Luke 24:2-4 and John 20:1-2 have the women (or Mary Magdalene) discover the body is missing *before* they encounter any angelic figure — they enter, find the body gone, and only then do the angels appear (Luke) or Mary runs to tell Peter (John). Matthew 28:5-6 and Mark 16:5-6 have the women see the angel/young man *first*, and only learn from him that the body is gone. Two gospels: discovery, then angel. Two gospels: angel, then announcement.
Proposed answers
People have answered this in several ways; GEBible presents them as equal peers.
Before talking to the angel (or angels).
And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre. And they entered in, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus. And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in shining garments: Luke 24:2-4The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre. Then she runneth, and cometh to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and saith unto them, They have taken away the LORD out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid him. John 20:1-2
2They found the stone rolled away from the tomb.3They entered in, and didn’t find the Lord Jesus’ body.4While they were greatly perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling clothing.
1Now on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene went early, while it was still dark, to the tomb, and saw the stone taken away from the tomb.2Therefore she ran and came to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have laid him!”
And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. Matthew 28:5-6And entering into the sepulchre, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a longwhite garment; and they were affrighted. And he saith unto them, Be not affrighted: Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him.Mark 16:5-6
5The angel answered the women, “Don’t be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus, who has been crucified.6He is not here, for he has risen, just like he said. Come, see the place where the Lord was lying.
5Entering into the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were amazed.6He said to them, “Don’t be amazed. You seek Jesus, the Nazarene, who has been crucified. He has risen. He is not here. Behold, the place where they laid him!
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: Leans toward a genuine contradiction
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 question turns on the order of two events: did the women find the tomb empty first and then meet the angel(s), or did they meet the angelic figure first and learn the body was gone from him? Luke 24:2-4 and John 20:1-2 give the first sequence. In Luke the women find the stone rolled away, enter, find no body, and 'while they were perplexed about this' (*en tōi aporeisthai autas*) the two men in dazzling clothes appear — discovery precedes the angels. In John, Mary sees the stone removed and immediately runs to Peter and the Beloved Disciple with the words 'they have taken the Lord and we do not know where they have laid him' (John 20:2), assuming theft; the two angels appear only later, on her return (John 20:11-12). Matthew 28:5-6 and Mark 16:5-6 give the reverse: the women see the angel/young man first, and it is the angelic figure who announces 'he is not here, for he is risen' and only then invites them to 'come, see the place where he lay.' The empty tomb in Mark and Matthew is the angel's evidence, not the women's prior discovery.
The harmonization attempted by John Wenham reconstructs a staggered arrival: an advance party enters and finds the tomb empty, the angels then appear, and later-arriving women see the angel before they see inside. Logically this can be made to fit, and it is the strongest form of the case. But it depends on a substructure none of the four narratives contains — women splitting into subgroups arriving at different moments and, implausibly, not relaying to each other what they had just witnessed. Each gospel narrates a unified group (or, in John, a single woman) moving through one continuous scene.
The more economical reading, advanced by Raymond Brown and Dale Allison, is that the difference in order is editorial and theological rather than chronological. Mark and Matthew frame the encounter around the women's mistaken expectation: they come to anoint a corpse (Mark 16:1 specifies the spices), and the angel's role is to correct that assumption — the dramatic reversal requires the angel to deliver the news, so emptiness is disclosed through proclamation. Luke and John instead foreground the women's autonomous discovery because each needs it to launch what follows: John uses Mary's premature theft-assumption to set up the footrace of Peter and the Beloved Disciple to the tomb (John 20:3-10) and her subsequent recognition scene, while Luke uses the women's puzzlement and the men's verification to build toward the Emmaus road and the motif of disciples 'slow to believe' (Luke 24:25). The ordering is a function of each narrative's design, not of competing stopwatch reports of one event. On the Two-Document Hypothesis, Matthew is reworking Mark directly here, while Luke and John draw on partially independent empty-tomb traditions, which is why the Markan proclamation-first structure survives into Matthew but is restructured in the other two.
Unlike the cast-list problem of the adjacent entry, this discrepancy is more amenable to a charitable reading: the events reported (empty tomb, angelic encounter, message of resurrection) are the same, and only their sequence differs, which a sequenced reconstruction can in principle accommodate. The cost is inventing narrative machinery the texts do not supply.
