1. Introduction
At the Holy Thursday Mass in 2016, Pope Francis washed the feet of eleven Muslim asylum seekers in a refugee camp and a woman from the refugee organisation. His gesture of foot washing is clearly recognisable as a ‘quotation’ and variation of Jesus’ gesture in John 13.1–20. The gesture impacts upon material realities: the bodies of the refugees continue and actualise the bodies of Jesus’ disciples. Their bodies become different in the moment the gesture is performed. Hence, the gesture materialises an invisible reality and, at the same time, creates a new reality that slightly modifies Jesus’ gesture. The Pope’s gesture provoked discussions about inclusion, interreligious dialogue and gender roles. It also shows that gestures are significant because they create new material realities.
In her dissertation, Sophie Schweiger, a German studies scholar, argues that gestures are significant in the analysis of texts because they show that ‘bodies develop their own plots and these plots are significant’.Footnote 1 According to Schweiger, ‘observing a body in actu and in exchange with its immediate environment means observing an act of production and, simultaneously, an act of becoming’.Footnote 2 She does not regard bodily acts as expressions of feelings or meanings but rather underlines their ability to create their own materiality.Footnote 3
In her lecture, ‘When Gesture Becomes Event’, Judith Butler develops a theory of gesture that compares bodily acts to performative speech acts, proposing that not only speech acts, such as ‘I hereby sentence you to two years of prison,’ but also bodily acts create material realities. As ‘citational acts’,Footnote 4 gestures can be repeated in new contexts and take on new meaning, as shown by Pope Francis’ act in the refugee camp. Words but also bodily acts can be quoted. Butler, however, emphasises the importance of continuity between spoken language and bodily acts, and their possible transfer to new contexts, as well as the role of interruption as a significant aspect of bodily acts. She defines gesture as a ‘truncated form of action’Footnote 5 characterised by interruption. Butler explains this by referring to a scene in a play by Bertolt Brecht, which is discussed by Walter Benjamin in his text on gesture, ‘What is Epic Theatre?’: A mother is about to throw a bronze bust at her daughter when a stranger enters.Footnote 6 The interruption holds the gesture as if in a still image and prevents it from becoming a completed action. The interruption exposes a scene of domestic violence and brings it to a halt. The spectator, who already imagines that the bust flies towards the daughter’s head and hurts her, is surprised by the interruption. The expected course of action is not continued. As I see it, the mother, the daughter and the stranger who interrupts the scene form a performative unit because the interruption is now part of the mother’s bodily act. The shared activity in the same bodily act serves to blur the boundaries between the characters involved.
The significance of gestures, as underlined by Schweiger and Butler, is also reflected in the vast research literature on this subject. The publication of gesture research in nearly every area of the humanities, including classics,Footnote 7 anthropology,Footnote 8 linguistics,Footnote 9 art history,Footnote 10 theatre studies,Footnote 11 and political science,Footnote 12 has rightly been described as the ‘coming of age of […] gesture studies’.Footnote 13 This development, however, has not until now been applied in the field of New Testament studies,Footnote 14 although there is a marked increase in publications on the significance of bodies and their material realities for the interpretation of New Testament texts.Footnote 15
In this article, I examine this research gap by analysing a New Testament passage where a gesture is present, although not explicitly mentioned. In John 20.11–18, Mary Magdalene encounters Jesus after his death in the famous Noli me tangere scene. At first, she takes him to be a gardener, but when he calls her by name, she expresses her recognition of him by naming him ‘Rabbuni’. Jesus reacts with the words μή μου ἅπτου (20.17b), which can be translated as ‘do not touch me’.Footnote 16 There is evidently a textual gap between the spoken words ‘Rabbuni’ and μή μου ἅπτου because Mary’s utterance alone does not fully explain Jesus’ reaction. The reader has to relate both utterances to each other by constructing a bodily interaction between Jesus and Mary.Footnote 17
