The resurrection is the claim on which the Christian reading of Jesus rests, and the four accounts of it are the part of the gospels in which the four writers are most clearly working without a common written source: Mark ends before any appearance, and Matthew, Luke and John each supply their own. The table sets the accounts side by side, detail by detail, with chapter and verse, and records only what each text says. Where a cell says “none”, the gospel is silent on that detail; where two cells differ, the texts differ. Interpretation is kept out of the table and placed in the notes below it.
| Detail | Mark | Matthew | Luke | John | Thomas |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Who goes to the tomb | Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, Salome 16:1 | Mary Magdalene and the other Mary 28:1 | Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and other women 24:10 | Mary Magdalene 20:1 | No account |
| Time | Very early, after sunrise 16:2 | Toward dawn 28:1 | At early dawn 24:1 | While it was still dark 20:1 | No account |
| The stone | Already rolled back 16:4 | An angel descends and rolls it back 28:2 | Found rolled away 24:2 | Found taken away 20:1 | No account |
| Who is there | A young man in white, sitting inside 16:5 | An angel, sitting on the stone 28:2-5 | Two men in dazzling clothes, standing 24:4 | Two angels, seen later by Mary 20:12 | No account |
| The women’s response | Flee and tell no one, for they were afraid 16:8 | Run to tell the disciples 28:8 | Tell the eleven and the rest 24:9 | Mary runs to Peter and the beloved disciple 20:2 | No account |
| First appearance | None in the earliest manuscripts; the longer ending gives Mary Magdalene 16:9 | The women, on the way 28:9 | Two disciples on the Emmaus road 24:13-31 | Mary Magdalene, at the tomb 20:14 | None. Thomas has no resurrection or appearance narrative. |
| Where the disciples see him | Galilee, promised 16:7 | Galilee, on a mountain 28:16 | Jerusalem; told to stay in the city 24:33-49 | Jerusalem 20:19; later Galilee 21:1 | No account |
The Gospel of Thomas is a collection of sayings with no passion or resurrection narrative, so every row is empty. Its sayings speak of not tasting death (1, 18, 19, 111) but never of an empty tomb or of Jesus appearing after death. See The Gospel of Thomas.
Reading the table
The women. Each gospel names a different group, from one woman in John to several in Luke. Mary Magdalene is the only name in all four. Matthew and Luke, who both copy Mark here, each changed his list.
The stone and the messenger. In Mark the stone is already rolled back and a young man sits inside; in Matthew an angel descends in an earthquake, rolls it back and sits on it, before the women’s eyes; in Luke there are two men; in John, two angels, seen only by Mary and only on her second visit. A young man has become an angel, and one has become two, within twenty years of Mark.
The message. In Mark and Matthew the women are told to send the disciples to Galilee, where Jesus will meet them. In Luke the same words are rewritten to refer back to what Jesus said while he was in Galilee, and the disciples are told to stay in Jerusalem (24:49). The two instructions cannot both have been given.
What the women did. Mark’s oldest text ends with the women fleeing and saying nothing to anyone (16:8). Matthew, Luke and John have them run to tell the disciples. The writer who added the longer ending to Mark (16:9-20) did so because Mark, as it stood, had no one hear the news.
Where he appeared. Matthew’s appearances are in Galilee, on a mountain, where some doubted (28:16-17). Luke’s are all in and around Jerusalem on one day, and he ascends that evening (24:50-51); Acts, by the same author, makes it forty days (1:3). John has Jerusalem and then, in the appended chapter 21, the Sea of Tiberias. Mark, in the oldest manuscripts, has none. A reader who follows Matthew will have the disciples in Galilee when Luke has them under orders not to leave the city.
What follows. These are not variations of emphasis. They are different answers to the questions who went, what they saw, what they were told, what they did and where he was seen, given by four writers who were not there, two of whom had the first writer’s account in front of them and changed it. The historians’ consensus is that the disciples believed they had seen him; what the table shows is that the churches did not possess one account of how. The Qur’an’s statement on the matter, and this website’s position, are on the end of his earthly mission; the measure applied to these accounts in the gospel is on the measure.
Sources: Raymond Brown, The Death of the Messiah; Bart Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted, ch. 2; Bruce Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, on Mark 16:9-20.