The KJV has Jesus telling Mary “Touch me not.” The Greek points to “stop holding on to me,” most modern Bibles now say so, and Joseph Smith’s Bible revision said “Hold me not” in 1832.
We all know the phrase “touch me not.” It’s one of the most famous lines in the Easter story. Mary Magdalene finds the risen Lord in the garden, and the King James Version has Him tell her not to touch Him.
Here’s the problem. Eight days later the same Jesus tells Thomas to put his hand into His side. Matthew says the women “held him by the feet.” Luke has Him say “handle me, and see.” If “touch me not” is what Jesus meant, the Gospels can’t agree on whether you’re allowed to touch the risen Christ. But if the English word is the problem, the tension disappears, and one of the clearest fixes was written down by Joseph Smith in 1832.
The verse everyone knows
Mary has been weeping at the tomb, sure someone took the body. She mistakes Jesus for the gardener until He says her name:
Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master.
John 20:16 (KJV)
Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.
John 20:17 (KJV)
Picture it. The person she watched die is standing in front of her, alive. She doesn’t politely shake His hand. She grabs Him and doesn’t want to let go. That’s what the Greek is describing, and “touch me not” misses it.
What the Greek actually says
The Greek phrase is mē mou haptou (μή μου ἅπτου). The verb is haptomai (Strong’s 680). Strong’s defines it as “properly, to attach oneself to, i.e. to touch,” and Thayer’s lexicon gives the core sense of the middle voice as “to fasten oneself to, adhere to, cling to” (Strong’s and Thayer’s, Bible Hub). It’s the word Paul uses in “It is good for a man not to touch a woman” (1 Corinthians 7:1). It means more than a fingertip.
Then there’s the grammar. Haptou is a present middle imperative (Bible Hub lexicon). With mē, a present imperative usually forbids something already going on or keeps it from continuing. So the natural reading is “stop holding on to me” or “don’t keep clinging to me,” not “don’t lay a finger on me.”
This isn’t a Latter-day Saint invention. Here’s the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, a 19th-century commentary series, on this verse (Bible Hub commentaries):
The translation ‘touch Me not’ is inadequate and gives a false impression. The verb (haptesthai) does not mean to ‘touch’ and ‘handle’ with a view to seeing whether His body was real; this Christ not only allowed but enjoined (John 20:27; Luke 24:39; comp. 1 John 1:1): rather it means to ‘hold on to’ and ‘cling to.’ Moreover it is the present (not aorist) imperative; and the full meaning will therefore be, ‘Do not continue holding Me,’ or simply, hold Me not.
Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, on John 20:17
Notice the last three words: “hold Me not.” Marvin Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament says the verb “implies here, not a mere momentary touch, but a clinging to,” and Ellicott’s commentary reads the prohibition as “Do not continue clinging to Me” (both at Bible Hub).
In fairness, scholars don’t all land in the same place. Thayer himself explained this verse as “Do not handle me to see whether I am still clothed with a body” (Thayer’s, Bible Hub), and the NET Bible keeps “Do not touch me” (parallel translations). Even so, most major modern translations went with “hold” or “cling.” That’s the meaning the grammar supports and the one that fits the rest of the chapter.
The problem “touch” creates
If Jesus meant “don’t touch me,” you run into trouble with the rest of the New Testament. In Matthew’s account of that same morning, the women who came to the tomb take hold of Him, and He doesn’t object:
And as they went to tell his disciples, behold, Jesus met them, saying, All hail. And they came and held him by the feet, and worshipped him.
Matthew 28:9 (KJV)
That evening He tells the disciples to handle Him:
Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.
Luke 24:39 (KJV)
And eight days later, still before His ascension, He invites Thomas to do much more than touch:
Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.
John 20:27 (KJV)
John himself later wrote of the Word of life that “our hands have handled” (1 John 1:1). So touching the risen Christ was never the issue. Holding on was. Mary had already lost Him once. Jesus wasn’t pushing her away. He was telling her to let go because she had a job to do: “go to my brethren.” She became the first witness sent to tell the disciples He was risen (verse 18).
“Touch me not” makes the Bible look like it contradicts itself. “Hold me not” makes it read the way it should. That matters for anyone who claims the English Bible is flawless, which is why apparent contradictions like this are worth studying honestly (Apparent Biblical Contradictions).
Every English Bible before 1830 said “touch”
I checked the major English Bibles printed before 1830 (textusreceptusbibles.com). Every one of them says “touch”:
- Wycliffe (c. 1382–1395, from the Latin Vulgate’s noli me tangere): “Nyle thou touche me”
- Tyndale (1526): “touche me not”
- Coverdale (1535): “Touche me not”
- Great Bible (1539): “touche me not”
- Geneva (1560): “Touch me not”
- Bishops’ Bible (1568): “Touche me not”
- King James Version (1611): “Touch me not”
Lesser-known 18th-century versions do the same: Daniel Mace’s New Testament (1729) and Thomas Haweis’s (1795) both say “touch me not,” and the Catholic Douay-Rheims (Challoner revision) says “Do not touch me” (Bible Hub parallel). Even after 1830 the big revisions held on to the old wording. The Revised Version (1881) and the American Standard Version (1901) still say “Touch me not.”
