to reach out and lay hold of a person or thing: purposeful physical contact, not an accidental brush
In the Gospels this is the word for the touch that heals. A leper, a fever, blind eyes, a dead boy on his funeral bed, the hem of a cloak reached for in a crowd: again and again someone makes contact and power passes across it. The form the Greek uses marks the touch as deliberate and self-involving, the reach of a person who wants something from the contact, not an accidental bump against a stranger.
From that plain core the word stretches a long way:
- To lay hold of a woman was an old, polite way of speaking about sex, so Paul's line about a man "not touching a woman" is about sexual relations, not ordinary contact.
- To touch what is unclean is to be defiled by the contact, the language of Old Testament purity rules.
- To touch a person can even mean to get a harmful grip on them, so when John says the evil one "does not touch" the believer, he means the evil one cannot lay hold of him to do harm.
Every one of these uses was already available in ordinary Greek and in the Greek Old Testament, which used this verb to translate the Hebrew word for touching (נגע). The New Testament writers inherited the whole range rather than inventing it, and context, not the word itself, tells a reader whether a verse means a healing touch, a sexual union, a defiling contact, or a hostile grip.
Nuances
What Jesus's command to Mary Magdalene forbids, given that he invites Thomas to touch him a week later (John 20:27).
- majorityA command to stop an embrace already underway: Mary is holding on and must let go so that Jesus can ascend to the Father.; Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John XIII-XXI (Anchor Bible, 1970); D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John (Pillar, 1991)
- minorityA signal that the risen Jesus is entering a new mode of presence mediated by the Spirit, in which the old physical intimacy is no longer the point.; C. K. Barrett, The Gospel According to St John, 2nd ed. (SPCK, 1978); Andrew T. Lincoln, The Gospel According to Saint John (Black's, 2005)
- minorityAn echo of the verb's classical sexual overtone, read as a hint at Jesus's celibacy; a largely reception-critical minority reading.; Anne Aalbers, 'A Fresh Reading of John 20:17,' Bible and Critical Theory 17.2 (2021)
Whether "it is good for a man not to touch a woman" is Paul's own view or a Corinthian slogan he cites in order to qualify.
- majorityA slogan from the Corinthians' own letter, which Paul quotes and then balances in the verses that follow, matching his cite-then-answer pattern elsewhere in the letter.; Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, rev. ed. (NICNT, 2014); Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (NIGTC, 2000)
- minorityPaul's own ascetic preference, stated as an ideal and then immediately softened by pastoral concession.; John Chrysostom, Homilies on 1 Corinthians; Hans Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians (Hermeneia, 1975)