In her book Dialogue and Drama, Jo-Ann Brant argues, notably in the chapter ‘Speech as Gesture’, that the textual gap in John 20.17 is an example of deictic language, that is, ‘an action encoded in […] speech’.Footnote 18 Deictic language offers a way to bypass stage directions by integrating them into dialogues. Brant applies this concept to John 20.17 and explains why a gestural action is in the text, although it is not mentioned.Footnote 19 Mary’s gesture in John 20.16–17 is part of a textual gap, while Jesus’ deictic words clearly imply some kind of bodily action. It, therefore, comes as no surprise that the textual gap has been filled by readers, interpreters and artists in various ways. In most cases, they imagine either a proskynesis or an embrace. My aim is to demonstrate that the ways in which the unmentioned gesture is constructed produce different kinds of bodies. It will be argued that a focus on gesture can counter a long tradition that understands Jesus’ utterance as the repudiation of Mary’s touchFootnote 20 and the whole Gospel of John as a spiritual sublimation of the physical.Footnote 21 Bodily interaction deconstructs the opposition between the earthbound, sensual, bodily, female disciple, who desires to touch, and the heavenly, spiritual, speaking, male teacher, who averts the touch. It will be shown that Mary’s gesture and Jesus’ interruption form a performative unit, rather than representing an instance of two characters in opposition to each other. The focus on gesture entails two central questions: Does μή μου ἅπτου imply that Mary touches or tries to touch Jesus, and what is the posture that shapes the inter-action between Mary and Jesus? After a brief introduction on the possible implications of μή μου ἅπτου, two larger sections of the article will be dedicated to the postures of proskynesis and embrace, juxtaposing exegetical findings and aspects of cultural history with later artistic representations of this textual gap. Touch, proskynesis and embrace function as gestures in line with Sophie Schweiger’s definition of gestures as ‘postures and movements of the body or its parts’.Footnote 22 In keeping with this definition, posture is used as a sub-category of gesture.
2. Previous Research on μή μου ἅπτου and the Artistic Representation of Touch
Previous research on John 20.16–17 primarily addresses the question of how to translate μή μου ἅπτου, for different translations imply different assessments of Mary’s and Jesus’ characters.
The scene is variously evaluated, depending on whether Mary tries (or succeeds) to touch Jesus or seeks to cling to him. This aspect is especially important for feminist research on the passage, because, if Jesus rejects Mary’s touch in general, it contrasts with his invitation to the male Thomas to touch him (John 20.27). However, if it refers only to a certain kind of touch (‘clinging to’), ‘[…] the stark contrast between this scene and the following encounter with Thomas is reduced’.Footnote 23 The translation ‘do not cling to me’ is based on the durative aspect of the negated present imperative and the interruption of an action already begun.Footnote 24 A more general rejection of Mary’s touch would raise the question whether the reason for the rejection is based on whether Mary is impure or misunderstands the situ-ation.Footnote 25 If the touch is rejected because Mary tries to hold onto Jesus, the focus lies on Jesus and his transitional state.Footnote 26 Reimund Bieringer offers a third way of translating μή μου ἅπτου. Based on an analysis of a comparable semantic inventory in the Septuagint, he translates ἅπτομαι as ‘to draw near’, ‘to reach,’Footnote 27 in the sense of ‘approaching someone to be close to that person and possibly to go with someone to stay in that person’s presence’.Footnote 28 This translation does not imply that Mary touches Jesus, and simultaneously emphasises the durative aspect of the present imperative. It is not her touch that is rejected per se, but her attempt to remain in Jesus’ presence. These different proposed translations show that the question of touch in John 20.17 is not easily resolved, but the characters are certainly evaluated differently if Jesus rejects Mary’s touch because it is her touch or the wrong kind of touch or because he does not want to be or cannot be touched at all.
