we have seen the Lord! Thomas, like the other Apostles, did not believe in the possibility of Jesus' resurrection, and therefore said:

Unless I see the wounds of the nails in His hands, and put my finger into the wounds of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.

It is generally accepted that Thomas showed more unbelief than the other apostles. From that time on, anyone who does not believe, even to completely reliable witnesses, but who strives personally, through his senses, to be convinced of the truth of their words, is usually identified with the Apostle Thomas, and is called Thomas an unbeliever. But is it so? Did not the other Apostles seek the same thing? Did they not also examine the wounds of Jesus, and touched His side? The same general disbelief was expressed by Thomas, but only in a more precise, definite form, and this could depend both on his character and on the way he adopted to express his thoughts.

Other Appearances of Jesus

Eight days passed after the first appearance of Christ to the ten Apostles. Whether He appeared to anyone else during these days is unknown. The Evangelist Luke, telling about the appearance of the Lord to two disciples on their way to Emmaus, says that when these disciples returned to Jerusalem,

found eleven together

Apostles

and those who were with them, who said that the Lord had truly risen and appeared to Simon (Luke 24:33-34). Only Luke speaks of this appearance of the Lord to Simon Peter, and he speaks as if the Lord appeared to Peter before His appearance to the ten Apostles, but when and where He is silent about it. Judging by the order in which the Evangelist Luke narrates the story of Christ's appearance to the two disciples on their way to Emmaus, we can conclude that the Apostles themselves informed these two disciples about Christ's appearance to Simon at the time when these disciples were telling them that they had seen the Lord. Meanwhile, Peter, when the Lord appeared to the ten Apostles, not only did not strengthen their faith in the Resurrection of Christ, but together with them he took the Lord's appearance for a phantom, a spirit, and, in order to dispel his perplexity, with his own hands

touched Him (1 John 1:1). And this gives reason to ask the question: did Christ really appear to Peter on the first day after His Resurrection, and moreover before His appearance to the ten Apostles? If He had appeared to Peter before the two disciples who had returned from Emmaus came to the ten Apostles, and if Peter, seeing Jesus appear to him, had believed that He had really risen, then the Evangelist Mark, who wrote his Gospel from the words of Peter, would not have written that