal to skin disease and sores is most likely a vestige of the pre-modern view that Lazarus was a leper.Footnote 43 While we now accept that locating Hansen's disease in the Bible is problematic, the continued use of these terms for Lazarus is perhaps an indication that we have found nothing better with which to diagnose him. Recognising the positive role of the dogs also removes the most important crutch to the theory that Lazarus is a cripple, paralysed or blind. As the theory goes, it is due to his infirmity that Lazarus cannot escape the torturous laps by the dogs. With no desire to resist his canine nurses, Lazarus’ immobility must be based on some other ground. Lazarus is hungry and bears the marks of one exposed on the street, he lies at the gate with lesions.
With the biblical information set straight, the banquet of the rich man must also be scrutinised. The primary objection against dogs being present at the feast or owned by the rich man is that they are unclean animals. This obstacle removed, we are free to correctly understand a Roman banquet scene and observe what is insinuated by Lazarus’ longing. When Jesus says that Lazarus desires to eat the morsels that fall from the rich man's table, he indicates that Lazarus desires the task of the rich man's table dog, to lie beneath the table waiting for the scraps. At aristocratic banquets the presence of table dogs was customary, serving as decorations that would signal the rich man's opulence.Footnote 44 By their presence the dogs attest to ‘the richness of a laden table, the abundance of food able to feed many useless mouths, and presumably, the more dogs at the table, the more splendid was the effect of the display’.Footnote 45 Even though dogs are not mentioned in the description of the banquet, table dogs are clearly in view when the narrator divulges Lazarus’ desire to eat the table scraps in verse 21. This verse balances two relative clauses, one in which the table dogs are implied and one in which the dogs at the gate appear. Thus the dogs licking Lazarus at the gate mirror the rich man's, completing a trio of grotesque parodic features of the earthly scene. In the same way the rich man's clothing of purple and fine linen finds its grotesque counterpart in Lazarus’ lesioned body, and Lazarus lying at the gate languishing is a mime of the rich man reclining at banquets, so also the dogs that lick Lazarus parody the rich man's dogs at his banquet table.
While the standard interpretation of the afterlife scene finds the basis for the condemnation of the rich man in the contrast between the concern for his brothers and his callousness towards Lazarus, we may put a finer point on this moral. The author signals that in his envy of the rich man's table dogs Lazarus does not aspire to equality with the rich man's brothers, he longs merely for the position of the lowliest servants.Footnote 46 In the household hierarchy, the dogs are last at the table, ‘the seat of the miserable lowly’,Footnote 47 but members of the household they are nonetheless. The moral failures commonly ascribed to the rich man may all be governed by the exclusion of Lazarus from even this lowest place of honour in his household.
The ubiquitous scholarly interpretation of the earthly scene views Lazarus as a wretch who is mistreated by everyone and everything, only receiving comfort in the afterlife. We must now come to a different conclusion about how to read the parable. The findings of this article suggest that everyone and everything is showing Lazarus mercy, except the damned rich man. The licking of the dogs serves to dramatically highlight this point – even irrational animals acting on instinct are more humane. The function of this seemingly small narrative detail is not exhausted here, however. It is from this detail that the narrator treats the ancient reader to a delicious irony concerning the rich man's punishment, an irony that has eluded the modern reader until now. The pain-quenching wet tongues of the dogs are the last detail we receive concerning Lazarus’ earthly life. The first thing we learn of the rich man, in his afterlife, is that he begs for a wet tongue (Luke 16.24).
Finally, we may add another layer to the rhetorical artistry of the story befitting the character complexity, moral dilemmas and paraenetic dimensions that are hallmarks of the L parables and example stories.Footnote 48 A motif of liminal spaces and characters emerges by completing a trio of pairings in the parable. The breaches in the most intimate barrier, which is Lazarus’ very flesh, create a liminal space, a broken membrane dividing the dangers of the outside from his vulnerable insides, his body serving as the stage upon which his claim to personhood is contested. These openings are occupied by the dogs, liminal creatures that transgress the boundary of animal and humankind, the household and the pariahs. Lazarus, for his part, occupies the opening in the wall, the rich man's gate, the liminal space both literally and symbolically between the insiders and the outsiders, the household and the street. The yawning chasm fixed between Lazarus, Abraham and the rich man marks the third liminal space between eternal torment and comfort. In keeping with the function of other example stories and L parables, it is this final space where we may locate the hearer, the liminal character whose fate is yet undetermined, now faced with the challenge to decide, ‘What should I do?’