The ambiguity of μή μου ἅπτου is also reflected in artistic interpretations of this Johannine scene. No other phrase uttered by Jesus has so often been the subject of a pictorial motif as Noli me tangere.Footnote 29 Many artists depict the textual gap of touch as a blank space: in Giotto’s representation of the scene in the Capella Scrovegni (1306),Footnote 30 the stretched-out hand can imply rejection, the attempt to touch or even a blessing.Footnote 31 Fra Angelico’s fresco (1442)Footnote 32 depicts a tension in the middle of the constellation between the hands of Jesus and Mary.Footnote 33 In Titian’s painting (1514),Footnote 34 moreover, the spectator cannot say for sure whether Mary touches Jesus’ garment or fails to touch it.Footnote 35 Lucas van Leyden’s Christ Appearing to Mary Magdalene (1519)Footnote 36 is a typically Catholic representation of the Noli me tangere, because it depicts Jesus touching Mary’s forehead in a gesture of blessingFootnote 37 and thus alludes to the reliquary of Mary’s forehead in medieval France.Footnote 38 Jacopo da Pontormo (1531)Footnote 39 depicts Jesus touching Mary’s breast, which offers ‘tactile proof’Footnote 40 of the resurrection.Footnote 41 It alludes to the ritual of anointing the breast,Footnote 42 Mary’s change of heart or a reversal of the Incredulity of Thomas: Jesus instils belief in Mary by touching her and reminding her of the location of his wounds.Footnote 43 With regard to this iconography, Jean-Luc Nancy writes that Jesus takes over the active part in the scene: ‘Don’t touch me, for I’m touching you, and this touch is such that it holds you at a distance.’Footnote 44 Jesus gains control over the scene, because he is not exposed to Mary’s touch, although she is exposed to his reaction. The art historian Barbara Baert expresses in what ways this is problematic: ‘The iconographic history of Noli me tangere is situated within the contrapposto of feminine desire and masculine prohibition. It is precisely this contrast that forms the Pathosformel Footnote 45 of this iconography.’Footnote 46
The interpretive decision as to whether Jesus rejects Mary’s touch in general or only a specific kind of touch, whether he does not want to be touched or reverses the roles of touched and touching person, creates different kinds of bodily interactions. The opposition between Jesus and Mary is diminished when they are interpreted as a performative unit of gesture and interruption. The tension between possible touch and its interruption emphasises that both bodies are in the process of becoming: Mary’s body is about to materialise Jesus’ presence among the disciples (20.17c), and Jesus’ body is in a status of transition between death and heaven.
Just as the question of touch creates multiple interpretive possibilities, so does that of Mary’s posture, which I analyse in the following section. If the focus lies on proskynesis, an allusion is identified to the proskynesis of Mary and ‘the other Mary’ who grasps the feet of the risen Jesus in Matthew 28.9 (ἐκράτησαν αὐτοῦ τοὺς πόδας καὶ προσεκύνησαν αὐτῷ). If the focus, rather, lies on a standing embrace, it establishes an allusion to ancient anagnorisis scenes and their gestural inventory. Both readings of Mary’s posture, however, interact well with the translation ‘do not cling to me’, because the word κρατέω in Matthew, and the long-term reunion of formerly separated characters in recognition scenes, point to the durative aspect of the verb.
3. Proskynesis
3.1 Exegetical Considerations
Scholars who assume that the textual gap in John 20.16–17 is a reference to the proskynesis of the women in Matthew 28.9 sometimes do not elaborate on this decision. In his commentary on the Gospel of John, Jean Zumstein suggests, without further explanation, that Mary throws herself to the ground and grasps Jesus’ feet.Footnote 47 Felix Porsch similarly states that Mary mistakenly wants to worship Jesus as an eschatological figure.Footnote 48 Thomas Söding explicitly mentions Matthew 28.9 as a reference point for the rendering ‘do not cling to me’.Footnote 49 This filling in of the gestural gap, however, creates a tension with Matthean Christology. Proskynesis as a bodily gesture attesting Jesus’ divine status (cf. Arrian, Anab. 4.11; Xen. An. 3.2.13)Footnote 50 is one of Matthew’s ‘key christological terms’.Footnote 51 Several persons fall to the ground in their encounter with Jesus, including the wise men, a leper, the disciples, the Canaanite woman and a slave.Footnote 52 In John, nevertheless, προσκυνέω means ‘to worship’ in a spiritual sense (cf. John 4.21–4; 12.20), and only once (9.38) is Jesus the object of proskynesis as a bodily gesture.Footnote 53 In 9.38, the healed blind man expresses his recognition of Jesus and his divine status in a scene of conflict with the Pharisees. The different context and the changed mode of Jesus’ presence could be the reasons for the rejection of reverence in John 20.17.Footnote 54 Mary attests to her recognition of Jesus’ divine status, but her reverence is redirected from this soon-absent body towards the Father. Bieringer further elaborates on this argument with a methodological recourse to redaction criticism. If the Matthean version forms the backdrop of Jesus’ rejection of a proskynesis in John, and Jesus, thus, repudiates a proskynesis, it can be understood as the redirection of such a gesture away from Jesus toward God.Footnote 55 This explains the connection to verse 17c. That is, the translation of μή μου ἅπτου as ‘do not approach me’ (like a sacred object),Footnote 56 and the theological consequence that Mary’s desire to be close to Jesus is redirected to the Father and to the brothers and sisters in faithFootnote 57 align well with each other (cf. also John 14.2–3). The negative imperative signals that Mary must first seek Jesus’ presence in the community of believers. Bieringer thus interprets the gestural gap in the text with something that is not in the text, that is, Matthew’s version of the scene. According to Bieringer’s interpretation, the performative unit of proskynesis-and-interruption enacts the risen Christ’s redirection of worship to God and is thus part of John’s distinct Christology. If readers decide to fill in the textual gap with a proskynesis in the Matthean sense, they emphasise that the gesture is a ‘citational act’. They transfer it to a new context where it takes on new meaning, because it turns into a gesture that is redirected towards the Father. The performative unit of a bodily act and its interruption brings to halt a gesture of worship in response to the divine presence in Jesus’ body. It thereby produces a body in the process of becoming, because its identity is negotiated in the encounter between Jesus and Mary.
