Re:multiple ascensions

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Wed Jan 28 1998 - 07:03:33 EST


Just a couple comments on the discussion regarding John 20:17 MH MOU hAPTOU

(a) I have no objection to understanding Jesus as demonstrating a sense of
humor, and I think there are clear instances where gospel passages call for
such an understanding. I don't think, however, that this is one of them.

(b) I think that Mary has a problem here in her understanding of what the
resurrection of Jesus means, and it is a problem that Peter and the Beloved
Disciple did not have and somewhat different from the problem that Thomas
has later. Mary's problem is that she wants a tangible (and I choose that
word deliberately) presence of Jesus--either a corpse that's clearly
missing from the tomb, or else a warm, live, person with whom she can
continue to interact as she did before the crucifixion. She cannot have
that kind of relationship any more and that, I believe, is what she's being
told in "MH MOU hAPTOU, OUPW GAR ANABEBHKA PROS TON PATERA." It's not that
she'll be able to do so AFTER he has ascended either, of course, but the
point, I think, is that this is a transitional state and the appearance in
visible form here is different from the way he is to be experienced
hereafter. So he says to her, "Don't hold on to me," or, as others have
said, "Don't cling to me." hAPTOU is middle voice and it's completed with a
partitive genitive: that MOU is significant here: it means: "you want a
part of me to hold onto, but you can't have that, and if you are to believe
that I have risen, you've got to surrender that tangible part of me that
would assure you that I am still here in the flesh." So in Mary's case,
it's important to understand that Jesus' resurrection means that, while
Jesus is indeed ALIVE, he is not a flesh-and-blood personage with whom one
can have a PHYSICAL interrelationship: to recognize and relate to a
"glory-body" has to be different from recognizing and relating to a
flesh-and-blood body. Yet despite this, the Jesus whom Mary thinks is a
gardener is REAL, really alive, and really interacting with her--but not in
the same way--and she is not to imagine that she can relate to him as she
did before.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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