From Wounds to Scars: The Embodiment of a Forwarded Past through the Body Marks of Jesus in John 20

Abstract

This article draws attention to the narrative development of the body marks of the resurrected Johannine Jesus and explores what these marks might signify about John’s reappropriation of Jesus’s suffering. Drawing on the work of Candida R. Moss, who has argued that the resurrection body marks of the Johannine Jesus should be understood as closed scars rather than open wounds, this article re-envisages the implications of Jesus’s textured skin in Jn 20 and examines how John’s gospel mediates and ascribes meaning to Jesus’s body as an inscription surface in response to the crucifixion. By discussing how marked skins serve as privileged facilities to convey meanings and interacting with an exemplary ancient scar narrative from Homer’s Odyssey, I argue that the crucifixion wounds of the Johannine Jesus undergo a narrative transformation in Jn 20 in which the forming of the scars signifies a process of ‘working through’ the trauma and violence of the cross.

Introduction: The Question of Body Marks

In one of the most well-known scenes in the Gospel of John, Thomas, who initially demands to see and touch Jesus’s nailed hands and pierced side, is led to recognise the risen Christ as Jesus appears and invites him to scrutinise his resurrected body (Jn 20.24–28). Much of the scholarship that has been devoted to the study of Thomas has examined his role as a character and the narrative function of his recognition. While some scholars regard Thomas’s earlier request for tangible proofs as an indication of unfavourable scepticism (Morris 1995: 751; Brown 1966: 1045), other critics consider Thomas as an empiricist whose requests are ‘signs of awareness and insight’ (Lee 1995: 43; cf. Ridderbos 1992: 649; Seglenieks 2022: 148–50). Scholars from both sides of the debate tend to suggest that the recognition scene took place as a means to ascertain the reality and physicality of the resurrected Jesus (Brown 1966: 1046; Larsen 2008: 209; cf. Morris 1995: 751). Notably, many of these arguments operate on the presumption that the body marks (τύποι) presented by Jesus are his crucifixion wounds, and Thomas is invited to place his hands into (εἰς) the open lesions. In this case, it remains unclear why the display of wounds would function as John’s most natural and effective way to recognise Jesus as opposed to other means of recognition. ¹ If the marks of Jesus’s crucifixion remain as wounds, is Thomas expected to scrutinise the wounded sites by plunging his fingers inside and subsequently withdrawing fingers that are covered with the blood and gory entrails of Jesus before his climactic confession, ‘my Lord and my God!’ (20.28)?

In her 2017 and 2019 works, Candida R. Moss (2017: 52; 2019: 28) challenges this assumption and contends that the body marks of Jesus should not be considered as open wounds but as healed scars that form a ‘bump’ on the skin. Moss (2017: 54–58; 2019: 26–31) bases this proposal on the grammar of the Greek preposition εἰς, the semantic range of τύπος, and ancient medical writings, where τύποι are best understood as impenetrable scars, thereby rendering εἰς to be ‘on’ instead of ‘into’. Not only does Moss provide insights into the meaning of scars and suggest that they highlight Jesus’s identification, physicality, and honour, she also concludes that John sets up a precedent that ‘bodily anomalies and imperfections can be transfigured’, as the wounds have now become virtuous scars (Moss 2019: 38). Yet what remains to be explored are the ways that these body marks develop in the text, and, more importantly, what difference it would make for John’s story-world and the other characters if Jesus’s body marks are understood as scars.

Sarah Coakley (2002: 135, 140–146) notes that the recognition accounts of the risen Christ in the gospels (e.g., Jn 20.11–18; 21.1–14; Lk. 24.13–15) often have a ‘progressive nature’ that guides the readers along a path of transformation. Not all characters, ‘even among the faithful’, express the same response to the resurrected Jesus (Coakley 2002: 139). However, as the narrative unfolds, recognition takes place as some characters develop an awakened ‘spiritual sense’, as Coakley argues, which allows them ‘the possibility of seeing differently’ as their physical senses are deepened and accompanied by moral insights (Coakley 2002: 140, 147). When exploring Thomas’s recognition of the resurrected Jesus, it is also important to question how this change and transformation occurs with a focus on Jesus’s body marks. As such, two new questions arise: First, if Jesus’s crucifixion wounds transformed into identifiable scars, in which a development process is involved, how can this transformation be understood in John’s narrative world? Second, in what ways is the character of Thomas involved in this process of transformation?

Before examining such a possible transformation process in John, it may be useful to take note of theories that have attempted to delineate the roles and relationships between wounds and scars in narratives. Scholars have suggested that narrated wounds and scars can function as carnal traces of the characters’ pain and violence from the past; scars, however, add a cathartic layer to the narrative and signify a process of narrative ‘working through’—that is, an outlet to carry forward the subject’s pain and suffering through retelling a story in the form of the scars (Kearney 2016: 77–90; MacKendrick 2004: 152–55). Richard Kearney (2003: 103–105) suggests that narrative ‘working through’ can be understood as a channelling process that invites one to sympathise with those who have tragically suffered and undergone death ‘narratively, practically, [and] cathartically’. Narrative ‘working through’ does not entail one’s over-identification with the subject’s experience of suffering, but it allows one to acknowledge a degree of the suffering while moving forward as the trauma is witnessed in a meaningful way. Thus, a narrated scar may function as a distinctive symbol that not only recalls the suffering of the subject but also offers a form of closure or healing of one’s past woundedness. To this extent, if one entertains the plausibility of reading Jesus’s body marks as scars, could the marks be reconsidered as the textual tokens that encapsulate the suffering past of Jesus’s crucifixion that is not obliterated nor forgotten but which moves forward as part of a narrative ‘working through’? In light of these questions, the article aims to examine Jesus’s body marks by reading John’s text with and through these marks. To read with the body marks is to invite a way to examine the role of these body marks while attending to the ways they form and transform, emerge and re-emerge from the Passion scenes to the post-resurrection narratives. To read through the marks is to call for a thinking that does not merely treat the marks as superficial body features but which investigates how these marks incorporate and generate meanings through the narrative.