The next sub-section will examine cultural-historical aspects of proskynesis to describe the bodily relation created in the encounter between Mary and Jesus.
3.2 Cultural-Historical Aspects of Proskynesis
It is evident that a proskynesis does not suggest a meeting between equals but emphasises a difference in their status. This can be substantiated with reference to ancient texts. Herodotus understands proskynesis among the Persians as follows: ‘When one man meets another in the way, it is easy to see if the two are equals; for then without speaking they kiss each other on the lips; if the difference in rank be but little, it is the cheek that is kissed; if it be great, the humbler bows down and does obeisance (προσπίπτων προσκυνέει) to the other’ (Herod., Hist. 1.134 LCL 117.175). Plutarch, moreover, describes how two barbarians bend down before Octavius (Plut., Crass. 31.1), which accentuates their subordination,Footnote 58 while Xenophon narrates how Cyrus’ awe-inspiring appearance provokes others to prostrate before him (Xen., Cyrop. 8.3.14). Proskynesis indicates a hierarchy, which can be accompanied by binary oppositions like male/female, heaven/earth and spirit/flesh. Mary’s posture contrasts her with Jesus, who is standing (John 20.14)Footnote 59 and on his way to his Father (20.17) instead of lying on the ground as if dead (20.13, 15). Jesus is directed towards heaven; Mary is bound to earth. Lisa Rafanelli states that in ‘most Western philosophical systems, erect posture is associated with moral character and intellectual elevation (and therefore, by extension, masculinity)’.Footnote 60 The argument that the gesture of proskynesis enforces a dichotomy can be substantiated by a side-glance at ancient texts about gesture and posture.
In Legum Allegoriae, Philo interprets Genesis 2.24 as indicating that the female part holds back the male part and binds him to the level of the senses, whereas – potentially – the woman could also cleave to the man and become spirit:
Observe that it is not the woman that cleaves to the man, but conversely the man to the woman, Mind to Sense-perception. For when that which is superior, namely Mind, becomes one with that which is inferior, namely Sense-perception, it resolves itself into the order of flesh which is inferior, into sense-perception, the moving cause of the passions. But if Sense the inferior follow Mind the superior, there will be flesh no more, but both of them will be Mind (Philo, Alleg. 2.50 LCL 226.255–7).Footnote 61
In Philo’s De gigantibus, the dichotomy of spirit/man and senses/woman is also applied to gesture. Persons who mostly adhere to the fleshly sphere are said to crawl on the ground like animals, because they are rooted in the earth: ‘But those which bear the burden of the flesh, oppressed by the grievous load, cannot look up to the heavens as they revolve, but with necks bowed downwards are constrained to stand rooted to the ground like four-footed beasts’ (Gig. 31 LCL 227.461). Here Philo’s thinking is shaped by the philosophy of Plato, who writes:
God has given to each of us, as his daemon, that kind of soul which is housed in the top of our body and which raises us – seeing that we are not an earthly but a heavenly plant – up from earth towards our kindred in the heaven. And herein we speak most truly; for it is by suspending our head and root from that region whence the substance of our soul first came that the Divine Power keeps upright our whole body (Plato, Tim. 90 a–b LCL 234.245–7).
