The Sad Case of Mary Magdalene's Amnesia

Illustrated Bible Stories (that they won't tell you in Sunday School)

Why this story matters

(Commentary on Mark 16, Luke 24, Matthew 28, and John 20)

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Introduction

The sequence of events in this story is obviously absurd. How could Mary go from being happy that Jesus had risen from the dead and even meeting him and praising him, to telling the disciples that his body had been stolen? And yet, if you put the four resurrection accounts together, this is what you get. In fact, the illustrated story represents a version of events that leading Christian apologists have come up with in an attempt to explain away a major discrepancy in the stories. As the illustrations demonstrate, the result makes no sense. It doesn't work. While it's true that some discrepancies in the resurrection stories can be explained by playing with the words a little, this one can't. As we'll see when we look closer, there's simply no credible way of explaining how the resurrection accounts can conflict in such a fundamental way and still all be accurate. One of the gospel writers has got his story wrong.

Discrepancies or contradictions?

First of all, we need to clear up a semantic obstruction. Many Bible critics are fond of saying that there are contradictions in the resurrection accounts. But contradictions are very difficult to prove, and many of the differences are not technically contradictions. For example, the gospels disagree on who first visited Jesus’ tomb. Mark speaks of three women: “When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus' body” (16:1). Matthew speaks of only two women: “After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb” (28:1). And John appears to say it was only Mary Magdalene: “Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance” (20:1). While the differences are obvious, apologists will argue that Matthew and John just didn’t bother to mention the other women. Omission does not constitute a contradiction. Technically this is true. In order for there to be a contradiction, John would have to have specifically said that Mary was the only woman who went to the tomb that morning.

There are many such minor discrepancies and if someone wants to believe these don’t rise to the level of contradiction that’s up to the individual. However, there are discrepancies that are too glaring and they can't be denied by appeal to semantics. One of these involves the role of Mary Magdalene. Let's turn to that now.