In what follows, I will first lay the theoretical foundation by introducing the concepts from carnal theories relevant to our investigation. I will then explore the mechanics and pathways in which marked skins convey ideologies and then showcase this process with an exemplary scar narrative from Homer’s Odyssey. Next, I will evaluate the variety of ways John mediates the body and the body marks of Jesus in Jn 20. By re-envisaging the meaning and implications of Jesus’s body marks through a close reading of John’s presentation of Jesus’s body, this article aims to demonstrate that the crucifixion wounds of Jesus undergo a narrative transformation and become tangible scars, in which the forming of the scars may also signify a process of ‘working through’ the trauma and violence of the cross. As such, the investigation will offer a refreshing lens to understand the ways in which the Johannine text gives witness to the crucified Jesus.

Approaching Narrated Bodies as Canvas Spaces

The interpretation of body scars is, in essence, an analytical exploration of the body surface that is considered with respect to, and within the scope of, human bodies. Before we discuss the perceptible body marks and other body-related themes in John, it is helpful first to consider that depicted bodies in literature are generally not ‘natural’ nor do they primarily designate the sense of ‘meat’, but they are both perceived and inscribed in textual form. This first section will present the case that narrated bodies and body parts do not merely exist as bounded objects but are subjectively utilised as a multifaceted canvas space to transmit meanings and ideologies.

The notions of textuality and expressivity of the body can be traced in the wake of resistance against traditional Cartesian body-mind dualism. Conceptual theories of the body cast by scholars such as Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michael Foucault, Judith Butler, and Martin Heidegger have attempted to reclaim the body as the primary site of knowledge. ² Notably, Merleau-Ponty (2002) views the body not simply as a materialistic entity driven by a transcendent mind but as an expressive site where one is simultaneously perceiving and forming the knowledge of both the external world and the bodies of other humans. ³ The body is understood both as a subject of thinking and perception, as well as an object of thought, being perceived and conceptualised by other bodies. ⁴ In this way, the world’s meaning and the body mutually construct and comprise each other. For Merleau-Ponty (2002: 190), the body emerges as a means to incorporate and express both meanings and knowledge.

If a body is not merely a static object but can be considered as ‘an agent in its own world construction’ (Lyon and Barbalet 1994: 48), it is also important to stress that this construction is culturally shaped. Informed by Foucault (2003; 1995) and Butler (1993), in particular, bodies and their body parts do not exist without language, and thus they are shaped as (but not reduced to) textual representations with embedded notions of cultural, societal, and ideological values. ⁵ A person’s body and its appearance can be depicted in the form of text to mediate age, gender, cosmetic condition, social status, or even moral interest, and notably, these qualities cannot be engaged apart from their specific societal and cultural domains (Anzieu 2016: 103–18). In this system of thinking, bodies, being simultaneously perceived and depicted, can be understood as (re)constructions, at the same time as reflections, of a specific nexus of temporal dimensions, societal activities, and discursive conditions. Therefore, questioning how the body is being mediated in their textual forms will posit new pathways for interpreters, and for this article, to access the underlying cultural constellations and ideologies in insightful ways.

Biblical Bodies as Inscriptive Surface

It can be observed that the bodies depicted in the bible are also far from neutral entities but assume a certain fluidity as the writer’s canvas space, embodied with religious meanings and cultural notions. In an edited volume of collected essays that largely focuses on biblical texts with body-related themes, Joan E. Taylor (2014: xv) also considers the body as an ‘inscriptive surface’ on which ‘religious ideology is printed, both as a single artefact and in relation to other bodies’. Taylor’s volume has consistently illustrated that the body is a subject of interest in the biblical text with widespread uses, showing that the body does not only arouse matters of moral, social, and religious concerns but also facilitates how one experiences the world. One important work is Sandra Jacobs’s essay, where she pays particular attention to the visibility of bodily inscriptions in the Hebrew Bible. By juxtaposing the explicit prohibition of skin marking (Lev. 19.28; 21.5; Deut. 14.1) and the divine markings of bodies (e.g., Gen. 4.15; Num. 11.24–25), Jacobs argues that these bodily markings express religious devotions and commitment while at the same time they can be perceived as the Israelites’ belongingness to God and mark God’s divine protection (Jacobs 2014: 10–16). ⁶ Jacobs’s fruitful assessment sheds light on how the visible surface of the body, within the context of specific priestly and prophetic traditions, functions both as a locus of expression to the outside world and as an object of perception. The attention to the visibility of the inscribed skin will be important as we explore the perceived appearance of the Johannine Jesus’s marked body in the subsequent discussion. ⁷

Another noteworthy contribution can be drawn from Michelle Fletcher’s innovative essay, where she challenges prevailing scholarship that predominantly interprets the ‘whore of Babylon’ in Rev. 17 as a figurative city. By shifting the focus to the body and the reproductive functions ascribed to Babylon while comparing the figure with Frankenstein’s monster in filmic portrayals, Fletcher (2014: 144–64) argues for a reconsideration of the whore of Babylon as a ‘multiply penetrated prostitute’ who poses a threat to the sterile Lamb on the throne. Fletcher’s attention to the Babylonian body from a ‘fleshly’ angle allows one to examine how the body and its physical properties can be dynamically constructed and inscribed as text to unfold the narrative. As such, both Jacobs and Fletcher demonstrate the potentiality of the body’s twofold ability even in biblical narratives: the body can be used by the writers as a privileged site to both incorporate and communicate religious meanings through its appearance and its bodily attributes while simultaneously making itself readily available for perception.