Thus, Mary’s crawling posture, which the proskynesis becomes when she starts to move towards him but does not approach Jesus on equal footing, can be regarded as part of a long tradition of a dichotomy between heaven/spirit/man and earth/flesh/woman. This tradition is even reinforced in Hippolytus’ commentary on the Song of Songs, which also fills the textual gap in John 20.17 with a Matthean proskynesis. Martha and Mary take over the role of Mary Magdalene and meet Jesus at the tomb. They try to delay his ascension by clinging to his feet, which is then explained as follows: ‘O blessed woman, who held on to his feet, that she might be able to fly up in the air!’ (Hippol., Cant. 25.2).Footnote 62 Hippolytus places a plea into their mouth: ‘Christ, do not abandon me on earth! So that I may not stray, take me up to heaven!’ (Hippol., Cant. 25.3).Footnote 63 The dichotomy between heaven and earth is here connected to the dichotomy between man and woman because, in Hippolytus’ view, Martha and Mary reverse Eve’s act of leading Adam into sin by carrying the message of the resurrection to the apostles.Footnote 64
To summarise, if Mary’s ‘citational act’ quotes a subordinate posture that is then rejected by Jesus, what is foregrounded is the opposition between them. It is also an opposition that has been connected to other dichotomies, such as between man and woman, heaven and earth, spirit and flesh. A female subordinate body is contrasted with the erect body of Jesus.
3.3 Proskynesis in Artistic Interpretations
Painters were ready to fill the gestural gap in John 20.17 with a proskynesis. The paintings by Corregio (1525)Footnote 65 and TitianFootnote 66 in particular can be interpreted in the tradition of creating a dichotomy between the male divine teacher and the female earthbound disciple. In Correggio’s depiction of the scene, Jesus points to the sky, whereas Mary’s arm points to the groundFootnote 67: ‘[…] Christ’s emphatic gesture and contrapposto pose function as a rhetorical call for Mary Magdalene, firmly grounded to the earth, to forego the incertitude of the material world and embrace the divine.’Footnote 68 The dichotomy also exists in Titian’s painting, where the ground beneath Mary is dry, whereas green grass sprouts from beneath Jesus’ feet.Footnote 69 According to Titian’s interpretation, Jesus draws his garment away from the crawling Mary as if frightened by her touch. Kathryn Murphy, however, offers a way to interpret Titian’s painting that undermines this dichotomy, one which resonates with the notion of a performative unit that has been developed in this article. She points out that Jesus not only draws away his garment, but also bends his head towards Mary: Titian thus ‘softens the scene’s awkwardness by making of the two figures a dyad, a triangular compositional whole, which gathers up the internal dynamics of attention, yearning, separation, and care into a single arrangement’.Footnote 70 Here, Murphy dissolves the dichotomy between the heavenly Jesus and the earthly Mary into two characters that performatively enact the new status of JesusFootnote 71 and its ambivalent veering between absence and presence. Although the proskynesis amounts to a subordin-ate posture, Mary is not contrasted with Jesus, because they form a dyad, a unit of action that, through the interruption of Mary’s bodily action, shows that contact with Jesus is still possible after his death, but that the character of their relationship must change.
This filling in of the textual gap with a proskynesis emphasises not only the dichotomy of heaven and earth, man and woman, spirit and body but also the subordination of Mary. When she is imagined as approaching Jesus with a proskynesis, she is staged as an antipode to Jesus, that is, as a contrasting character who establishes his identity through her difference. This dichotomous setting can be deconstructed by Butler’s theory of gesture, where characters do not appear as separate entities or antipodes, but as a unit of a gesture and its interruption. In their joint participation in the same bodily act, Jesus and Mary negotiate how this relationship can continue after death.
Mary’s gesture may also be imagined as an embrace, quoting the gestural inventory of ancient recognition scenes.
