From Wounds to Scars

The Embodiment of a Forwarded Past through the Body Marks of Jesus in John 20

Bibliographic Data

ID21446954
AuthorsEdward Wong (0000-0003-1436-9581, University of Edinburgh, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume46
Issue2
Pages193-215
Publication date2023-12-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal for the Study of the New Testament (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0142-064X • E-ISSN: 1745-5294
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0142064x231208763
OpenAlexW4388224619
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited24

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

Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Gospel · Literature · Meaning (existential) · Narrative · New Testament · Scars · Biblical Studies and Interpretation · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · Interdisciplinary Studies: Technology, Society, and Humanities · Medicine · Philosophy

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