The Body in John’s Gospel

In light of these studies, it is not surprising that John’s portrayal of Jesus’s body also shares an inscriptive and displaceable nature where it both transmits meanings and is perceived by other bodies. The portrayed body of Jesus does not necessarily nor adequately bring the readers back to the ‘real’ historical body of Jesus per se but is mediated and materialised by the writer through the text as an ‘embodied’ body of Jesus. This forces us to rethink how Jesus’s body is being mediated through its inscription—what can be perceived from the represented body of Jesus in John? What can be transmitted and communicated?

In broad terms, the represented body of the Johannine Jesus is altered in relation to time and space where he appears in different locations, travelling and passing through places at various times and seasons. The body is led to the Passion scenes, displayed to be scourged, tortured, and crucified, and then reappears to the disciples in the post-resurrection scenes. It should not be overlooked that the way the Johannine text presents the interaction of Jesus’s body with the external world and others’ bodies is, in fact, John’s attempt to mediate how Jesus experiences the world. What we have is a perceived and inscribed body of Jesus that is experiencing the constructed narrative world of the writer. In particular, when one turns to the specific words σάρξ and σῶμα in relation to Jesus, it is notable that John presents Jesus’s body not as a fixed entity but one that is being and becoming. The text asserts that ‘the Word’ became σάρξ (1.14) and Jesus’s σάρξ can be consumed (6.51–56), referenced as the temple (2.21), and elsewhere as Jesus’s dead body (19.38; 20.12). While the lexical and metaphorical meanings, as well as the interchangeability of the Johannine Jesus’s σάρξ and σῶμα, are vigorously disputed among scholars, what is important is that neither of these words designates a neutral body but rather they are subjectively appropriated and negotiated as canvas spaces to convey various meanings. ⁸

Christina Petterson (2017: 29, 111–13) notes a pattern in which the body of the Johannine Jesus is often represented in body parts such as mouth (19.29), head (19.2, 30; 20.7), feet (11.2, 32; 12.3; 13.14), and side (19.34), where they gradually build up into a unified σῶμα as a corpse in the Passion narrative (19.31, 38) and later disintegrate again into body parts in the post-resurrection scenes. To a certain extent, then, the body of the post-resurrection Jesus is articulated not altogether as a single σῶμα but is represented in the form of body parts—namely, Jesus’s marked hands and side. Through the ways described previously, these marked body parts do not exist as neutral objects but as John’s textual mediation of Jesus’s body, where they hold the potential to archive and transmit meanings. This calls into question the particular presentation of Jesus’s hands and side in Jn 20.19–29 as we examine how they are inscribed and perceived, as well as the possible meanings that are incorporated and expressed through these marked body parts.

Body with Wounds and Scars

If we entertain the possibility that the body marks of Jesus described in Jn 20 are not envisioned as open wounds but rather closed scars, one way to examine the text is to investigate how these scars attribute and convey meanings of their own in ways that a smooth skin surface or a wounded flesh do not. It is obvious that scars are different in comparison to wounds on a temporal basis where the former presupposes the latter but not necessarily the other way around. However, the temporal relationship between the original bodily intrusion and the aftermath marking left on the body does not simply move in a linear manner. Didier Anzieu (2016: 105–14), in specifying the skin’s role in relation to the self and body, proposes that the skin can operate as (1) an ‘envelope’ of oneself; (2) a protective barrier against the outside; (3) a communicative site for past records; and (4) a mirror of reality. In Anzieu’s typology, the skin envelope can protect, yet it is also permeable and vulnerable; when this shield is pierced or disrupted, the skin records and preserves the marks while its present appearance communicates this disruption to others. Thus, the skin is considered as ‘the original parchment that acts as a palimpsest, preserving the crossed-out, scratched-through, overwritten drafts of an ‘original’ pre-verbal writing made of traces on the skin’ (Anzieu 2016: 114). This means that, in comparison to an ‘unmarked’ surface, the marked skin inherits the ability to bear witness to a bodily intrusion event from the past while at the same time providing a reciprocal channel for this past to be read and interpreted in the present. Put otherwise, the skin remembers and conjures the past in the form of body marks.

The scar, as part of the marked skin surface, beholds a wounded past of the body. This is also a past that has been refigured and carried forward in the skin. Gilles Deleuze (1994: 77) illuminates this point and suggests that scars signify not only the past wound but also ‘the present fact of having been wounded’ and ‘the contemplation of wounds’. Following this logic, the scarred skin surface can be understood as a trope that entails and evokes a multilayered and convoluted temporality of the past, present, and also the future, insofar as the body continues to carry these marks of disruption.