4. Embrace
4.1 Exegetical Considerations
Strikingly, it is mostly those exegetes who also analyse ancient recognition scenes who clearly identify an embrace in the textual gap in John 20.16–17. Brant, for instance, states that the deictic language of μή μου ἅπτου implies an embrace,Footnote 72 but also Adeline Fehribach points out that, ‘After having called out to each other, Mary Magdalene apparently embraces Jesus (20:17).’Footnote 73 Amy Huprich reconstructs an ‘in-progress physical embrace’.Footnote 74 These scholars also emphasise the erotic connotations of the scene and the feminist potential of an egalitarian embrace. Their research further elaborates on the wider agreement among New Testament scholars that the narrative structure of recognition scenes shapes some passages of the Gospel of John.Footnote 75 In ancient drama and novels, anagnorisis scenes narrate the reunion of previously separated lovers, siblings, or parents and children. Romantic novels and their anagnorisis scenes were known widely in the first century ce, which may indicate that John’s readers could have recognised an intertextual allusion to them.Footnote 76 In his book Recognizing the Stranger, Kasper Bro Larsen describes a literary inventory of what is encountered in recognition scenes: ‘the meeting, cognitive resistance, displaying the token, the moment of recognition’ and ‘attendant reactions and physical (re-)union’.Footnote 77 All these elements are present in John 20: Jesus and Mary meet at the tomb (meeting); Mary does not recognise Jesus at first (cognitive resistance), but she recognises him when he calls her by her name (recognition token) and expresses this with her response ‘Rabbuni’ (recognition); the physical reaction is thus part of the gestural gap. The physical reunion is, however, denied or delayed if we follow Bieringer’s assessment that Jesus must first go to his Father and prepare a place for Mary and other Christ-believers.Footnote 78 Although the physical reunion is delayed,Footnote 79 the function of anagnorisis scenes to bridge the distance between two personsFootnote 80 is fulfilled. Mary can once again relate to the formerly dead Jesus. The text thus ends with the continuation of the relationship on a different level.
4.2 The Gestural Inventory of Anagnorisis Scenes
The literary inventory of anagnorisis scenes is an important tool for making comparisons to scenes in the Gospel of John. Larsen also hints at gestures that are repeated in various recognition scenes,Footnote 81 but does not further elaborate on this. In the following analysis, I propose a gestural inventory of the recognition scenes as an addition to the compositional motives that Larsen describes. It is striking that, in recognition scenes between lovers, siblings, parents and their children, the moment of ‘attendant reactions and physical (re-)union’ in most of them is accompanied or materialised by an embrace.Footnote 82
4.2.1 Recognition between Lovers
Lovers often embrace each other and fall to the ground together, as in Xenophon’s Anthia and Abrokomas 5.13.3 (καὶ περιλαβόντες ἀλλήλους εἰς γῆν κατηνέχθησαν) or Achilles Tatius’ Leukippe and Klitophon 3.17 (κατεπέσομεν). The setting of the scene by a tomb makes a comparison with John 20 even more plausible. In Heliodorus’ Theagenes and Chariklea 2.6.3, the lovers embrace and call each other by their names. They fall to the ground together (καταφέρονται) as though they were one (ὥσπερ ἡνωμένοι), and as if they were dead (καὶ μικρὸν ἔδει ἀπο θνήσκειν αὐτούς). In Chariton’s Chaireas and Callirhoe 8.1.8, the seemingly dead Callirhoe recognises Chaireas thanks to his voice. She shows her face, they call each other by their names, embrace each other, faint and then fall to the ground (ἐπεσον). In Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe 3.7, the lovers nearly fall to the ground (εἰς τὴν γῆν κατερρύησαν), but their kisses prevent them from doing so. On the level of gesture, no hierarchy is indicated between the lovers. They become one body in their embrace.
