It is written somewhere that the first time the Resurrected Jesus appeared to his Apostles, Thomas as not there to witness the event. And when the other ten told him about it, he said he wouldn’t believe it until Jesus appeared to him personally, and let him put his hands in the nail holes and the lance-wound in his side. And that Jesus came around again when Thomas WAS, there and let him probe the Stigmata.
Do you suppose Jesus flinched when Thomas started poking around in still-healling wounds?
There are suggestions (e.g. “Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them”) that the resurrected Jesus did not have the same kind of physical body, with the same physical limitations, as before.
But if he had a new, improved body, why did it still have those wounds?
Maybe precisely so he could demonstrate that way that it was really him, and he really had been crucified?
I am very much not an expert and have not attended bible study with any sort of regularity for a long time (like, never, but I did go to Sunday school…) so take this with a grain of salt, but I recall this coming up once and this is what I remember…
The answer is, of course, who knows.
John does not actually claim Thomas went poking around with his fingers in Jesus’ wounds. Jesus basically tells Tom to take a good hard look at his wounds and quit being a Doubting Thomas (which, in case you were unaware, is where this phrase comes from). Specifically:
–John 20: 26-29
So according to Paul what actually happened was Jesus, finally standing before in Thomas in person, challenged Tom to make good on his doubts, calling his bluff. It doesn’t say Thomas actually did so, or that he touched Jesus, just that he saw the wounds for himself and, presumably, agreed in their authenticity and became a True Believer right then and there.
If Thomas actually probed Christ’s wounds that brings us to Paul. In 1 Corinthians 15 he is explaining the resurrection to the Corinth church. He writes:
–1 Corinthians 15: 44
I understand this to mean (and what I remember being taught in Sunday school) that Jesus was resurrected as a spirit, not a physical flesh-and-blood man. Of course there’s also Acts which state that he was literally brought back from the dead as a living man:
–Acts 1: 1-3
To ask the question in the OP assumes a literal interpretation of the NT which will be difficult because different passages can – and will – be interpreted differently. If you believe Jesus was resurrected as a living breathing man made of flesh then yeah, he probably felt some discomfort when Thomas explored his wounds, but then again John doesn’t actually say that happened, so your premise is flawed to begin with, but Paul basically said Jesus was resurrected as a spirit or, at least, a different kind of body that had died on the cross.
So the answer is, really, whatever you want to believe.
I think you’re thinking of John 20:11-18, which is right before the bit about Doubting Thomas. In the King James Version, Jesus says to Mary Magdalene: “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.” In more modern translations, “Touch me not” is translated as “Do not hold on to me” or “Stop holding on to me.”
In one of his other post-resurrection appearances, Jesus eats some food with his apostles, and reassures them “Does a ghost eat?”. So while his new form might still be different somehow in its fundamental nature, it’s not so different that it’s not still a living, biological body.
I think that was the first one, and the apostles were wandering around going “Whoa, what is with that empty tomb? I’m freakin’, man…”
It’s just after dawn, and they come upon a guy on the shore, grilling fish over a fire, and he asks them what happened while he serves them crispy tilapia. . .[could’ve been…]
That blew my little Sunday School brain: Whoa, Jesus is a class guy! First miracle? Turning water into wine (and the good stuff, better than the wedding had run out of). First appearance after death? He’s making breakfast for his friends…
The traditional mainline orthodoxy has been that Jesus underwent the fullness of the Resurrection of the Flesh ahead of everyone else, so he did rise in his real own physical body, only now it is a “glorified” body freed from the deficiencies of the finite world – Aquinas defines that as being imperishable and freed from restraint of matter and space.
The latter sounds to me like that means Jesus’ physical body now abides in the transcendent plane and he can make it present in our dimension at will, where it is as material (according to our finite world’s perception of “matter”) as it was before.
Well, it’s never mentioned in any of the three other, earlier gospels.
Indeed, Thomas is only mentioned 7 times in the gospels, 4 of those times in lists of the apostles. Plus we really don’t know what his name was, it’s not given in the original texts.
I find that - and that you know this so precisely - most interesting. There were 12 apostels (right? or is this also just an approximate magic number with some kaballistic occult significance?), do you happen to know how often each one is mentioned?
My guess would be that Simon/Peter is the most often mentioned one, followed by John, James and Judas Iscariot, but that is just a guess.