Now look at what’s on the shelf today:
Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”
John 20:17 (NIV)
Jesus said to her, “Do not hold me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brethren and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”
John 20:17 (RSV)
The ESV and NKJV say “Do not cling to me.” The NASB says “Stop clinging to Me.” The NRSV says “Do not hold on to me” (ESV, NASB 1995, NKJV and NRSV). The move from “touch” to “hold” has become the mainstream reading.
What Joseph Smith wrote in 1832
Joseph Smith revised the New Testament in 1831 and 1832, with scribes including Sidney Rigdon. They reached John 5 on February 16, 1832, the day of the vision now in D&C 76, and finished the New Testament by late July 1832 (LeFevre, BYU Religious Studies Center; Joseph Smith Papers, New Testament Revision 2). At John 20:17 he changed one word. The Latter-day Saint edition of the KJV prints it in the footnote:
JST John 20:17 … Hold me not …
John 20:17, footnote a (KJV)
The Ensign prints the JST verse as “Jesus saith unto her, Hold me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father” (April 2014). The Church’s own New Testament study helps put it this way: “Other Bible translations, including the Joseph Smith Translation, state that Jesus told Mary not to hold Him. A more literal translation of the Greek would be, ‘Stop holding on to me’” (Scripture Helps: John 20–21).
One honest detail. After John 5, Joseph’s manuscript mostly records his changes as short notes, and the note here is just the word “hold.” The 1867 RLDS Inspired Version printed it as “Hold; touch me not,” and the 1944 edition as “Hold me not,” as Robert J. Matthews showed in BYU Studies. Either way, Joseph put “hold” into John 20:17. He did it in 1832, with no formal training in Greek and while every English Bible around him said “touch.”
I also want to be fair about one more thing. Joseph wasn’t the first person to wonder about this verse. Bible commentators had puzzled over it for centuries. In the 1740s the Baptist scholar John Gill suggested Mary had thrown herself at Jesus’ feet and was about to embrace them. But commentators write in the margins. Of every English Bible I checked, Joseph’s revision is the first to put “hold” in the verse itself. Weymouth’s “Do not cling to me” came in the early 1900s. The RSV’s “Do not hold me” came in the mid-1900s, more than a century after Joseph.
Joseph taught that “many plain and precious things” were taken from the Bible (1 Nephi 13:28), and the Bible Dictionary says the JST “to some extent assists in restoring” them (Bible Dictionary: Joseph Smith Translation). Not every JST change claims to restore a lost line. Some, like this one, just make the meaning plain. But I find it VERY interesting that Joseph, with no Greek training, revising the Bible by revelation, landed where Greek scholars and modern translators later landed. For more on the JST, see The Joseph Smith Translation.
If Joseph “changed the Bible,” so did the ESV
Critics love to say Joseph Smith “changed the Bible.” Fine. Then explain the ESV, the NASB, the NIV, the NKJV, and the NRSV. They all made the same change at John 20:17. They changed “touch” to “hold” or “cling” because they were trying to get closer to what the Greek says. When Joseph did it, it’s tampering. When a Protestant committee does it a century later, it’s scholarship. That’s the double standard.
The hidden assumption behind it is that one English translation, usually the KJV, is the untouchable word of God. But nobody has the original manuscript of John. We have copies of copies, and translators still disagree over a two-word phrase. Latter-day Saints have said this from the start:
We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God.
Articles of Faith 1:8
John 20:17 shows why “as far as it is translated correctly” matters. If the most famous English Bible ever printed can miss the sense of a well-known Easter verse, then insisting it can never be improved is a belief about the Bible, not something the Bible teaches. For the bigger picture, see “As Far As It Is Translated Correctly”: What the Bible’s Own Manuscripts Say, Psalm 145 and the Missing Verse: No Translation Is Flawless, and Is the Bible Infallible?
Don’t miss the rest of the verse
People argue over the first three words and skip the last sentence. The risen Jesus says: “I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.”
That’s the resurrected Son of God, with a body of “flesh and bones” (Luke 24:39), telling Mary He’s going to His Father. He calls that Father “my God” and says He is also her Father. That isn’t one being talking to himself. It’s a Son going to His Father, and the same Father is ours. Jesus also said “my Father is greater than I” (John 14:28). Read it plainly and you get the Godhead the Restoration teaches: three distinct beings, one in purpose, with a Father who is literally our Father. More: The Trinity or a Literal Father and Son: Which Does the Bible Teach?, God Has a Body: The Verses vs. John 4:24, and The Godhead, Not the Classical Trinity and An Embodied God at Galatians18.
