How many women came to the tomb?

A classic example of a supposed biblical contradiction is that the four gospels differ in their lists of the women who visited Jesus’ tomb when he was resurrected. Let’s see what the four gospel accounts say and see whether there is any contradiction:

Matthew 28:1 Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb.

So Matthew reports Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary” (which is probably the same as Mary the mother of James mentioned in the other accounts ) went to the tomb.

Mark 16:1 When the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him.

Mark reports that it was Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome.

Luke 24:10 Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles,

Luke reports that it was Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joanna.

John 20:1 Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the mtomb.

John only mentions Mary Magdalene.

Is this a contradiction?

No. It is not a contradiction. A contradiction is when a claim directly contradicts the facts of another claim. None of these claims contradict one another. An example of a contradiction would be if one account says one person went there, and another specifically says that that person did not go, or that the people in their list were the only ones there. But if the other accounts just leave out this information it is not a contradiction. It’s just a case of highlighting different details of the same information.

• All the accounts agree that Mary Magdalene went there, and none of them contradict this.
• Three of them agree that “the other” Mary (the mother of James) went there, and none of them contradict this.
• One of them says Joanna went there, and none of them contradict this.
• One of them says Salome went there, and none of them contradict this.

Luke even points out that apart from Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joanna, there were “other women” there. One of these other women would be Salome. But there could be at least one other woman, if not more, who are unnamed. In total there were at least 5 women going there. However the writers probably didn’t think it was important to mention the names of all of them.

Evidence of being eyewitness accounts

When you question an eyewitness to an event like a crime, you will get different details about how many people they say, where they were, differences in the sequence of events, different details pointed out, like colors, clothes, sounds, numbers, etc. But if everyone is telling the truth, the police can piece it together and get a pretty good picture of what happened. However if all eyewitnesses report the exact same thing, the police will start suspecting collusion or a conspiracy.

Just as eye witness accounts, these gospel accounts describe the same event from four different perspectives. Therefore they contain different details. They include pieces of information that were deemed important by the writers for whatever reason. But at no point are they contradicting one another. They also do not copy or borrow from one another and there is no sign of a conspiracy. They are just giving an honest account of what they knew happened. This kind of testimony is exactly what you’d expect from trustworthy eyewitnesses about an event that actually happened.