The Synoptic Gospels record Jesus making at least three explicit, detailed passion predictions to the disciples (Matt 16:21; 17:22-23; 20:18-19; Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:33-34; Luke 9:22; 9:44; 18:31-33) — each one specifying betrayal, condemnation, death, and resurrection on the third day. John 20:9 then says, after the resurrection, "For as yet they knew not the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead." If Jesus had personally told them three times that he would rise on the third day, John 20:9 is incomprehensible.
Proposed answers
People have answered this in several ways; GEBible presents them as equal peers.
21From that time, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and the third day be raised up.
18“Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death,19and will hand him over to the Gentiles to mock, to scourge, and to crucify; and the third day he will be raised up.”
1When Jesus had finished all these words, he said to his disciples,2“You know that after two days the Passover is coming, and the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified.”
31Then Jesus said to them, “All of you will be made to stumble because of me tonight, for it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’32But after I am raised up, I will go before you into Galilee.”
31He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.
33“Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem. The Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes. They will condemn him to death, and will deliver him to the Gentiles.34They will mock him, spit on him, scourge him, and kill him. On the third day he will rise again.”
31He took the twelve aside, and said to them, “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and all the things that are written through the prophets concerning the Son of Man will be completed.32For he will be delivered up to the Gentiles, will be mocked, treated shamefully, and spit on.33They will scourge and kill him. On the third day, he will rise again.”
What follows is one scholar’s way of reading this disagreement— a critical-historical view that often concludes the texts genuinely disagree. It draws on the peer-reviewed sources listed below and stands as one position among the answers above, presented for transparency, not as GEBible’s position.
How critical scholarship weighs this: Genuinely disputed among scholars
This summarizes where critical scholarship tends to land on this tension — a report on the field’s center of gravity, not GEBible’s own ruling.
The Synoptic passion predictions are among the most schematized material in the Gospels. Mark frames three (8:31; 9:31; 10:33-34), each more detailed than the last, building to the climactic 10:33-34, which names the betrayal, the handover to the chief priests and scribes, the condemnation, the transfer to the Gentiles, the mocking, scourging, spitting, killing, and resurrection "the third day." Matthew and Luke reproduce and in places sharpen these (Matt 16:21; 17:22-23; 20:18-19; Luke 9:22; 9:44; 18:31-33). Against this backdrop, John 20:9 reads as a flat contradiction: after the resurrection, "as yet they knew not the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead." If Jesus had told the Twelve three times, with mounting precision, that he would rise on the third day, the disciples' post-resurrection bafflement is hard to credit.
Two features of John 20:9 deserve close attention. First, the object of the disciples' ignorance is *tēn graphēn* — "the scripture" — not Jesus' own predictive words. The Johannine narrator says the disciples had not yet grasped the scriptural necessity of resurrection, most likely an allusion to texts such as Psalm 16:10 ("thou wilt not leave my soul in hell") and Hosea 6:2 ("the third day he will raise us up"), which the early church read messianically (cf. Acts 2:25-31; 1 Cor 15:4). Second, the verb is *ēdeisan* (pluperfect of *oida*), "they had known/understood," framing this as a cognitive state only resolved by the resurrection appearances.
The strongest harmonization (Carson, Köstenberger, Blomberg, France) does not rest on special pleading; it rests on the Synoptic text itself. Luke twice inserts an explicit veiling motif: after the second prediction, "they understood not this saying, and it was hid (*parakekalymmenon*) from them, that they perceived it not" (9:45); and after the third, "they understood none of these things: and this saying was hid from them, neither knew they the things which were spoken" (18:34). The Synoptic tradition therefore furnishes its own mechanism: the disciples were told but, by something approaching divine concealment, failed to comprehend until after the event. On this reading John 20:9 is simply the Johannine version of the same incomprehension theme, and the apparent conflict largely dissolves. This is a genuinely strong point and is why the status here is partial rather than total.
What the harmonization does not quite reach is the specific content of John 20:9. The Lukan veiling explains why the disciples did not *understand* a teaching they had received; John locates the failure one step further back, in not yet knowing *the scripture* that resurrection was necessary. These are not identical claims. A disciple could fail to grasp Jesus' words yet, the moment the tomb was found empty, recall that Jesus had repeatedly said he would rise on the third day — which is precisely what Luke 24:6-8 has the angels prompt ("Remember how he spake unto you... the third day rise again. And they remembered his words"). John 20:9, by grounding the gap in scriptural rather than dominical ignorance, sits awkwardly with the explicit, thrice-repeated dominical predictions.
Critical scholarship (Brown, Meier, Marcus, Ehrman) widely regards the detailed third-day predictions as Markan *vaticinia ex eventu* — prophecies-after-the-fact retrojected to display Jesus' foreknowledge. The very precision of Mark 10:33-34, matching the passion narrative point for point, is the tell. On this view the disciples' historical incomprehension is authentic bedrock, and the explicit predictions are a later overlay; Luke's veiling clauses then function as redactional stitching to reconcile the inherited tradition of disciple-ignorance with the newly supplied predictions. John 20:9 preserves the older, prediction-free memory of disciples genuinely surprised by the resurrection. The contradiction is thus real at the level of the narrative as it now stands, but it is substantially mitigated by the Synoptics' own veiling motif.
Where the critical reading lands: partially harmonizable; the residual tension is John's appeal to scriptural rather than remembered ignorance.
