ABSTRACT
Thinking about the relationship of Christianity to sight, we may reach yet further back to consider the biblical story of creation. It derives, of course, from the Hebrew scriptures, but was appropriated wholesale by the Christians and read in complicated intertext with the first chapters of John, "In the beginning was the Word". The way in which Alcimus Ecdicius Avitus dwells on the sensation of touch speaks for itself, from the simile of the craftsman with his tactile lumps of wax and clay to the details of God's own artisanal technique. For Augustine, the animation of the senses (not the presence of a living body as such) proves there is a living soul in the human being. Another of Augustine's sermons glosses Noli me tangere as follows: Noli hoc usque credere, noli in homine figi: est aliud maius, quod non intellegis.