If a disrupted skin surface can act as a mediator of the body’s ‘memory’, where the gazing upon a disrupted skin surface attests to the bodily intrusion of the past given the skin’s inherent archival and communicative capacities, it is also important to caution that the context of this past and the meaning of the disruption are indeterminate based on the marked skin at its present state alone. One can consider the practice of Jewish circumcision described in the Hebrew Bible as an example. Whether treated as a rite or metaphor, a cut or an amputation, the mark of the male flesh cannot be merely considered from its postincision appearance in an isolated timeframe. The meaning and significance of the mutilated flesh are always anchored to the past in relation to the present context. In this case, the circumcision mark concerns not only the past of the original body mutilation but also a far-reaching, multigenerational past with respect to its covenantal tradition (Gen. 17.10–14). ⁹ Similarly, just as Moss demonstrates that military scars are ‘visible tokens of virtue and patriotism’ whereas the scars of criminal bodies are markers of ‘shame and degradation’ (Moss 2019: 60), it should also be noted that the differentiation between virtuous and shameful scars cannot be solely determined by the scars’ present appearances. Instead, the meanings are inextricably linked to the narrative of the scar bearer’s past and how this past is being carried to the present. As Lisa Woolfork (2009: 61) illustrates in her study on the representation of slavery and trauma in bodily epistemology, scars ‘begin to narrate the traumatic past’, but the scarred body itself is not ‘self-explanatory’. In short, there is a limitation of a scar’s expressivity. A scar can initiate a story and provide a channel to the past but cannot fully narrate it. Hence, this is where narrativity plays a key role in understanding how the past is registered and reflected in the present scar marks. Through the narrative text, the bodily intrusion of the past can be inflicted or self-initiated; superficial or extreme; received as punishments or acquired through accidents; transitional or completed; and it can become aggravated or recuperated, being concealed or revealed. It is precisely the specific ways the intrusion site changes over its temporal course in the narrative that attributes meaning to the present marked body.

Following this sense, I suggest that the temporal transformation from wounds to scars in a narrative can mark the way in which the past is being represented and re-appropriated in the present—namely, a narrative ‘working through’ in which the woundedness of the character’s past is reshaped and reconfigured into recognisable bodily scars in meaningful ways. Before delving into the Johannine text, it is fitting to turn briefly to an exemplary ancient scar narrative in Homer’s Odyssey as a comparative case to draw together my points and illustrate how tangible and recognisable scars conjure the wounded past while signifying a process of a narrative ‘working through’. ¹⁰

Odysseus’s Scar: Identity through a Wounded Existence

In Homer’s Odyssey, the epic recounts the story of the hero Odysseus who repeatedly suffers throughout his agonising voyage as he tries to return home, enacting both as the receiver and witness of his name’s meaning: ‘causer of pain’ (Dimock 1956: 52–70). When Odysseus finally returns home to his palace in Ithaca, he disguises himself as a beggar so that he will not be recognised by his family as he assesses his household. The moment of truth occurs in the climactic recognition scene when Odysseus’s maiden nurse Euryclea comes to the full recognition of her master’s identity as she discovers the scar on his thigh by touch during a footbath. Notably, Euryclea’s recognition of Odysseus’s true identity takes place only after a detailed and explicit flashback scene to the scar’s origin. Readers learn that the original wound was inflicted during a boar hunt trip in Odysseus’s childhood, the same micro-narrative in which Odysseus receives his name from his grandfather Autolycus (Od. 19.392–466). The boar hunt remarks the way Odysseus’s body is permanently changed as the boar ‘tore a long gash of flesh’ (Od. 19.450) from Odysseus’s thigh. This reference to the wounding of Odysseus’s σάρξ by the boar can be seen as the outcome of human vulnerability, just as the cyclopes devour the flesh of Odysseus’s men (Od. 6.293), or as in various other Homeric episodes where the human flesh is susceptible to the damage inflicted by animals or other creatures (e.g., Il. 8.379–380) (Hopman 2019: 68–69). If the skin can be said to be inscribable, then it is the boar who narratively inscribed pain and suffering onto the vulnerable Odysseus in the form of this primal wounding—the pain that inaugurates his very own name and identity. ¹¹ In this sense, the boar hunt functions as a microcosm that implicates the mythic pattern of Odysseus’s life, as an aspirant hero who embarks on a journey to a foreign land, only to find himself deeply wounded by the world. The healing and recognition can only be found within his own family, just as the wounded site of the young Odysseus was then described as ‘bound up’, with its ‘black blood’ held back, and was ‘cured’ by his grandfather Autolycus and his sons as ‘they quickly sent [Odysseus] rejoicing back to his native land, to Ithaca’ (Od. 19.456–462).

The flashback ends with an important yet often-overlooked episode, where the young Odysseus is at home recounting his hunting journey to his parents, describing ‘how a boar struck him’ (Od. 19.462–466). Here, Odysseus’s own reinterpretation of the story places the boar as the subject who inflicts the οὐλήν and him being the passive victim (πάθοι), and thus, the recounting captures not a victorious battle that leads to the death of the boar but Odysseus’s own woundedness (Hopman 2019: 69–70). It is in this parallel manner that the recognised scar recounts and materialises the macro-narrative of Odysseus’s wounding journey in its own nonverbal way. The scar that Euryclea touches and sees exhibits its twofold ability to both encapsulate and present Odysseus as the victim of his wounds, representing not merely the wound inflicted by the one-time boar hunt, but also metaphorically, the accumulated woundedness from his journey. Despite the fact that Odysseus is disguised as a nameless beggar whose woundedness is, in a sense, concealed and hidden, the scar unfolds and conjures the knowledge of Odysseus’s wounded existence. ¹² Odysseus’s scar becomes a locus of memory, or as Dennis Patrick Slattery (2000: 24) puts it, a metaphorical ‘threading marker’ through which Euryclea knits together Odysseus’s wounded past and is thus able to recognise his identity.

It is significant that Euryclea does not directly access Odysseus’s primal wounding, but it is mediated and recognised in the form of his scar as it conjures the story of his wounded past. The scar carries forward and brings to surface the inexpressible experiences of suffering in a recognisable and tangible way. ¹³ Just as Kearney (2016: 83) contends, ‘while wounds remain timeless and unrepresentable, scars are the marks left on the flesh to be seen, touched, told and read’, the wounded past of Odysseus is not obliterated but is now reoriented and transformed as a perceptible scar to be comprehended in a meaningful way. In essence, the scar does not replicate the wounded past but reinterprets it through a story. The narrating of the wounded past is, therefore, a ‘working through’ of pain in which meanings are being instilled to this past as it bears the testimony to Odysseus’s wounded existence.

