Mary the Magdalene discovers Jesus’s empty sepulcher.

John 20.1-11.

The gospels manage to give slightly different accounts of Jesus’s resurrection. Even the synoptic gospels, which are usually in sync, aren’t. Thus creating “bible difficulties” which many Christians kinda drive themselves bonkers trying to unjumble. I don’t, because as any cops can tell you: Sometimes eyewitnesses, who were there and totally saw everything, won’t all say the exact same thing. If they do, it means they got together to get their story straight—which now means their testimonies are compromised. Whereas what we have in the gospels are uncompromised testimonies. So don’t worry about ’em!

Anyway one of the facts they do get straight is Mary the Magdalene was there. In Mark and John, she was the only one there—and the first to see Jesus. In Matthew she’s with “the other Mary,” Mt 28.1 who’s probably Jesus’s aunt Mary, or “Mary of James,” Lk 24.10 meaning James’s mom; the wife of Zebedee. In Luke she’s with Joanna as well. Lk 24.10 But in Mark and John she appears to be alone. The long ending of Mark has her see Jesus right away; John has her see nothing yet.

John 20.1-2 KWL

1On the first day of the week,

in the dark part of the morning,

Mary the Magdalene comes to the sepulcher,

and sees the stone was taken away from the sepulcher.

2So Mary runs away.

She comes to Simon Peter,

and to the other student whom Jesus loves,

and tell them, “They took the Master out of the sepulcher!

We couldn’t figure out where they put him!”

The “we” in verse 2 reveals other people were with Mary at that time, and no doubt these women speculated where Jesus’s corpse might be. I translated οὐκ οἴδαμεν/uk ídamen, “we haven’t known” as “we couldn’t figure out,” because it’s better English.

Yeah, Matthew and Luke depict the women going to wherever the Eleven were staying, and telling them what the angel(s) had told them. John—written by John, who’s this “student whom Jesus loves” in verse 2—recalls it differently. He and Peter were together in some other place. Neither bothers to go inform the other nine what’s going on; they run to the sepulcher themselves… as if they can figure out what happened where the women couldn’t. Men, I tell ya.

What John saw.

Mary did come back to the sepulcher with them, Jn 20.11 but not as fast. She’d been running, you know. John got there first; then Peter. But lemme go back to having John tell the story.

John 20.3-11 KWL

3So Peter and the other student come with her,

and are going to the sepulcher.

4The two are running together,

and the other student quickly outruns Peter,

and comes to the sepulcher first.

5Bending down, he sees the linen strips laying there,

yet he doesn’t enter.

6So Peter, following the student,

also comes and enters the sepulcher,

and observes the linen strips—

7and the bandanna

which was wrapped around Jesus’s head,

not with the linen strips but separate,

folded in one place.

8So then the other student, who came to the sepulcher first,

enters the sepulcher, sees, and believes.

9For the students didn’t yet know this scripture:

“It’s necessary for him to rise from the dead.”

10So the students go back again to their {own} people,

11A and Mary stood outside the sepulcher, weeping.

I’ve heard people claim John was bragging about outrunning Peter, but I don’t know that he was. He did wait for Peter to arrive before going in, and he didn’t really get a good look at the contents of the sepulcher until Peter first went in.

What they saw were the linen strips Joseph and Nicodemus used to wrap Jesus’s corpse. Nope, he wasn’t wrapped in a shroud; nope, he wasn’t first put in a shroud, then wrapped in strips. Shrouds were a European invention; they draped them over a corpse for the very same reason doctors pull a sheet over a corpse—so you don’t gawk at the dead. Yep, the Shroud of Turin was a medieval invention; I don’t know whose image is baked into that cloth, but it can’t be Jesus, ’cause Jesus was wrapped in strips. The strips were loaded with spices and myrrh to help the body decay quickly, ’cause first-century custom was to come back a year later, gather up the bones, put them in an ossuary, and put that in the graveyard.

Whereas the head was wrapped separately, as John says in verse 7—wrapped in a σουδάριον/sudárion, a sweat-rag (KJV “napkin,” ESV/NASB/NET/ “face cloth,” NKJV “handkerchief,” and I went with our American equivalent “bandanna”). That’s in case anyone came into the sepulcher, and wanted to quickly remove it to identify the corpse.

Yet John noticed it wasn’t merely tossed aside, like the strips; it was set apart from the strips, and folded in half. That’s how I interpret “folded in one place”—it wasn’t placed in one place; John’s describing how it was folded. I once heard a preacher speculate that Jesus may have been in the habit of folding his bandannas a certain way, and the reason John saw the bandanna “and believes,” is because he immediately recognized Jesus folded this particular bandanna. It’s a neat theory, but I have no idea how true it is. (Neither do you, so don’t go quoting this like it’s proven fact; no it’s not.)

The bit John says is scripture—“It’s necessary for him to rise from the dead”—doesn’t come from the Old Testament scriptures; it comes from Jesus’s teachings.

Mark 8.31 KJV

And he began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.

It’s scripture now, and if it’s true that John was written for the purpose of filling in the blanks of the other gospels, it would’ve been scripture by the time John was written. But regardless of when it became scripture, Jesus had already, more than once, taught Peter and John that he’d rise again. It’s just this particular teaching hadn’t sunk in, which is why they were still so very confused about what was going on. They’d heard this teaching, but still didn’t know this teaching.

But before the day was over, they’d definitely know it. And before the hour was over, so would Mary.