4.2.2 Recognition between Parents and Children or Siblings
In Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe, the parents recognise Daphnis through the recognition tokens they had left with him. They embrace each other, kiss each other and weep (Οὗτοι πάντες περιέβαλλον, κατεφίλουν, χαίροντες κλάοντες), and Daphnis does not want to break the embrace (ἐξελθεῖν τῶν περιβολῶν οὐκ ἤθελεν; 4.23). In Euripides’ Iphigenia in Tauris, the siblings Orestes and Iphigenia reunite, and Iphigenia utters the fear that her brother might fly out of her hands and into the air (Eur., Iph. 834–44), a fear that fits well with the translation of John 20.17b as ‘do not cling to me’. Ancient statues portray the embrace of Orestes and Iphigenia as an encounter between equals.Footnote 83 In Sophocles’ Electra, the protagonist points to the gesture accompanying the recognition by saying to her brother Orestes: ‘Do I hold you in my arms?’ Orestes answers: ‘So may you always hold me!’ (Soph., El. 1226 LCL 20.287). The physical action is hinted at with deictic language.Footnote 84 In Euripides’ Ion, Kreusa and her son Ion reunite. Ion asks Kreusa if she is trembling with the fear ‘that you have me but have me not?’ (Eur., Ion 1453 LCL 10.493), insinuating both an embrace and the ephemeral character of the moment. In Plautus’ Poenulus 5.4, the two daughters embrace their father Hanno, still disbelieving that they have reunited. In Plautus’ Menaechmi, twins recognise each other on the basis of where they were born. Embracing his brother, Sosicles says: ‘I’ve recognized the signs, I can’t refrain from embracing you’ (Plaut., Men. 5.9 LCL 61.545).
Although there are various kinds of recognition scenes, most of them share the gestural inventory of an embrace. They also express the wish for the embrace to last and the fear that the reunion is only temporal. As in Butler’s theory of gesture, interruption is essential here. By interrupting Mary’s gesture-in-progress, Jesus also disrupts the well-known inventory of recognition scenes. This reunited couple does not fall to the ground as though dead, and as if they were one. This sheds new light on the γάρ-sentence in verse 17c: having recently risen from the dead, Jesus cannot fall to the ground as if dead. Butler’s emphasis on the variation of a gesture transferred to a new context explains this difference: the quotational allusion to the gestural inventory of recognition scenes also points to its variation, because every quotation is not only the repetition of the same but also contains variation. Another variation is that, although reunited, the couple does not leave the scene together: Jesus is on his way to the Father, Mary is sent to the disciples. Against the background of recognition scenes, Mary and Jesus nonetheless perform the continuation of a relationship despite its interruption by death. Although Jesus and Mary, from now on, belong to different places and worlds, they remain connected to each other. This implies that there is no clear opposition between a misunderstanding female disciple and her male teacher who corrects her. Butler’s definition of gesture as interrupted bodily action suggests that Mary’s gesture and Jesus’ interruption form a joint bodily act that reflects the ambiguity between their present relationship and its interruption by death.
4.3 Artistic Representations of an Encounter at Eye Level
Most artistic interpretations of the Noli me tangere depict Mary positioned on the ground.Footnote 85 There are, however, some exceptions that picture a standing Magdalene. This posture is not the same as an embrace, but it allows for an encounter on eye level and thus corresponds to the reunion of two equals in anagnorisis scenes. It may originate from an interpretation of the Johannine passage against the background of the Song of Songs, which emphasises an encounter between two equals,Footnote 86 but the question of where the standing position comes from is an open question.Footnote 87 In Songs 3.1–4, the female lover is looking for her beloved one and, once she finds him, she clings to him and does not let go (ἐκράτησα αὐτὸν καὶ οὐκ ἀφήσω αὐτόν; 3.4).Footnote 88 If this forms the intertextual background of the scene in John 20.11–18, the translation ‘do not cling to me’ may be suitable, but not in the context of an encounter between a subordinate and a divine figure but rather between reunited lovers. A long-lasting standing embrace is to be imagined.
It is striking that paintings hardly ever show a standing Magdalene, although she is standing at the tomb in John 20.11 (Μαρία δὲ εἱστήκει πρὸς τῷ μνημείῳ). She stands beside the cross in John 19.25 (εἱστήκεισαν δὲ παρὰ τῷ σταυρῷ).Footnote 89 Jesus, moreover, is standing in John 20.14 when Mary turns around towards him (θεωρεῖ τὸν Ἰησοῦν ἑστῶτα). A standing Magdalene would, consequently, be on equal footing with Jesus and would fit into the gestural inventory of the scene. A standing Mary would also quote her own former posture beside the cross, creating a gestural citation that links that reunion with the resurrected one to the cross, the dead to the resurrected. Hans Holbein the Younger depicts a standing Magdalene (1526–8).Footnote 90 The motif is notably influenced by his stay in Antwerp, where he also bought the oak wood for the painting:Footnote 91
The tradition of a standing Magdalene in Noli me tangere scenes is more widely developed in the illustrated Bible tradition centred in Antwerp and Amsterdam. The Biblia Sacra project has catalogued seven discrete versions of the Noli me tangere scene in printed Bibles from the Netherlands ranging in date from 1481–1548,Footnote 92 and in all of these, the Magdalene is standing rather than kneeling. Holbein is unique in applying this compositional strategy to the painted image.Footnote 93
Radiography has shown that Holbein’s figures were different in an earlier version of his painting, in which Mary and Jesus were equal in size and gazed at one another. In a later revision, Holbein enlarged Jesus and bent Mary’s head.Footnote 94 It would be interesting to know what provoked these changes.