Sources for this reading
Raymond E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah: From Gethsemane to the Grave, 2 vols. (ABRL; Doubleday, 1994), vol. 2 pp. 1468-1491on the passion predictions
John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol. 2: Mentor, Message, and Miracles (ABRL; Doubleday, 1994) pp. 154-163on the authenticity of the passion predictions
Joel Marcus, Mark 8-16: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AYB 27A; Yale University Press, 2009) pp. 605-619, 661-672, 745-755on the passion predictions as vaticinia ex eventu
Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John (XIII-XXI) (AB 29A; Doubleday, 1970) pp. 982-985on John 20:9 and the appeal to scriptureJohn 20:9
W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, vol. 2 (ICC; T&T Clark, 1991) pp. 655-666vol. 3, pp. 81-86, on the Matthean passion predictions
Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium (Oxford University Press, 1999) pp. 217-220on retrojected passion predictions
D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John (PNTC; Eerdmans, 1991) pp. 638-639representative harmonization of John 20:9John 20:9
Andreas J. Köstenberger, John (BECNT; Baker Academic, 2004) pp. 567-569on John 20:9John 20:9
Craig L. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of John's Gospel: Issues and Commentary (IVP, 2001) pp. 268-270on John 20:9John 20:9
R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark (NIGTC; Eerdmans, 2002) pp. 328-331on the disciples' incomprehension
Examining the tension
What follows is one scholar’s way of reading this disagreement — a critical-historical view that often concludes the texts genuinely disagree. It draws on the peer-reviewed sources listed below and stands as one position among the answers above, presented for transparency, not as GEBible’s position.
How critical scholarship weighs this: Genuinely disputed among scholars
This summarizes where critical scholarship tends to land on this tension — a report on the field’s center of gravity, not GEBible’s own ruling.
The Synoptic passion predictions are among the most schematized material in the Gospels. Mark frames three (8:31; 9:31; 10:33-34), each more detailed than the last, building to the climactic 10:33-34, which names the betrayal, the handover to the chief priests and scribes, the condemnation, the transfer to the Gentiles, the mocking, scourging, spitting, killing, and resurrection "the third day." Matthew and Luke reproduce and in places sharpen these (Matt 16:21; 17:22-23; 20:18-19; Luke 9:22; 9:44; 18:31-33). Against this backdrop, John 20:9 reads as a flat contradiction: after the resurrection, "as yet they knew not the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead." If Jesus had told the Twelve three times, with mounting precision, that he would rise on the third day, the disciples' post-resurrection bafflement is hard to credit.
Two features of John 20:9 deserve close attention. First, the object of the disciples' ignorance is *tēn graphēn* — "the scripture" — not Jesus' own predictive words. The Johannine narrator says the disciples had not yet grasped the scriptural necessity of resurrection, most likely an allusion to texts such as Psalm 16:10 ("thou wilt not leave my soul in hell") and Hosea 6:2 ("the third day he will raise us up"), which the early church read messianically (cf. Acts 2:25-31; 1 Cor 15:4). Second, the verb is *ēdeisan* (pluperfect of *oida*), "they had known/understood," framing this as a cognitive state only resolved by the resurrection appearances.
The strongest harmonization (Carson, Köstenberger, Blomberg, France) does not rest on special pleading; it rests on the Synoptic text itself. Luke twice inserts an explicit veiling motif: after the second prediction, "they understood not this saying, and it was hid (*parakekalymmenon*) from them, that they perceived it not" (9:45); and after the third, "they understood none of these things: and this saying was hid from them, neither knew they the things which were spoken" (18:34). The Synoptic tradition therefore furnishes its own mechanism: the disciples were told but, by something approaching divine concealment, failed to comprehend until after the event. On this reading John 20:9 is simply the Johannine version of the same incomprehension theme, and the apparent conflict largely dissolves. This is a genuinely strong point and is why the status here is partial rather than total.
What the harmonization does not quite reach is the specific content of John 20:9. The Lukan veiling explains why the disciples did not *understand* a teaching they had received; John locates the failure one step further back, in not yet knowing *the scripture* that resurrection was necessary. These are not identical claims. A disciple could fail to grasp Jesus' words yet, the moment the tomb was found empty, recall that Jesus had repeatedly said he would rise on the third day — which is precisely what Luke 24:6-8 has the angels prompt ("Remember how he spake unto you... the third day rise again. And they remembered his words"). John 20:9, by grounding the gap in scriptural rather than dominical ignorance, sits awkwardly with the explicit, thrice-repeated dominical predictions.
Critical scholarship (Brown, Meier, Marcus, Ehrman) widely regards the detailed third-day predictions as Markan *vaticinia ex eventu* — prophecies-after-the-fact retrojected to display Jesus' foreknowledge. The very precision of Mark 10:33-34, matching the passion narrative point for point, is the tell. On this view the disciples' historical incomprehension is authentic bedrock, and the explicit predictions are a later overlay; Luke's veiling clauses then function as redactional stitching to reconcile the inherited tradition of disciple-ignorance with the newly supplied predictions. John 20:9 preserves the older, prediction-free memory of disciples genuinely surprised by the resurrection. The contradiction is thus real at the level of the narrative as it now stands, but it is substantially mitigated by the Synoptics' own veiling motif.
Where the critical reading lands: partially harmonizable; the residual tension is John's appeal to scriptural rather than remembered ignorance.
Sources for this reading