Tool Beta
Hebrew and Greek Without Learning Either
A walk through Genesis, the Psalms, and John, plus the key Hebrew and Greek words worth knowing. Each card is a place the English Bibles part company, and what in the Hebrew or Greek made them.
John 20:17
Touch me not. The Greek is stop doing what you are already doing.
John 20:17, in every translation this tool compares.
Do not shout. Stop shouting. The first is a rule for the future. The second says you are shouting right now and should quit. English uses different words. Greek uses different tenses of one verb.
Because the traditional rendering makes Jesus refuse to be touched, which contradicts the invitation to Thomas eight verses later. The contradiction is manufactured by an English tense.
Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father.
The King James reads touch me not. Modern versions read do not cling to me, do not hold on to me, or stop clinging to me. The correction is now near-universal.
ἅπτομαι haptomai · G680
Haptou is a present imperative with a negative. In Greek that construction ordinarily means stop an action in progress rather than forbid one not yet begun. Mary is already holding him. The command is to let go, not to keep away.
English negative commands have no aspect. Do not touch me is the same shape whether the touching has started or not, so a translator must add words like stop or cling to carry it.
A negated present imperative in Greek usually means stop. A negated aorist subjunctive usually means do not start. That single distinction fixes a surprising number of hard verses.
There is no real dispute left. The King James rendering reflects a grammatical understanding that has since been refined, and every modern version has moved.
- John 20:27 invites Thomas to touch, which is the internal evidence against the older rendering
- Matthew 28:9 has the women already holding his feet
- Standard grammars on the negated present imperative; see Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics
