If you try to harmonize all the biblical accounts of Jesus’ resurrection, you’ll get frustrated pretty quickly. Some of the details supplied by the four gospels are mutually contradictory. Does that make them untrustworthy? I don’t think so. If all four versions of the story were exactly alike, that would strongly suggest that they were all copying from a single source with no independent verification. But the New Testament has preserved multiple sources witnessing to the same event. Some of the differences are too basic to be dismissed as embellishments of one original account. And yet, they all verify that on the Sunday after Jesus’ crucifixion, some disciples of Jesus (Mary Magdalene being the only one specifically mentioned in all four gospels) found that the stone sealing the entrance of the tomb had been rolled away, and the tomb was empty because Jesus had been raised.
In all four gospels, at least one woman meets some sort of messenger. In Mark, the earliest gospel (written about A.D. 65), “a young man dressed in a white robe” was sitting on the right side of the tomb. In Luke (written about A.D. 75), “two men in dazzling clothes” appeared beside the weeping women disciples. In Matthew (written around A.D. 80), “an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and rolled back the stone” while the women were watching. “His appearance was like lightning and his clothing white as snow.” Then, in John (probably not completed until sometime in the 90’s) Mary Magdalene found “two angels in white” sitting on the slab where the body of Jesus had been laid.
