Jaguar Prince

"John" 20:17 tells us that Jesus didn't allow Mary the Magdalen to touch him, for "I am not yet ascended to my Father". The explanation given by the Master is hard to grasp, even seemingly absurd, but that is not what I want to talk about here.

This has proven a huge embarrassment to generations of Biblical exegetes and commentators, people who are forever trying to smoothe out and explain away discrepancies between the different gospels or to make them as trivial and rational as possible.

The problem is that in the other gospels, specially in Matthew, we read that Jesus let two women (not just one as in John!) embrace his feet and that in the gospel of "John" Jesus allows his male disciples to handle him at will. Therefore commentators have tried to change the meaning of the verse by alleging that prohibitions in the present imperative in Greek always imply the cessation of an activity which has already begun (Henry Jackson, Dana-Mantey, Moulton). Therefore, Jesus didn't say to Mary: "Don't touch me", but "Stop touching me!"

Alleluyah, this brings the story in line with the rest of the Gospel!

Unfortunately, there are quite a number of examples of prohibitions in the gospel of John, which cannot be rendered as "stop doing this or that", which indicates that prohibitions in the present imperative don't necessarily imply the cessation of an activity in progress.

Splendid examples of this are John 19:21

Write not: The king of the Jews but that he said... (v 19 indicates that the writing was already completed)

John 10:37

If I do not the works of the Father, believe me not ('stop believing in me' is patently ridiculous)

More examples can be found in Wallace's Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics, p.717. Wallace indicates that the rule that present imperative prohibitions prohibit actions that are already in progress has been overturned by recent Greek scholarship (McKay, James L.Boyer, Stanley E.Porter, Buist M; Fanning). What present imperatives indicate is a view of the action commanded or prohibited as an ongoing process whereas aorist imperatives view the action as a whole.

Note that Jerome, the Latin translator of the Bible (Vulgate), someone who, contrary to modern scholars, knew Hellenistic greek as a living language, got it right since he renders John 20:17 as: Noli me tangere.

"Don't be touching me or don't touch me continually" would be the ideal and strictly grammatical translation of John 20:2 (but translation doesn't depend only on grammar as all truly intelligent and unbiased translators know). The Greek doesn't imply that Mary had already begun to touch or to cling to Jesus at all, something the text doesn't tell us in the first place.

It is clear to me that what Jesus did was to stop Mary Magdalen in her tracks when she was about to rush forward to pay tribute to him in the traditional manner, by embracing his feet, as described in Matthew. Why he didn't let Mary touch him, while he let his male disciples "handle" him, is one of the subtle theological points of "John", one on which I will not elaborate.

Let me simply state that there is a hierarchy or ladder of knowledge implied in the distinction made by the Evangelist between the-other-disciple-whom-Jesus-loved, who believed without seeing or touching, Mary the Magdalen, who believed by seeing and hearing, and the male disciples, who believed by seeing, hearing and touching. Guess who is lowest in the ladder...?

Let me say that the fact that Jesus could be touched doesn't in any way imply that he was not a spirit since angels and even God, beings devoid of flesh and bones, could be touched in their occasional epiphanies. Remember the fight between the angel and Jacob at Peniel and Abram's three guests at Mamre.

Let us note finally the low, debasing idea of women as weak, sentimental creatures implied in the translation "don't cling to me". It is simply disgusting.

:devil3: Jag

Toto

digression split off here

Godfather

Threads like this always start some kind of digression. . . . . .

Very fascinating information, thanks Jag.

Godfather