Bible Synapse
Could the risen Jesus be touched before he ascended?
Hard question · The death and resurrection of Jesus · raised by 1 of the lists sceptics circulate
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Jesus told Mary, “Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father” (BSB: “Do not cling to Me”).
Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.
The women “held him by the feet, and worshipped him”.
And as they went to tell his disciples, behold, Jesus met them, saying, All hail. And they came and held him by the feet, and worshipped him.
Jesus told the disciples, “handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have”.
Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.
A week later he told Thomas, “Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands”.
Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.
The objection
In John, the risen Jesus tells Mary Magdalene “Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father”. Yet in Matthew the women take hold of his feet, in Luke he invites the disciples to handle him, and a week later he tells Thomas to put his finger in his wounds, all before the ascension. Critics ask whether he could be touched or not.
The answer
Jesus was not forbidding Mary to touch him at all, but telling her to stop holding on to him. The Greek is mē mou haptou. The verb haptomai means to touch, but also to take hold of or cling to, and a present imperative with mē often tells someone to stop doing what they are already doing. Modern versions translate it so: “Do not cling to Me” (BSB), “Don’t hold me” (WEB). Mary, having recognised him, had evidently taken hold of him, just as the other women “held him by the feet” (Matthew 28:9).
The reason Jesus gives fits this sense: “for I am not yet ascended to my Father”. He was not about to vanish; there would be time to see him again, as Barnes, Gill and Clarke all explain. Meanwhile she had an errand: “but go to my brethren”. So the saying is not a ban on touching, and cannot be, since in the same chapter John records Jesus inviting Thomas, “Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands” (John 20:27), and Luke records him telling the disciples, “handle me, and see” (Luke 24:39). There the touching had a purpose: to show doubting disciples that he was really there in the body. Mary did not doubt that. She needed to let go and carry the message.
Other answers Christians give
A new relationship
Calvin, and later Ellicott and Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, see a further meaning. Mary was holding on to the bodily presence she had known before; he tells her that the old companionship is giving way to a new one, which will begin when he has gone to the Father and sent the Spirit (John 16:7). Augustine read the words more spiritually still: Mary was to ‘touch’ him by faith, believing him equal with the Father. These views add to the plain sense rather than replacing it.
From the classic commentators
“Touch” represents a Greek word which means to “cling to,” to “fasten on,” to “grasp” an object. The tense is present, and the prohibition is, therefore, not of an individual act, but of a continuance of the act, of the habit, “Do not continue clinging to Me.”C. J. Ellicott (ed.), Commentary for English Readers, on John 20:17 (1878)
Sources
- C. J. Ellicott (ed.), Commentary for English Readers: John 20, at Bible Hub
- Albert Barnes, Notes on the Bible: John 20 (1832), at Bible Hub
- Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible: John 20 (1810–1826), at Bible Hub
- Strong’s Greek 680, haptomai, at Bible Hub