123
John Versus the Synoptic Gospels on Mary
Magdalene’s Visit to the Tomb
Jake H. O’Connell
1
Abstract
In this article, a solution is proposed to an alleged
contradiction between the Gospel of John, and the Synoptic
Gospels—an apparent contradiction concerning whether or
not Mary knew that Jesus was raised when she saw the
disciples after her visit to the tomb. John appears to suggest
that Mary did not know that Jesus was raised from the dead,
whereas the Synoptic Gospels appear to indicate that she did
know this. However, it is most likely that Mary Magdalene
did not know Jesus was raised from the dead, but the other
women did. Therefore, there is no contradiction, because
Mary Magdalene and the other women made two different
visits to two different groups of disciples. Mary Magdalene
left the tomb by herself before the angels had appeared.
Before anyone had realised that Jesus had been raised, she
reported to Peter and the Beloved Disciple. The other women
left the tomb after the angels had appeared, and hence, they
did know Jesus was raised, and they reported to another group
of disciples.
1
The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily represent
the beliefs of the South African Theological Seminary.
O’Connell, ‘Mary Magdalene’s Visit to the Tomb ’
124
Introduction
The view that the resurrection narratives are filled with blatant and
irresolvable contradictions is widespread among New Testament
scholars. One hears statements such as those of Bart D. Ehrman:
‘[T]here are numerous differences in our accounts that cannot be
reconciled with each other’ (2006). David Catchpole (2000:40) claims
Matthew has ‘drastically changed’ Mark’s empty tomb story. Likewise,
C. F. Evans (1970: 28) is emphatic that ‘it is not simply difficult to
harmonize these traditions, but quite impossible.’ Further, it is common
to appeal to the presence of contradictions as a basis for arguing that the
resurrection narratives are generally unreliable as historical accounts.
According to Robert Price (2005:427), the presence of ‘gross
contradictions’ is one of ‘many reasons’ we have to ‘dismiss the gospel
Easter narratives as unhistorical.’ And Reginald H. Fuller (1980:2)
declared: ‘the stories themselves appear incredible on the grounds of
their palpable inconsistencies.’
The first thing to note in response to this is that most of the alleged
discrepancies are confined to inessential matters, and thus, do not cast
doubt on the general reliability of the narratives. For example, there are
seeming disagreements over how many women went to the tomb, and
whether it was dark or light when they had arrived. Even if the gospel
writers do contradict each other on these minor points, this hardly leads
to the conclusion that the essence of the story (the discovery of Jesus’
empty tomb and his subsequent appearances to the disciples) is
unhistorical. As an analogy, consider the discrepancies surrounding
Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game. Chamberlain claims he had ten
assists that game (1991:190–191), but the official box score reveals he
had only two (Burwell 2001:127). Some accounts have Chamberlain
scoring his 100
th
point on a layup, while others say it was a dunk (p.
Conspectus 2012 Vol. 14
125
126). When Chamberlain scored his 100
th
point, the crowd rushed onto
the court, but some accounts say that the game was called at this point
(p. 126), while others claim that the crowd was cleared and the game
resumed (p. 126). Hence, irreconcilable contradictions do exist
regarding the details of Chamberlain’s 100-point game; yet, no one uses
these contradictions to argue that Chamberlain’s 100-point game has
never occurred. Thus, the argument that, because the resurrection
narratives disagree on minor matters, they are unreliable on major
matters, is a non sequitur. (I am not implying that the so-called minor
contradictions cannot be harmonised. I am only arguing that if in fact
they are, this does not affect the general reliability of the accounts.)
However, here, I will focus on one apparent contradiction which, if it is
an actual contradiction, would indicate that the gospel writers do
disagree on an essential matter regarding the women’s visit to the tomb,
and therefore, call into question the basic reliability of the resurrection
accounts. I will argue that, despite the initial appearance of the
situation, there is in no contradiction present.
1. Mary Magdalene’s Visit to the Tomb
It seems that John blatantly contradicts the Synoptic Gospels
concerning whether the women at the tomb knew that Jesus was
resurrected before they met the disciples. In the Synoptic Gospels, the
women arrived at the tomb and meet an angel (or a young man) who
tells them that Jesus has risen and that they are to go and tell this to the
disciples. However, John wrote that Mary Magdalene returned from the
tomb alone. Upon her return, she is not only unaware of Jesus’
resurrection, but she tells Peter and the Beloved Disciple that she thinks
someone has taken Jesus’ body. Peter and the Beloved Disciple then run
to the tomb and see that it was empty, but they also do not see an angel.
O’Connell, ‘Mary Magdalene’s Visit to the Tomb ’
126
Hence, in John’s account, Mary Magdalene had not encountered an
angel at the tomb announcing Jesus’ resurrection, while the Synoptic
Gospels appear to indicate that she had, indeed, encountered an angel.