Once the flashback scene is over, the narrative turns back to Euryclea with an added emphasis on the scar’s tangibility and comprehensibility, where she ‘took hold of’ his leg and ‘felt’ the scar with her ‘palm’ (Od. 19.467–468). Euryclea’s discriminating hands, as with Merleau-Ponty’s concept of perception, act as the perceiving body that simultaneously thinks and constructs its knowledge of the world—that is, Odysseus’s true identity. Here, it is precisely the tactile recognition of the touchable scar that triggers Euryclea’s final realisation of the truth, leading to her climactic confession: ‘Very truly you are Odysseus, beloved child, I did not know you until [I] touch all of my master[’s body]’ (Od. 19.474–475). Just like Odysseus being ‘Nobody’—an absent, nonexistent, disguised figure—in the cave of Polyphemus who finally escapes from death and repossesses his name by shouting back, ‘I am Odysseus’, or as the nameless youth who received his name from Autolycus, this unnamed and previously absent beggar has his name and identity restored when Euryclea calls him Odysseus by his name, with the scar recounting his wounded existence. While the scar of Odysseus is engraved with a wounded past, it also leads to Odysseus’s restoration, serving as a form of healing. Hence, in this narrative, the touchable scar marks not only a bodily intrusion in a plain sense, but it operates as a carnal trace that enables one to ‘work through’ Odysseus’s wounded past in a comprehensible and restorative manner. The scar bears witness to Odysseus’s wounded existence and, in turn, his true identity.

The scar inscribed on the flesh of Odysseus does not merely reveal his pain and suffering. It is not merely a static identity marker. It is the becoming of his scar that attributes meanings to his wounded past, providing an accessible carnal trace for other narrated characters and the readers to participate in the ‘working through’ of their woundedness in a transformative way. Encompassing the paradoxical nature of both rupture and closure, suffering and healing, loss and restoration, the scar of Odysseus bears witness to the multifaceted makeup of his identity that an unmarked body cannot. ¹⁴ Together, the attention to scars and their unique properties form the backdrop for our study to explore the meanings and significance of Jesus’s post-resurrection body marks. In what ways do Jesus’s crucifixion wounds become perceptible scars, and to what extent can this transformation process be seen as a narrative ‘working through’ of Jesus’s pain and suffering? I will now address these questions.

From Wounds to Scars

As I have emphasised, the significance and meaning of narrated scars are primarily synthesised through their becoming. Likewise, if we read τύποι as scars, the potential fulfilment of Thomas’s specified threefold request to ‘see the scar of the nails’, to ‘place [his] finger on the scar of the nails’, and to ‘place [his] hand on [Jesus’s] side’ (Jn 20.25) requires a transformed body that is once wounded and crucified yet has now resurrected and recuperated, being both visible and touchable. Put differently, the narrative transformation from wounds to scars necessitates Thomas’s identification of the post-resurrection Jesus. In this way, it is essential to question how the ‘narrative journey’ from wounds to scars takes place in the resurrection scenes and explore the relevant implications.

The focus of this section, then, is to examine the ways in which Jesus’s crucifixion wounds and his body scars are being perceived and mediated in John. I will first trace the ways in which the crucifixion wounds begin to re-emerge as body scars in the resurrection narratives, and in particular, how they resurface in an increasingly tangible and comprehensible manner. From there, I will discuss how this transformation process can be understood as a narrative ‘working through’ that not only weaves together the narratives but also reflects a retroactive reassessment of Jesus’s victimisation on the cross, displaying meanings by recasting Jesus’s wounds as scars. I suggest that by undergoing a process of narrative ‘working through’, Jesus’s scarred body operates as a textual trope that simultaneously encapsulates an enduring, yet reoriented past of the violence and trauma of the crucifixion while bearing witness to Jesus’s post-resurrection identity.

The Appearance of Jesus’s Hands and Side (Jn 20.19–23)

Roman crucifixion is a common form of capital punishment, executing its victims by nailing or binding their hands and feet to a wooden cross while cruelly leaving their bodies until death, usually caused by suffocation, dehydration, or excessive bleeding. ¹⁵ In John, Jesus was not only crucified by the perpetrators (19.23), ¹⁶ but his side was also pierced by a soldier, which emitted both blood and water (19.34). While not denying the multiple layers of theological implications concerning ‘blood’ and ‘water’, ¹⁷ this distinctive piercing account, comparable to Odysseus’s flashback where the boar acts as a ‘flesh inscriber’ with its tusk launching into the victim’s skin, here depicts the soldier and his weapon inflicts a wound that inscribes and marks Jesus’s body. After the crucifixion, we are told that the resurrected Jesus reappears before Mary. Without disclosing Jesus’s pierced body parts in the text, Jesus is unrecognised at first sight (20.14–15) and his body is inaccessible for touch (20.17). It is possible that Mary ‘sees’ Jesus (and perhaps his already-marked body too) in her own progressive way (Coakley 2002: 135, 147), yet the readers do not know what the supposedly pierced body parts of the resurrected Jesus look like at this point in the narrative. It is not until the first appearance to the disciples that the specific pierced body parts begin to resurface in the text. Specifically, the nailed hands and the pierced side are mentioned three times, and each subsequent mention adds a deeper layer of comprehensibility and tangibility to these presented body parts.

