1. 17: 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.

1. 27: 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.

2. 28: And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.

3. 29: Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.

4. (John 20.17, 27–9)

Sainthood and misrepresentation

In these verses from John 20, where the risen Christ addresses St Mary Magdalene and then, only ten verses later, St Thomas, we are presented with both a contrast, or even contradiction (‘Touch me not’ / ‘reach hither thy finger’), and a parallel, through a verbal echo (‘my God, and your God’ / ‘My Lord and my God’). Most Victorian commentators focused upon the similarities and continuities between these two post-Resurrection appearances, rather than the contrasts between them, not least through a desire to affirm the gospel's historical authenticity and internal consistency. Contrasts, whether between the faithful Mary and ‘doubting’ Thomas, or between Christ's comments on his liminal bodily state, tended to be softened. Manning, for example, when Archbishop of Westminster, described how the risen Christ came to ‘tarry in the midst’ of his followers, ‘to speak with them, to eat and drink with them, to suffer them to touch Him’. The next sentence is constructed in a way which implies coherence in the narrative, rather than contradiction: ‘If He forbade Mary Magdalene in the first moment of her joy, yet He suffered Thomas to handle the wounds of His hands and side.’