Only according to John. In the Letters and the others Gospels he was tied to the cross, so he would have wanted a good pair of scissors.
It’s one of those things that could mean a lot or could mean nothing. Me personally I think it was a very important detail, because it means
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The author had seen both methods used and picked the dramatic effect one despite knowing that earlier writers hadn’t chosen that way.
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Since he has Thomas stick his fingers in the hole it weakens the Thomasian/Gnostic view of the events. Indicating that Gnostics were older than expected, since there is no reason to rebute an argument with powerful symbolism if no one is yet making it.
I met someone who claimed to believe that every word in the Bible is true and that it describes events that all actually happened. How do such people explain inconsistencies like this?
I think about this idea a lot. In my mind, I thought it was obvious to everybody that most if not all of the Bible was meant to be allegory or instructional. Clearly I don’t know a lot of fundamentalist Christians… How do they account for different translations and versions of the Bible?
That was me when I was much younger. Basically I used a lot of cognitive dissonance. Yes, I was a biblical literalist. It was the word of God and the word of God needs to be perfect, not allegory not metaphor.
Would love to tell people I left because of some profound revelation but it didn’t happen that way.