The first occurrence takes place as the disciples are gathered together in a closed room. Jesus, being both spectral and fleshly, appears in the midst and greets his disciples (20.19). Jesus immediately ‘showed his hands and side’ (ἔδειξεν τὰς χεῖρας καὶ τὴν πλευρὰν αὐτοῖς), and after ‘having seen the Lord’ (ἰδόντες τὸν κύριον), the disciples are overjoyed (20.20). A close reading of this incident may suggest that although the disciples ‘see’ their Lord, the disciples, like Thomas, have yet to recognise and witness the transformed wounds of the crucified Jesus—the crucial tokens of Jesus’s post-resurrection identity. Granted, the disciples recognise the appeared man to be their very own master after Jesus presents his previously punctured hands and side. Brown (1966: 1028) notes, however, this recognition scene is rather awkward as the text does not describe the disciples’ reaction after Jesus’s sudden apparition, nor does the text indicate why Jesus is compelled to show his hands and side. The Johannine Jesus seems quite independent in his self-initiated demonstration, while the disciples show no signs of incredulity and express their joy afterwards in a seemingly natural and reflective manner. Here, a question looms and would require a closer re-examination: what did the disciples ‘see’ and recognise according to the text?

In comparison, the Lukan Jesus is motivated to present his hands and feet to affirm his physicality as a response to the frightened disciples who thought that their risen master is a ghost (Lk. 24.38–39). The Lukan ‘hands and feet’ serve as the tokens of Jesus’s corporality, invited to be touched and seen by the disciples to assure themselves that Jesus is comprised of ‘flesh and bones’ (24.39–40). The emphasis on Jesus’s physicality continues as Luke depicts Jesus eating with the disciples as an ordinary human (24.38–39). The Lukan account appears to be relatively less concerned with the location of the displayed sites than with the physicality of Jesus’s body. ¹⁸ Conversely, the recognition of the displayed sites in John is imminently linked to the matching locations of the crucifixion punctures. While the display of ‘hands and side’ may imply Jesus’s physicality, the unique and self-initiated witness to the ‘side’ recalls the specific wounds inflicted on Jesus’s body during the recent Passion scenes. Here, the utilisation of Jesus’s ‘hands and side’ as the tokens of recognition is dependent on the location of the crucifixion wounds. By demonstrating that the presented ‘hands and side’ are in fact the same pierced body parts, the text posits that the appearing man is not an impostor but the same crucified Jesus.

If the disciples’ recognition of Jesus is largely based on the matching locations of the pierced sites, it is noteworthy that the text does not elaborate on the distinguishable texture of Jesus’s skin surface, nor does it describe the diagnostic gaze of the disciples. ¹⁹ Indeed, the hands and side were perceived to be punctured during the Passion, but do these sites remain as open wounds coated in blood or have they become closed and recuperated scars? Alternatively, are they now perfectly smoothed skin surfaces, as if the disruption marks of the crucifixion have been entirely erased? While the concealed wounds of the crucifixion are beginning to re-emerge as visible body parts, the texture of these disrupted body sites remains unscrutinised by both the disciples and the implied readers at this point. ²⁰

As highlighted earlier, if a disrupted skin surface acts as an important communicative site that remembers and conjures a wounded past, the texture of this disrupted skin demonstrates how that wounded past is carried over into the present. In this way, while the presentation of Jesus’s hands and side attest to the occurrence of a past crucifixion and marks Jesus as the disciples’ crucified master, the texture of the displayed body parts remains undefined and undisclosed. The perceptual characteristics of Jesus’s textured body parts are only revealed subsequently as the narrative unfolds. Hence, as much as the disciples are able to ‘see’ and recognise their master as a living person returning from death, the particular ways in which the crucifixion wounds change in the Johannine story-world remain undiagnosed, and the full weight of Jesus’s transformed woundedness has yet to be acknowledged.

The witness to Jesus’s resurrection body and the ‘working through’ of his crucifixion wounds are set in motion but are not yet matured. It is only in the next scene (Jn 20.24–25) that John begins to disclose Thomas’s absence and discusses the envisioned texture of Jesus’s body parts. As we will see, the full recognition of the risen Jesus through his scars will require a multisensory engagement with his textured body parts, where Jesus’s refigured wounds and the story they testify will be witnessed in an increasingly comprehensible manner.

The Envisioned Appearance of Jesus’s Hands and Side (Jn 20.24–25)

John’s second presentation of Jesus’s hands and side is uttered through the inquisitive voice of Thomas, where the text decorates the envisioned hands and side with a specific texture and a particular way of engaging with them. In this scene, the scepticism and incredulity found in the Synoptic disciples are dramatically displayed in the character of Thomas. Thomas reinforces his determined disbelief and responds to the disciples’ testimony, ‘unless I see the mark (τὸν τύπον) of the nails in his hands, and put my finger on the mark (εἰς τὸν τύπον) of the nails and my hands on (εἰς) his side, I would not believe’ (20.25). ²¹ While many commentators presuppose that Thomas’s demand to probe Jesus’s pierced body corresponds to his way of verifying Jesus’s resurrection (Lee 1995: 43; Kruse 2003: 378), what is often overlooked is that his affirmation does, in fact, require a particular way of engaging Jesus’s body, namely, by scrutinising the τύπος—a specific type of texture of Jesus’s pierced body parts—in a tangible manner.

Obviously, the character of Thomas is not able to comprehend Jesus’s τύπος at this point, and the way he phrases the statement may suggest sarcasm rather than a genuine desire to probe the body. The language expressed in Thomas’s request, nevertheless, features a developing imagery of Jesus’s pierced body parts with increasing comprehensibility and tangibility. Like the prior recognition scene, the pierced sites mentioned here are deliberately referenced to the crucifixion, where violence was focused onto these specific bodily locations. These pierced sites, however, are now empathically imagined to be carrying a specific skin surface texture (τύπος) that the previous recognition scene does not disclose.

