The lack of modern punctuation in biblical texts is not ordinarily a problem, but in the case of the following verse, it creates significant ambiguity:
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).
Here are two modern translations, showing the two possible readings. The key difference is that the NLV adds that word that, while the NIV (like most other mainstream translations) has a comma and quotation marks.
Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to Me. I have not yet gone up to My Father. But go to My brothers. Tell them that I will go up to My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God!” (NLV)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.'" (NIV)
The question is how the words I, my, and your -- "deictic" words, whose meaning depends on the context of who is talking to whom -- are to be interpreted.
In the NLV reading, which uses that and does not have a comma or quotation marks, they are to be understood in the context of Jesus speaking to Mary: I and my refer to Jesus, and your (which is plural) refers to Mary and others. When Mary delivers the message, she will say something like, "Jesus is ascending to his Father and our Father, to his God and our God."
In the NIV reading, with comma and quotation marks, the deictic words are to be understood in the context of Mary delivering the message to the brethren: I and my refer to Mary, and your refers to the brethren. When Mary delivers the message, she will say something like, "I, Mary, am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God."
Although all major modern translations follow the NIV reading -- which is why I had to use a bush-league version like the NLV as an example of the alternative -- I think the vast majority of Bible readers nevertheless understand this verse in the NLV sense. That is, they understand it as referring to Jesus' own ascension into Heaven. However, I lean toward the other interpretation. The Catholic tradition that Mary ascended bodily to Heaven may actually be correct, but the may have made an incorrect assumption -- the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, we might call it -- about exactly which Mary it was.
The main reason for assuming the NLV reading is that Jesus has just said, "I am not yet ascended to my Father," meaning that he will ascend to his Father later, and so it's natural to assume he's still talking about that when he gives Mary the message to deliver to the brethren.
However, I think the context also implies that Mary will ascend. "Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father." This implies that Mary can touch him after he ascends to his Father. That means either (a) that Jesus will ascend briefly and them return to Earth, and people will then be allowed to touch him or (b) that Mary will ascend to Heaven, too.
Eight days after telling Mary not to touch him, Jesus allowed Thomas to touch him (John 20:26-27). If we go with option (a) above, that must mean that in those eight days Jesus ascended the the Father and came back down, and that for some reason it is was necessary for him to do this before anyone could touch him. If we go with option (b), then the Thomas story is evidence that people were allowed to touch Jesus before he ascended, and that therefore "Touch me not" must have meant something else. (Most modern translations acknowledge this logic and modify it to something like "Don't hold on to me" or "Don't cling to me.")
Bruce Charlton arrived at a similar conclusion even though he reads v. 17 in the NLV manner. this is from his April 5 post "Mary Magdalene at the tomb and after: Two presumed later excisions from Easter Sunday in the Fourth Gospel" (emphasis in the original):
The exchange of words between Jesus and Mary at the tomb may imply that she would join the risen Jesus after he had ascended.“Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father” means, therefore: stop touching me just-now – we will be able to touch one another when I am ascended.After all, it wasn't forbidden to touch Jesus - Doubting-Thomas was invited-to.My inference is that Mary touched Jesus in some fashion as a wife would touch him - but this was not correct or appropriate until after the ascension: until after their ascension.Then Jesus describes his ascension “unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and to your God.” Such a very specific form of address (the reiterated symmetry of my-your) is appropriate to the wife of Jesus; in the sense that God the Father has become Mary's Father-‘in Law’, and 'her' God – in the same kind of direct and personal way as for Jesus.So, we are being-told, by Mary's brother Lazarus, author of the Fourth Gospel; that Mary Magdalene ascended to God to be with her divine husband.
Bruce's reading of "my Father, and your Father" is not tenable -- your is plural and thus cannot be singling out Mary as having a special relationship to the Father -- but I agree with the rest of what he says here.
A parallel case to John 20:17, is this passage from Exodus:
And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you (Ex. 3:14).
Moses, like Mary, is given a message to deliver to others -- and the deictics here are clearly to understood in the context of Moses delivering that message, not that of God speaking to Moses. Me means Moses (not God), and you means the children of Israel (not Moses). I know this is a different author writing in a different language, but I think it still offers some support to my preferred reading.
