The disciples’ experience of Jesus’ resurrection generated a much wider range of traditions than remain extant in our sources. Various non-Markan material recurs in Matthew and Luke (e.g., Matt 28:6; cf. Lk 24:6). John’s resurrection narratives resemble each of the three Synoptic accounts in different respects, and many scholars believe that he used “traditions which lie behind the Synoptic Gospels, and not the Gospels themselves.”3 Such factors suggest access to non-Markan resurrection traditions or perhaps material in a now-lost ending of Mark,4 if indeed the ending we have in Mk 16:8 was not the original one (a disputable premise).5 It is, in fact, difficult to doubt that such other traditions would have existed, given the large number of reported witnesses to the resurrection (cf. 1 Cor 15:5-7).
The witness of women at the tomb is very likely historical, precisely because it was so offensive to the larger culture — not the sort of testimony one would invent. Not all testimony was regarded as being of equal merit; the trustworthiness of witnesses was considered essential.6 Yet most of Jesus’ Jewish contemporaries held much less esteem for the testimony of women than for that of men;7 this suspicion reflects a broader Mediterranean limited trust of women’s speech and testimony also enshrined in Roman law.8
Indeed, the male disciples are said not to believe the women (Lk 24:11; even in the late material in Mk 16:11) — an embarrassing tradition that may reflect historical reality at this point.9 For the early Christians, neither the empty tomb nor the testimony of the women was adequate evidence by itself (cf. Lk 24:22- 24); they also depended on the testimony of men for the public forum (1 Cor 15:5-8).10 The criterion of embarrassment indicates that no one had apologetic reason to invent the testimony of these women, though the Gospel writers may have a profound theological purpose in preserving it. Most thus judge the report that the women were the first witnesses of the resurrection message to be historically accurate.11
Some scholars are convinced that one can completely harmonize the stories of the women at the tomb if we grant that the Gospel writers reported only data essential to their distinctive accounts;12 others, while acknowledging that the conviction of the resurrection is early, doubt that our current Easter stories belong to the earliest stratum of tradition.13 While harmonization approaches become strained when they misunderstand the liberties literary historians sometimes applied on details (see ch. 8), they do exhibit the virtue of working harder than more skeptical approaches to make the best possible sense of the data we have. They often help us to probe evidence more deeply if used heuristically rather than inflexibly, and are often so used in historiography more generally. 14 (Differing biographies of Lincoln or news reports may conflict in detail, but we do not normally conclude from these divergences that the reporters or biographers were fabricating their stories and hence are completely unreliable sources.)15
Whatever the merits of seeking to explain plausibly in such ways some differences among accounts, our approach here will not be to harmonize details but to look for common elements behind the diverse claims.16 In courts of law and certainly in history, testimonies may vary on details due to memories and perspectives. The substance, however, is normally what is most important.
On any account, two matters are plain and a third likely follows: (1) the differences in accounts demonstrate that the Gospel writers were aware of a variety of independent traditions. The likely diversity and number of such traditions precisely here (more so than at many other points in extant gospel tradition) suggest a variety of initial reports, not merely later divergences in an originally single tradition. Sanders rightly contends that “a calculated deception should have produced greater unanimity. Instead, there seem to have been competitors: ‘I saw him first!’ ‘No! I did.’”17 Eyewitness reports often varied on such details, in antiquity as today.18
(2) The independence of the traditions thereby underlines the likelihood of details the accounts share in common.19 These divergent traditions overlap significantly, hence independently corroborate the basic outlines of the story. (3) Given the likely variety of initial reports, explaining the similarities and differences in terms of multiple witnesses surrounding a core historical event appears plausible and indeed probable. This is the same way that we would approach other historical reports from antiquity.20
The various resurrection narratives in our Gospels vary considerably in length, focus, and detail. (For example, the variation in length of the Gospels’ resurrection narratives21 may partly reflect the desire to make optimum use of the scroll length, rather than leaving a blank space at the end as sometimes happened.) 22 If “Q” included a resurrection narrative (a thesis that is not necessarily probable but for which we actually lack evidence either way), most of the Gospel writers treated it as merely one among many; given the many witnesses of the risen Christ (1 Cor 15:6), it is hardly surprising that numerous accounts would exist and different Gospel writers would draw on different accounts. The four Gospels differ in detail, but in all four the women become the first witnesses, and Mary Magdalene is explicitly named as one witness among them.23