Following Moss (2019: 28–29), τύπος, which we usually translate as ‘mark’, is commonly used to designate an uneven impression produced by the application of physical pressure, and its semantic range does not include penetrable marks. It is more plausible for an ancient reader to understand the language of τύπος as a scar mark rather than an open bleeding wound. ²² Following this logic, while the preposition εἰς can either be referring to the motion ‘into’ or ‘on’, it is better understood as ‘on’ since τύπος is an impenetrable mark. And in this translation, the envisioned hands in 20.25 are twice specified and decorated with τύπος as scar marks, just as Thomas expresses his desire to place his hand on them. Here, through the text, the concealed wounds of Jesus are emerging and reconfiguring in the form of an envisioned image of a scarred Jesus.

As mentioned, a scar is a specific type of texture that is different compared to wounded or a smooth skin surface, where a scar marks a wounded past and at the same time signifies a form of healing from that past. Reading τύπος here as a scar suggests that Thomas is specifically demanding a healed or healing body in which the previously inflicted wounds have been or are being recuperated and restored. The appearance of the envisioned skin is marked by bodily disruptions that bear witness to the primal crucifixion wounds, yet they are no longer open wounds but closed scars, visualised to be impenetrable where Thomas can place his hands on the surface of these sites as he inspects them. This imagery of Jesus’s resurrection body is somewhat distinctive compared to numerous Greco-Roman texts and streams of Jewish traditions, where if the deceased preserve their bodily wounds and deformities, they are often not healed in their after-life apparitions. ²³ While post-mortem phantoms and resurrected bodies are often thought to be carrying their wounds, the desire to see a scarred body communicates the need to authenticate a resurrected body that is not merely raised from the dead as a static being or a ghostly reanimation but as a living corporal body that is continuing to experience healing (Moss 2019: 34–38). In this way, the envisioned scars are not only identity markers that correspond to the locations of the pierced sites, nor do they solely correspond to Jesus’s physicality. The scars are also the tokens of recognition that acknowledge the past wounds, and the embodied suffering experience is now reconfigured through healing in the form of scars.

Furthermore, by critically requesting a multisensory mode of perception to ‘see’ and ‘touch’ the scars of the pierced body parts, Thomas’s language reflects the potentiality of a visible and touchable body of Jesus that the disciples’ ‘seeing’ does not offer. Like Euryclea’s discriminating hands, Thomas’s eyes and hands are envisioned to act as the perceiving tools that allow him to both verify and construct the reality of Jesus’s risen and healing body. Whilst the text tells us that Thomas refuses the palpability of Jesus’s resurrection unless he sees, touches, and experiences the risen body, the text simultaneously places Thomas as the perceiving figure to envision Jesus’s body that is represented by the scarred body parts. To put it in Coakley’s terms (2002: 130–52), the text places Thomas in a process of transformation to deepen his physical senses and to develop the ‘spiritual senses’ necessary to recognise the resurrected Jesus. In this way, John sets up the character of Thomas as the central perceiving body of Jesus’s experience of healing in the form of his scars. Through Thomas’s critical statement, the imagery of Jesus’s risen body becomes increasingly comprehensible as the text prepares this once-wounded body to be witnessed as a recuperated body in the next climactic scene.

The Appearance of Jesus’s Textured Hands and Side (Jn 20.26–29)

John’s third and final presentation of Jesus’s pierced body parts takes place when the resurrected Jesus reappears in the midst of the disciples and immediately makes his body accessible to Thomas. In the presence of the disciples, Jesus turns specifically to Thomas with five consecutive imperatives (Jn 20.27): (1) ‘extend your finger here’ (ϕέρε τὸν δάκτυλόν σου ὧδε), (2) ‘see my hands’ (ἴδε τὰς χεῖράς μου), (3) ‘extend your hand’ (ϕέρε τὴν χεῖρά σου), (4) ‘place [it] on my side’ (βάλε εἰς τὴν πλευράν μου), ²⁴ and (5) ‘do not [remain in] unbelieving but become believing’ (καὶ μὴ γίνου ἄπιστος ἀλλὰ πιστός). Although it is often argued that Thomas receives no additional information compared to the disciples in the initial recognition scene (20.19–23), ²⁵ what Thomas experiences here is a witness to Jesus’s transformed wounds that the disciples did not fully comprehend in the first place. The progression to the fuller recognition of Jesus’s resurrection in the form of his scarred body can be seen from three aspects: (1) appearance, (2) multisensory perception, and (3) testimony to Jesus’s reoriented woundedness.

First, the text features the appearance of Jesus’s pierced sites in their reconfigured and verifiable forms as previously envisioned, inviting Thomas to engage them with his perceiving hands. While the self-initiated display of body parts portrays Jesus as the ‘unseen listener’ of Thomas’s statement in verse 25 (Lindars 1986: 614), the invitation for Thomas to extend his finger ὧδε also suggests that it is a specifically referenced location and would be indeterminate without the context. In this case, ὧδε refers directly to the precise nailed sites that Thomas envisioned. Thus, Jesus is not merely presenting his pierced body parts as in his first appearance to the disciples but is deliberately referencing the specific skin texture that Thomas seeks to verify. The gaze and the invitation to touch is directed to the textured sites, ὧδε. Jesus’s wounds are now presentable and available in the form of his scarred body parts. The disrupted skin is depicted as visible and touchable by Thomas’s perceiving hands, while the lance wound is now closed and impenetrable, allowing the possibility for Thomas’s hand to rest on the scarred surface. ²⁶

Second, the exhibition of Jesus’s body parts also meets the specific multisensual requirements for Thomas to see, touch, and experience. ²⁷ Although the text remains ambiguous as to whether Thomas did in fact probe the body parts, it is far more significant that Jesus’s body parts qualify to be visible and touchable as envisioned rather than whether the text fully satisfies Thomas’s desires. Through this, the emphatic imagery constructed through Thomas’s previous statement is now being displayed as Jesus’s scarred body and made present in close proximity. In this vein, the text does not only present a visible resurrection body as in the first appearance to the disciples but specifically a scarred body that is made readily available for visual and tactile engagement by other perceiving bodies, including Thomas and the other disciples.