Before addressing how this apparent contradiction ought to be solved,
the following problem illustrates how harmonisation should not be
done. Some have resorted to postulating an extremely improbable
scenario in order to avoid admitting a contradiction. The case in point is
the suggestion that Mary Magdalene did encounter an angel at the tomb,
but she still thought that the body of Jesus was stolen because she was
unable to comprehend fully what the angel had said. In the words of
Gleason Archer (1982:348): ‘She apparently had not yet taken in the
full import of what the angel meant when he told her that the Lord had
risen again and that he was alive.’ But this suggestion is not at all
feasible, for the words of the angel at the tomb are unambiguous. If
Mary was indeed at the tomb when the angel spoke these words, she
could hardly have misunderstood what he meant, and to suggest
otherwise is recourse to desperation akin to Eusebius’s attempt to
harmonise the resurrection narratives by hypothesising the existence of
two Mary Magdalenes (see Dungan 1999:109). However, there is a
more plausible way of resolving this seeming contradiction. In order to
do so, it is important to note three facts.
First, although John’s account makes mention of only Mary Magdalene,
it implies that Mary had gone to the tomb with at least one other person.
Mary states, ‘They have taken the Lord from the tomb and we don’t
know where they put him’ (20:2). While scholars have offered other
interpretations, the clear implication of Mary’s use of the word ‘we’ is
that Mary Magdalene went to the tomb with others, but left them at
some point in order to tell Peter and the Beloved Disciple.
Conspectus 2012 Vol. 14
127
Second, the disciples almost certainly did not all stay in the same place
on Sunday morning. In the gospels, the term, ‘disciples’, is never
equated with the ‘Twelve’. ‘Disciple(s)’ is a broad term used to refer to
more than just the ‘Twelve’. Thus, whatever their number may have
been, there were certainly more than twelve of them. In all likelihood,
their number was large enough to safely assume that they were not all
to be staying in one place. In addition, Mark and John testify that the
Twelve themselves were not all gathered in one place on Sunday
morning. This is obvious in John’s account: only Peter and the Beloved
Disciple are present when Mary arrives, and only they go to the tomb.
Hence, John thinks the other disciples are somewhere else. The same
situation is implied in the Synoptic Gospels, which note Jesus saying
‘strike the shepherd and the sheep will be dispersed’ (Mark 14:27). This
implies that the disciples would scatter after his arrest. Likewise, Mark
16:7 may imply that Peter was staying separately from the main group
of disciples, for it presents the job of telling Peter, and telling the
disciples, as two different commands. Thus, there is ample reason to
believe, that different disciples, even different members of the Twelve,
were staying in different locations on Sunday morning.
Third, Luke indicates that the angels were not at the tomb immediately
upon the women’s arrival. According to Luke, it was ‘while they were
puzzling over’ (24:4) the missing body that the angels appeared and
told them that Jesus was raised. Thus, the women did not know Jesus
was raised immediately upon seeing the empty tomb. Rather, for an
indefinite amount of time, they remained at the tomb ‘puzzling over’
why the body was missing. Only after the appearance of the angels did
they realise Jesus was resurrected. Consequently, there was a time gap
of unspecified length; from the time the women arrived at the tomb’
until the time when the angels appeared.
O’Connell, ‘Mary Magdalene’s Visit to the Tomb ’
128
2. The Solution
Taking these three facts into account, a plausible reconstruction is as
follows: John indicates that Mary went to the tomb with others, and
then left. Luke relates that the angels were not at the tomb immediately
upon the women’s arrival, but rather, the women stood at the tomb
puzzling over the missing body for an unspecified length of time prior
to the arrival of the angels. If we hypothesise that Mary Magdalene left
the tomb while the other women were still puzzling over the missing
body, the solution becomes apparent: Mary Magdalene did not know
that Jesus was raised, because she left the tomb before the angels
arrived. Since the angels were the ones who announced that Jesus had
been raised, if Mary left the tomb before the angels arrived, she would
not have known that Jesus was resurrected. Rather, as she ran to tell
Peter and the Beloved Disciple, she would have still been ‘puzzling
over’ what had happened to Jesus’ body, just as the other women (still
at the tomb) were doing. Hence, when she saw Peter and the Beloved
Disciple, her best guess was that someone had stolen the body. As Mary
Magdalene was in the process of telling Peter and the Beloved Disciple,
the rest of the women saw the angels, heard that Jesus was resurrected,
and then left the tomb. Since different disciples were staying in
different places on Sunday morning, and since Mary Magdalene, in her
panic, may not have told anybody where she was going, the women
went to tell a different group of disciples besides Peter and the Beloved
Disciple. As Peter and the Beloved Disciple were heading to the tomb,
the other women were leaving. By the time Peter and the Beloved
Disciple arrived at the tomb, the women had left.
