Blackening 
Frank Kermode
The story of Doubting Thomas, examined at length in this learned and fascinating book, has its origin in a brief passage near the end of St John’s Gospel. After the crucifixion, when the disciples were assembled behind locked doors ‘for fear of the Jews’, Jesus appeared among them and displayed the wounds in his hands and side. He also granted them the power to remit sins, or not, as the spirit moved them; so they had good reason to rejoice at having seen the Lord.
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Frank Kermode’s books include The Sense of an Ending and The Uses of Error.
Other articles by this contributor:
Here she is · Zadie Smith
Who has the gall? · Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
‘Disgusting’ · Frank Kermode remembers William Empson
First Pitch · Marianne Moore
Nothing for Ever and Ever · Housman’s Pleasures
‘It’s the way people like us don’t talk’ · Andrew Motion’s Boyhood
Complicated Detours · Darwin’s Worms by Adam Phillips
Point of View · Atonement by Ian McEwan
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