Doubting Thomas

glenn w. most

About the disciple known as Doubting Thomas, everyone knows at least this he stuck his finger into the risen Jesus' wounds. Or did he? A fresh look at the Gospel of John reveals how little we may really understand about this most perplexing of biblical figures, and how much we might learn from the strange twists and turns Thomas's story has taken over time. From the New Testament, Glenn W. Most traces Thomas's permutations through the as Gnostic saint, missionary to India, paragon of Christian orthodoxy, hero of skepticism, and negative example of doubt, blasphemy, stupidity, and violence. Rife with paradoxes and tensions, these creative transformations at the hands of storytellers, theologians, and artists tell us a great deal about the complex relations between texts and their interpretations--and about faith, love, personal identity, the body, and twins, among other matters. Doubting Thomas begins with a close reading of chapter 20 of the Gospel of John, set against the conclusions of the other Gospels, and ends with a detailed analysis of the painting of this subject by Caravaggio, setting it within the pictorial traditions of late antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. Along the way, Most considers narrative reactions to John's account by storytellers of various religious persuasions, and Christian theologians' interpretations of John 20 from the second century ad until the Counter-Reformation. His work shows how Thomas's story, in its many guises, touches upon central questions of religion, philosophy, hermeneutics, and, not least, life.

Genres theology

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1,2005

This edition

Format: 288 pages, Hardcover
Published: September 30, 2005 by Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674019140
ASIN: 0674019148
Language: English

About the author

glenn w. most

Glenn Warren Most is an American classicist and comparatist originating from the US, but also working in Germany and Italy.
Most studied classics at Harvard University from 1968 on and received a B.A. Summa Cum Laude in Classics (Latin) in 1972. He then took a Masters course at Corpus Christi College at Oxford University until 1973, when he continued at the Department of Comparative Literature of Yale University, receiving a M. Phil. in 1978. Two years later, he received a Ph.D. under Paul De Man with a thesis called "The Bait of Falsehood: Studies in the Rhetorical Strategy of Poetic Truth in the Romantic Period". Simultaneously, from 1976 to 1978, he studied classics at the Philologisches Seminar of University of Tübingen and was awarded D.Phil. under Richard Kannicht with a thesis entitled "Pindar's Truth: Unity and Occasionality in the Epinician Ode".
In 1980, Most was appointed Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor of Classics at Princeton University and remained in this position until 1985. In 1982/83, he was at the American Academy in Rome. In 1985/86, he taught at the Università degli Studi di Siena, from then until 1987 as visiting professor at the University of Michigan. In 1987, he followed a call from the Universität Innsbruck, becoming Ordentlicher Universitätsprofessor für Klassische Philologie und Altertumskunde. In 1988/89, he was a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. In 1991, Most moved to a full professorship for Ancient Greek language and literature at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, where he taught until 2001. During these years, Most also was guest professor at the University of Michigan and professor at the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. In 1994, Most was the first classicist to receive the Leibniz-Preis of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. Since 2001, he is teaching as Professor of Ancient Greek at the Scuola Normale at Pisa.
Most's work ranges from Greek to Latin authors, from literature to philosophy, and from history and methodology of classical studies to modern literary theory and reception history. In particular, he studies the relationship of the modern towards the ancient world, including New Testament topics such as the story of Doubting Thomas.