Third, if Jesus’s scarred body is now disclosed to be tangibly accessible to its witnesses, it is important to note that the scars are not merely identity tokens that prove Jesus to be the same crucified master, but they also elicit a unique testimony of Jesus’s crucifixion that awaits recognition and acknowledgment. The scarred body incorporates and conveys a story of Jesus’s crucifixion and its aftermath that an unmarked body does not. Specifically, the display of scars is itself a testimony that encapsulates the convoluted experience of both wounding and healing. The scars offer themselves as carnal traces to disclose Jesus’s wounded past, while at the same time carrying forward the past experience of violence and pain into the present in their reoriented forms. On one level, the recognisable scar functions similarly to Odysseus’s scar as it conveys and exposes Jesus’s ‘wounded existence’, marking the vulnerability of Jesus’s body and the violence that was once inflicted onto him during the crucifixion. What is more, it is no longer the soldiers who mark Jesus’s body (19.23, 34), as the supposedly wounded sites are now ‘inscribed’ over by scars to signify a healing process. Whilst the Johannine text does not specify whether the healing of wounds took place as the Father’s work or as Jesus’s own, ²⁸ the scars posit an act of divine healing that is engraved onto the skin surface of Jesus’s resurrected body as permanent body marks, to be recognised and witnessed. In this way, when compared to the earlier display of ‘hands and side’ (Lk. 20.20) or the Lukan ‘hands and feet’ (Lk. 24.39), the presentation of Jesus’s scarred body communicates a distinctive testimony as it bears witness to the haunting past of the crucifixion, which is not obliterated or forgotten but is now carried forward to be represented as visible and tangible scars that signify divine healing.

And here, Thomas, as the central perceiving body, is placed in this scene alongside the disciples to witness the testimony as Jesus’s scars are made accessible for scrutiny and verification. The resurrected Jesus, bearing the scars of his crucifixion, is revealed to Thomas, leading him to the expression of faith ‘my Lord and my God’ (20.28). Thomas’s utterance not only marks the thematic role of Jesus’s divinity but simultaneously constructs and acknowledges the perceived reality of Jesus’s resurrection in his scarred form within the Johannine story-world.

Conclusion: ‘Working Through’ the Wounded Past

Throughout our discussion, we have seen how John mediates and ascribes meaning to Jesus’s body as a canvas upon which Jesus’s crucifixion wounds undergo a ‘narrative journey’ and re-emerge as visible and perceptible scars. This presentation of the Johannine Jesus does not necessarily bring the readers back to the historical body of Jesus per se, but it does attempt to convey its peculiar version of what the crucified body of the resurrected Jesus looks like. ²⁹ John demonstrates that, ultimately, it is not the tortures nor the crucifixion that inscribe Jesus’s body but the scars that signify divine healing. Here, the re-emergence of Jesus’s scarred body does not only weave together the narrative as the story unfolds, but the text also reflects a retroactive reassessment of Jesus’s suffering just as it recasts the suffering past forward as scars. This is, I suggest, a narrative ‘working through’ that is attempting to address the wounded past of Jesus.

Just as Kearney (2016: 82–84) suggests, narrative ‘working through’ is a cathartic process that requires the acknowledgment of past sufferings while carrying them forward by translating them into recognisable and disclosable forms in a story. The narrative that leads up to Jesus’s scarred body becomes a cathartic ‘working through’ to the extent that the scars are the visible tokens that reflect the acknowledgment of the trauma of the cross while offering the renewed lens to review the woundedness of the past. Borrowing from Aristotle’s terms, the cathartic ‘purgation of pity and fear’ (Poet. 6.1149b) of the shame and death of the cross takes place as the scars recall the haunting story of the crucifixion, yet this past is now represented in a meaningful way where wounds have become scars. The text’s presentation of the scars reflects the contemplation of the wounded past, a ‘working through’ backward as the scars become the carnal trace to the past. Concurrently, the scars also reflect the attempt to carry the past suffering forward, a ‘working through’ forward as John narrates the becoming of the tangible scarred body. It is through this cathartic and bidirectional process of ‘working through’ that John’s gospel invites a renewed way to perceive and commemorate the wounded past as it brings to surface a reoriented reality through the scars. Put otherwise, the scars give the wounded past of Jesus a different future, a future that is not marked by the torturers nor their inflicted wounds but by the scars of divine healing that prevail over pain and suffering.

Overall, the becoming of Jesus’s scarred body can be seen as a process of narrative ‘working through’ to address the suffering and pain of Jesus’s crucifixion. For John, Jesus is identified as the once-wounded and hereafter scarred Christ whom Thomas confesses to as ‘my Lord and my God’ (20.28). The scarred body brings visibility to the reality of Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection, a reality that never obliterates the violence of the cross but also never ceases to put forward the attempt to bring closure to the wounded past. This is also the reality that John constructs and endows for Thomas, the disciples, and the implied readers to witness.