The story of the death of Lazarus (verses 1-16) is a self-contained unit, and so the first two verses serve primarily to introduce Lazarus. Verse 1 gives his name and the town where he lived, while verse 2 relates him to Mary, whom the Gospel writer intimates his readers will know. Verse 1 is considerably reordered in Good News Translation and in most modern translations (see Phillips, New English Bible, Jerusalem Bible, New American Bible). This reordering is intended to achieve a more natural construction in English. Compare, for example, the rather literal rendering of Revised Standard Version with Good News Translation and New English Bible. Revised Standard Version reads “Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.” Good News Translation renders this verse A man named Lazarus, who lived in Bethany, became sick. Bethany was the town where Mary and her sister Martha lived. New English Bible reads “There was a man named Lazarus who had fallen ill. His home was at Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.”
Lazarus is the Greek form of the Hebrew name Eleazar, which means “God helps.” It appears elsewhere in the New Testament only in Luke 16.19-31, the parable of Lazarus and the rich man. It may be that the meaning of the name Lazarus was in John’s mind, though he makes no attempt to explain it to his readers.
A man named Lazarus is a typical way in which a character is introduced in a narrative in English. Languages differ considerably in the ways in which names may be introduced, for example, “a man the people called Lazarus,” “a man whose name was Lazarus,” “a man who had the name Lazarus,” or “a man Lazarus.”
The Bethany referred to here is not the Bethany of 1.28. The Bethany of this verse is identified with the modern town of El ʿAzariyeh, just east of Jerusalem. The modern name of the town is itself derived from the name Lazarus.
Except in the Gospel of John the two sisters, Martha and Mary, are mentioned only in Luke 10.38-42. Luke does not identify where they lived, John seems to mention the names of the two sisters with the expectation that their names will be known to the reader, even if that of Lazarus is not. It may appear quite anomalous, or even contradictory, in some languages to introduce Mary and her sister Martha in verse 1 and then indicate in verse 2 that Lazarus is the brother of Mary. He would obviously be the brother of Martha as well, and not to have said so in verse 1 may leave readers in some receptor languages dubious as to what the relations really were. It may be necessary in some languages to introduce into verse 1 the statement “These were Lazarus’ sisters” or “Bethany was the town where his sisters Mary and Martha lived.”
Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on the Gospel of John. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1980. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .