Crime and Punishment — Sonya reads the raising of Lazarus

What the work does

Fyodor Dostoevsky published Crime and Punishment (Russian Prestupleniye i Nakazaniye) serially in The Russian Messenger (Russky Vestnik) across twelve monthly issues in 1866, with a book edition following in 1867. The novel follows Rodion Raskolnikov, an impoverished former student in St. Petersburg, who murders an elderly pawnbroker (and, unintentionally, her sister) under a theory that “extraordinary” men have the right to step over ordinary moral limits in pursuit of higher purposes. The novel’s six parts and Epilogue trace Raskolnikov’s psychological deterioration, his confession, and his exile to Siberia.

The novel is one of the great works of 19th-century Christian thematic engagement — written by an Orthodox Christian author who had returned to faith after a transformative experience of mock execution and Siberian exile (1849-54) for participation in the Petrashevsky Circle.

The novel’s pivotal religious scene is in Part IV, chapter 4. Raskolnikov visits Sonya Marmeladova, a young woman who has resorted to prostitution to support her family, and who is the moral and theological centre of the novel. He asks her to read to him from her copy of the Gospels. She reads, at his specific request, the account of the raising of Lazarus from John 11.

This entry documents that scene and its function within the novel.

The Lazarus narrative

John 11 records the raising of Lazarus of Bethany, brother of Mary and Martha, who has died and been in the tomb for four days. The narrative occupies forty-four verses, the longest single resurrection account in the Gospels.

The decisive theological exchange is between Jesus and Martha:

“Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ Martha replied, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in Me will live, even though he dies. And everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?’” (John 11:23-26, BSB)

The Greek word anastasis (ἀνάστασις) is used twice in this passage. BDAG s.v. anastasis: “rising again, resurrection, especially of the body, bodily resurrection.” The word is built from ana (up) + histēmi (stand) — standing up again. The word is the load-bearing New Testament term for resurrection.

The narrative continues to the climax:

“After Jesus had said this, He called out in a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ The man who had been dead came out with his hands and feet bound in strips of linen, and his face wrapped in a cloth. ‘Loose him and let him go,’ Jesus told them.” (John 11:43-44, BSB)

The Lazarus narrative differs from the other resurrection narratives in the Gospels (the daughter of Jairus, Mark 5; the widow of Nain’s son, Luke 7; Jesus’s own resurrection) in being the most extended, the most theologically explicit, and the only one where the dead person has been entombed long enough that decay would be expected (Martha worries about the smell, 11:39 — ēdē ozei, “by now he stinks”).

Why Dostoevsky chose Lazarus

Dostoevsky’s selection of John 11 for the pivotal reading scene is precise. The biblical canon has many texts about repentance and forgiveness:

• The prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32) — the prototype text of reform after wandering.
• The conversion of Paul (Acts 9; Galatians 1) — the prototype text of dramatic moral reversal.
• The woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-11) — the prototype text of mercy in the face of judgment.
• The good thief on the cross (Luke 23:39-43) — the prototype text of last-minute redemption.

Dostoevsky chose none of these. He chose Lazarus.

The reason is the structural fit between Raskolnikov’s condition and what Lazarus needs. Raskolnikov is not someone who has wandered and may return (the prodigal son). He is not someone whose moral framework needs reversal (Paul). He is not someone needing mercy from threatened judgment (the adulteress). He is not someone in the last hour of life (the good thief).

He has murdered. The act has not just damaged him; in Dostoevsky’s framework, it has killed something in him. The novel registers, across five hundred pages, the psychological deterioration that follows — Raskolnikov’s recurring fevers, his alienation from his sister and mother, his inability to feel anything in the ordinary register, his deepening conviction that he himself is now a category apart.

What Raskolnikov needs is not reform; he needs anastasis. He needs to be called out of the tomb in which he is already living. Sonya’s reading of the Lazarus passage is the novel’s announcement that this is what is at stake.

The scene is set in chapter 4 of Part IV — almost exactly the novel’s structural midpoint. Up to this scene, the novel has been the descent into the act and its aftermath; from this scene onward, the novel is moving toward whatever the resurrection-figure means for someone in Raskolnikov’s condition.

The Epilogue

The novel’s Epilogue is set in Siberia, where Raskolnikov has been sentenced to eight years of hard labour. Sonya has followed him; she lives nearby and visits regularly. The Epilogue traces a slow change in Raskolnikov — not a sudden conversion, not a dramatic vision, but a gradual return of feeling.

The closing pages contain the novel’s clearest anastasis image. Raskolnikov walks with Sonya by the river. He has been reading the same New Testament Sonya read from earlier — she sent it to him in exile, the one she has carried throughout the novel. The narrative voice describes the slow change in him as the beginning of new life:

“He had risen and gone out — he wanted to look at the river and the great spreading steppe… he didn’t know himself that the gradual renewal of life would be his new history.”

(The translation here is the Pevear-Volokhonsky 1992 version, which the novel’s English reception has substantially recentred on.)

The novel ends not with the moment of resurrection but with the beginning of it — Raskolnikov, who has been four days in the tomb, taking the first step toward being called out.

What the novel does with the biblical text

Dostoevsky’s use of John 11 is direct, sustained, and theologically deliberate. The novel is not citing the biblical text as a decoration; it is structuring the central plot question — whether the protagonist can be restored — around the most extreme New Testament image of restoration available.

This is what Crime and Punishment does with biblical material more broadly. The novel is full of biblical allusion (the prostitute Sonya as Magdalene-figure; Raskolnikov’s surname etymology — raskol means schism, split in Russian, the same root that gives raskolniki, the Russian Orthodox schismatic Old Believers; the names of multiple secondary characters carry religious weight). The Lazarus reading scene is the most concentrated single biblical engagement; the novel as a whole operates within a Russian Orthodox theological imagination throughout.

For the related cinematic engagement with Christ-figure imagery and resurrection structure, see The Matrix — Neo, resurrection, and Gnostic ideas. For the wider treatment of the born-again vocabulary in Christian theology, see What does the Bible mean by “born again”?.

To read John 11 in other translations:

• John 11 — NIV →
• John 11 — ESV →
• John 11 — NLT →