The bottom line
“Touch me not” is a weak English rendering of mē mou haptou. The verb means to take hold of or cling to, and the present imperative points to “stop holding on.” That reading fits Matthew 28:9, Luke 24:39, and John 20:27. The KJV wording makes those verses look like they clash.
Every major English Bible before 1830 said “touch.” Joseph Smith’s 1832 revision said “hold.” Most major translations now say “hold” or “cling.” That doesn’t prove everything Joseph said, and I won’t claim more than the evidence shows. But a prophet who said the Bible needed correcting made a correction that later scholarship backs up. Critics can call that a coincidence. Then they need to explain why the ESV made the same change.
I first posted this on X in March 2025:
Let's talk about the English translations of the Bible verse John 20:17.
— Travi𝕏 (@tkddroid) March 13, 2025
We all know the phrase, “touch me not.” It is a well known verse.
“Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father;… pic.twitter.com/VTMIur5A8f
Key takeaways
- The Greek mē mou haptou uses haptomai, “to fasten oneself to, adhere to, cling to” (Thayer), in the present imperative. The natural sense is “stop holding on to me.”
- Touching the risen Christ was never forbidden. The women held His feet (Matt. 28:9), He said “handle me” (Luke 24:39), and Thomas was invited to touch His wounds (John 20:27).
- Every major English Bible before 1830 that we checked, from Wycliffe to the KJV, says “touch.” The RV (1881) and ASV (1901) still did.
- Joseph Smith’s 1832 revision put “Hold me not” in the verse. Most major modern Bibles (NIV, ESV, NASB, NKJV, NRSV, RSV) now say “hold” or “cling.”
- If Joseph “changed the Bible” here, so did the translators critics read today. That’s why we accept the Bible “as far as it is translated correctly.”
- The same verse shows a risen Son going to “my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.”
Follow @TraviXai on X for daily answers to critics, and dig deeper into any topic at galatians18.app.
Sources
- Scripture quotations: King James Version, Book of Mormon, and Pearl of Great Price, churchofjesuschrist.org: Matthew 28:9; Luke 24:39; John 14:28; 20:16–17 (with footnote 17a, “JST John 20:17 … Hold me not …”), 20:27; 1 Corinthians 7:1; 1 John 1:1; 1 Nephi 13:28; Articles of Faith 1:8.
- Strong’s Greek 680 (haptomai) with Thayer’s Greek Lexicon, biblehub.com/greek/680.htm; parsing of haptou (present middle imperative), Bible Hub John 20:17 lexicon.
- Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, Vincent’s Word Studies, Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers, and John Gill’s Exposition on John 20:17, biblehub.com/commentaries/john/20-17.htm.
- Pre-1830 English Bibles (Wycliffe, Tyndale 1526, Coverdale 1535, Great Bible 1539, Geneva 1560, Bishops’ 1568, KJV 1611), John 20, textusreceptusbibles.com.
- Mace (1729), Haweis (1795), Douay-Rheims, RV (1881), ASV (1901), Weymouth, NKJV, NRSV, and NET renderings, biblehub.com/john/20-17.htm.
- NIV, RSV, ESV, and NASB 1995 renderings, Bible Gateway: NIV, RSV, ESV, NASB 1995.
- “New Testament Revision 2,” source note, Joseph Smith Papers; David A. LeFevre, “The Education of a Prophet: The Role of the New Translation of the Bible in the Life of Joseph Smith,” in Foundations of the Restoration (2017), BYU Religious Studies Center (February 16, 1832, at John 5).
- Robert J. Matthews, “A Study of the Text of Joseph Smith’s Inspired Version of the Bible,” BYU Studies 9, no. 1, byustudies.byu.edu.
- “The Atonement of Jesus Christ: Insights from the Joseph Smith Translation,” Ensign, April 2014, churchofjesuschrist.org; New Testament Scripture Helps, “Matthew 28; Mark 16; Luke 24; John 20–21,” churchofjesuschrist.org; Bible Dictionary, “Joseph Smith Translation,” churchofjesuschrist.org.
- Topics for further study at galatians18.app: The Joseph Smith Translation, Is the Bible Infallible?, Apparent Biblical Contradictions, The Godhead, Not the Classical Trinity, An Embodied God.
- Related on this blog: Textual Variants, Psalm 145, Trinity or Literal Father and Son, God Has a Body, Proof-Texting the Trinity, Sola Scriptura: 8 Problems.
- Featured image and in-post graphic: original graphics by thebookofmormon.ai (painterly backgrounds with no photographs or likenesses of real people).
- Scripture quotations from the Holy Bible (KJV), the Book of Mormon, and the Pearl of Great Price via churchofjesuschrist.org. Other translations quoted from Bible Gateway and Bible Hub.
Follow @TraviXai and explore more at https://galatians18.app.
