| John 20:28 | |
|---|---|
← 20:27 20:29 → | |
 Portland Stone carving showing St.Thomas kneeling to the risen Christ, byPhilip Pape in 1956. St.Thomas' Church,Skirbeck, Lincolnshire. | |
| Book | Gospel of John |
| Christian Bible part | New Testament |
John 20:28 is the twenty-eighthverse ofthe twentieth chapter of theGospel of John in theNew Testament, in which the apostleThomas declares his recognition of "My Lord and my God".
This short verse forms part of the Gospel's account ofJesus'reappearance tothe disciples, including Thomas, eight days afterhis resurrection. In theprevious verse, Jesus has invited Thomas to see and touch the wounds of his crucified body, and to believe.[1]
The originalKoine Greek, according to theTextus Receptus, reads:
The transliteration of the original Koine Greek to Latin script is:
In theKing James Version of the Bible, this verse is translated as:
The modernWorld English Bible (WEB) translates the passage as:
For a collection of other versions seeBibleHub John 20:28.
InJohn 13:13–14, Jesus used the term 'teacher' and 'lord' as synonyms, but here 'my Lord' is designated to the risen Christ, and 'my God' resumes Jesus' description in thePrologue as 'God' (John 1:1,18).[5] This is the only time in the four canonical gospels that Jesus is addressed as God.[6]
Suetonius records that the Roman emperorDomitian (AD 81–96) wished to be addressed asdominus et deus noster, "our Lord and God",[7] so the statement in this verse "may on a secondary level be designed to counter Roman emperor worship".[8]
Thedeclension of the Greek words 'Lord' (Κύριός) and 'God' (Θεός) used in this verse is in thenominative case - the one that marks thesubject of averb. Greek, like Latin, has avocative case for addressing someone directly. In the New Testament, the vocative case of the words 'Lord' (Κύριε) and 'God' (θεέ) is used 120 times and twice, respectively.[9][10] Therefore, an argument could be made on syntactical grounds that Thomas's expression was an exclamation of astonishment spoken to Jesus but actually directed to God, and that John would have had to use the vocative case instead if Thomas's words were directed to Jesus.[11] However there are many objections to this. Besides the explicit phrase “said to Him”,Murray J. Harris, for example, claims that we can find a lot of similar constructions, the closest of which is in the Psalm 34(35):23. He writes: “My suggestion regarding the genesis of Thomas's confession is this. In his attempt to depict the significance of the risen Jesus for himself personally, Thomas used a liturgical form ultimately drawn from the LXX, which later came to serve admirably as the crowning christological affirmation of the Fourth Gospel”.[12]
Augustine of Hippo observes that Thomas "saw and touched the man, and confessed the God whom he neither saw nor touched".[13]
This article incorporates text from this source, which is in thepublic domain. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in thepublic domain.| Preceded by John 20:27 | Gospel of John Chapter 20 | Succeeded by John 20:29 |