Where the critical reading lands: partially harmonizable; the order is a redactional and theological variable rather than a flat factual contradiction, but the apologetic reconstruction that smooths it requires assumptions absent from every gospel.
Sources for this reading
Dale C. Allison Jr., Resurrecting Jesus: The Earliest Christian Tradition and Its Interpreters (T&T Clark, 2005) pp. 198-299
Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John (XIII-XXI) (Anchor Bible 29A; Doubleday, 1970) pp. 980-1004on John 20:1-2John 20:1-2
François Bovon, Luke 3: A Commentary on the Gospel of Luke 19:28-24:53, trans. James Crouch (Hermeneia; Fortress, 2012) pp. 341-360on Luke 24:2-4Luke 24:2-4
Joel Marcus, Mark 8-16: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (Anchor Yale Bible 27A; Yale University Press, 2009) pp. 1081-1093on Mark 16:5-6Mark 16:5-6
W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, Vol. 3 (ICC; T&T Clark, 1997) pp. 663-675on Matt 28:5-6Matthew 28:5-6
John Wenham, Easter Enigma: Are the Resurrection Accounts in Conflict?, 2nd ed. (Baker, 1992)
Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them) (HarperOne, 2009) pp. 47-60
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: Leans toward a genuine contradiction
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 question turns on the order of two events: did the women find the tomb empty first and then meet the angel(s), or did they meet the angelic figure first and learn the body was gone from him? Luke 24:2-4 and John 20:1-2 give the first sequence. In Luke the women find the stone rolled away, enter, find no body, and 'while they were perplexed about this' (*en tōi aporeisthai autas*) the two men in dazzling clothes appear — discovery precedes the angels. In John, Mary sees the stone removed and immediately runs to Peter and the Beloved Disciple with the words 'they have taken the Lord and we do not know where they have laid him' (John 20:2), assuming theft; the two angels appear only later, on her return (John 20:11-12). Matthew 28:5-6 and Mark 16:5-6 give the reverse: the women see the angel/young man first, and it is the angelic figure who announces 'he is not here, for he is risen' and only then invites them to 'come, see the place where he lay.' The empty tomb in Mark and Matthew is the angel's evidence, not the women's prior discovery.
The harmonization attempted by John Wenham reconstructs a staggered arrival: an advance party enters and finds the tomb empty, the angels then appear, and later-arriving women see the angel before they see inside. Logically this can be made to fit, and it is the strongest form of the case. But it depends on a substructure none of the four narratives contains — women splitting into subgroups arriving at different moments and, implausibly, not relaying to each other what they had just witnessed. Each gospel narrates a unified group (or, in John, a single woman) moving through one continuous scene.
The more economical reading, advanced by Raymond Brown and Dale Allison, is that the difference in order is editorial and theological rather than chronological. Mark and Matthew frame the encounter around the women's mistaken expectation: they come to anoint a corpse (Mark 16:1 specifies the spices), and the angel's role is to correct that assumption — the dramatic reversal requires the angel to deliver the news, so emptiness is disclosed through proclamation. Luke and John instead foreground the women's autonomous discovery because each needs it to launch what follows: John uses Mary's premature theft-assumption to set up the footrace of Peter and the Beloved Disciple to the tomb (John 20:3-10) and her subsequent recognition scene, while Luke uses the women's puzzlement and the men's verification to build toward the Emmaus road and the motif of disciples 'slow to believe' (Luke 24:25). The ordering is a function of each narrative's design, not of competing stopwatch reports of one event. On the Two-Document Hypothesis, Matthew is reworking Mark directly here, while Luke and John draw on partially independent empty-tomb traditions, which is why the Markan proclamation-first structure survives into Matthew but is restructured in the other two.
Unlike the cast-list problem of the adjacent entry, this discrepancy is more amenable to a charitable reading: the events reported (empty tomb, angelic encounter, message of resurrection) are the same, and only their sequence differs, which a sequenced reconstruction can in principle accommodate. The cost is inventing narrative machinery the texts do not supply.
Where the critical reading lands: partially harmonizable; the order is a redactional and theological variable rather than a flat factual contradiction, but the apologetic reconstruction that smooths it requires assumptions absent from every gospel.
Sources for this reading