The following question arises: why would John narrate these events
from a very different perspective than the other gospel writers? In order
to answer this question, it is important to remember that none of the
Conspectus 2012 Vol. 14
129
gospel writers tried to give a comprehensive account of everything
which took place on the morning of the resurrection. One gospel omits
what another gospel includes, and in some cases, it cannot be
maintained that the writer who omitted an event simply did not know
about it. In order to ascertain why a particular fact was included or
omitted in a particular gospel, one should rather look at the question in
terms of what would be of interest to which gospel writer. If the
reconstruction above is valid, the following scenario occurred: a group
of women went to the tomb, heard that Jesus had been raised from the
dead, and then left. Mary Magdalene left this group of women without
knowing Jesus had been raised, and told Peter and John, who then went
to the tomb and saw only the empty tomb and grave clothes, without
seeing Jesus. It is clear that the most significant event in all of this is the
appearance of the angel who announced Jesus’ resurrection. Mary
Magdalene’s departure from the tomb, and Peter and John inspecting
the empty tomb, are comparatively unimportant features of the
narrative. It is not surprising, then, that Matthew, Mark, and Luke keep
their focus on the major event (the appearance of the angel) without
‘bothering’ to relate Mary’s departure to tell Peter and John about the
empty tomb and their subsequent return. That series of events
accomplished little, and so, it would be an unnecessary digression for
the gospel writers.
Why then, if Mary’s departure, as well as the inspection of the tomb by
Peter and the Beloved Disciple was not of interest to the other three
gospel writers, was it of interest to John? This is easily explicable if one
considers the fourth gospel’s claim to rest on the eyewitness testimony
of the Beloved Disciple (John 19:35; 20:24–25). While the events of
John 20:1–11 would, for Matthew, Mark, and Luke be of less interest
than the appearance of the angel, for the Beloved Disciple, they were of
O’Connell, ‘Mary Magdalene’s Visit to the Tomb ’
130
greater interest, because, unlike the other three gospel writers, he was
an eyewitness to those events.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I have examined an apparent contradiction between John
and the Synoptic Gospels and found that there is, in fact, no
contradiction. Although it appears that John and the Synoptic Gospels
disagree as to whether Mary Magdalene knew Jesus was raised when
she left the tomb, we have seen that this is not actually the case. It turns
out, that though the other women knew Jesus was raised when they left
the tomb, Mary Magdalene did not know this, because she had left the
tomb before the appearance of the angel. Critics who charge that there
is a definite contradiction here are being a little too rash in their
judgment. In any case of an apparent discrepancy, the text should be
examined closely, and possible harmonisations should be explored
before charges of contradiction are warranted.
Reference List
Archer GL 1982. New international encyclopaedia of Bible difficulties:
based on the NIV and the NASB. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.
Bauckham R 2006. Jesus and the eyewitnesses: the gospels as
eyewitness testimony. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
Bultmann R 1971. The Gospel of John: a commentary. Philadelphia:
Westminster.
Burwell B 2001. At the buzzer! Havlicek steals, Erving soars, Magic
deals, Michael scores: The greatest moments in NBA history. New
York: Doubleday.
Carson DA 2001. The Gospel according to John. Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans.
Conspectus 2012 Vol. 14
131
Catchpole DR 2000. Resurrection people: studies in the resurrection
narratives of the gospels. London: Darton, Longman, & Todd.
Chamberlain W 1991. A view from above. New York: Villard.
Dungan DL 1999. A history of the synoptic problem: the canon, the
text, the composition, and the interpretation of the gospels. New
York: Doubleday.
Ehrman BD 2006. Is there historical evidence for the resurrection of
Jesus? A debate between William Lane Craig and Bart D. Ehrman.
Online article. Online article. Accessed from www.bringyou.–
to/apologetics/p96.htm, 29/08/2012.
Evans CF 1970. Resurrection and the New Testament. Naperville: Alec
R. Allenson.
Fuller RH 1980. The formation of the resurrection narratives.
Philadelphia: Fortress.
Keener CS 2003. The Gospel of John: a commentary (vol. 1). Peabody:
Hendrickson.
Kostenberger AJ 2004. John. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic.
Moloney FJ 1998. The Gospel of John. Collegeville: Liturgical.
Price RM 2005. By this time he stinketh: The Attempts of William
Lane Craig to Exhume Jesus. In RM Price and JJ Lowder (eds.),
The empty tomb: Jesus beyond the grave, 411–431. Amherst:
Prometheus.