The depictions of a standing Magdalene by Jacopo da Pontormo (1531),Footnote 95 Bronzino (1531/2)Footnote 96 and Battista Franco (1537)Footnote 97 are related, because they are realisations of a drawing by Michelangelo.Footnote 98 Lisa Rafanelli, who has analysed the iconography of Noli me tangere in detail,Footnote 99 states that ‘[t]he Magdalene’s upright stance distinguishes this Noli me tangere from most other contemporary depictions’. The omnipresence of proskynesis in comparable paintings is represented in these realisations of Michelangelo’s drawing, because Jesus ‘appears to be looking toward the ground rather than at her face, as if expecting her to still be kneeling’.Footnote 100 Rafanelli interprets the standing position and the fact that Mary’s eyes are not downcast with Michelangelo’s female patron and viewer, the poet Vittoria Colonna, marchioness of Pescara. She was an aficionada of Mary Magdalene and was familiar with literature of the Querelle des femmes,Footnote 101 which discussed the status of women and referred to Mary Magdalene as a role model.Footnote 102 Her story is also embedded in the context of the sixteenth century, when women gained access to power at the Ottonian court. The status of women like Colonna as patrons and viewers of art in the sixteenth century can be interpreted as one of the reasons why, since then, the Noli me tangere subsequently appears regularly in autonomous works of art.Footnote 103 We may therefore conclude that the depiction of a standing Magdalene goes hand in hand with female access to power and that filling in the textual gap of gesture with a standing position reflects the self-confidence of a female patron.
Accordingly, if Mary’s unmentioned gesture is reconstructed as a standing embrace, Jesus and Mary appear as equals. The joy of a reunion between previously separated persons being foregrounded. Jesus’ interruption of Mary’s gesture emphasises that they can reconnect, although a unifying reunion, as in other anagnorisis scenes, must be delayed. Depictions of a standing Magdalene are an exception, and the posture is not chosen accidentally, but it does take the female viewer into consideration.
5. Conclusions
A gap exists in John 20.16–17 between Mary’s recognition of Jesus, when calling him ‘Rabbuni’, and Jesus’ words that refuse an implied bodily action. The reader is confronted with the gap of Mary’s implied gesture: Does she touch Jesus or try to touch him? Is her bodily posture to be imagined as an embrace, as in ancient anagnorisis scenes, or with reference to the grasping of Jesus’ feet in Matthew 28.9? I have argued that both attempts at filling the textual gap are based on solid exegetical arguments. I have also proposed that the way in which the textual gap is filled in makes a difference; in other words, the plot we create with gestures is significant. Mary and Jesus can appear as antipodes (proskynesis). Proskynesis creates a body in subjection that is often associated with a mix of dichotomous elements. Mary and Jesus can also appear as reunited equals (standing embrace). An embrace emphasises that the relationship can continue, but not in the same way as it would continue after other anagnorisis scenes. Hence, although it can be reasonably argued for both ways to fill in the textual gap, they produce different bodies.
Along with this observation, I argue that exegesis does not always imply the fixation of meaning, in our case, to answer the question of how the gap has to be filled. Sometimes, it can also present different possible meanings and show in what ways the various reconstructions of meaning entail different consequences for the evaluation of a passage. In this sense, when the reader fills in the gap, they encounter something about themselves and how they prefer to read the encounter. The exegetical responsibility, then, does not lie in the decision to opt for one way of reading, but in the question of the possible effects each reading can have. A performative reading, in line with Butler’s theory of gesture, helps to soften the dichotomy between the male teacher on his way to heaven and the female disciple seeking to approach him.
Competing Interests
The author declares none.
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