What angel was at Jesus' empty tomb?

Answer 1

In Mark's Gospel, there was a young man in the empty tomb, with no suggestion that he was an angel.

In Matthew's Gospel, as the women approached, an earthquake moved the stone and an angel came down and sat upon the stone. The story does not say who the angel was.

In Luke's Gospel, the stone was already moved and there were two men, apparently angels inside the empty tomb. The story does not say who the angels were.

In John's Gospel, the stone was moved, but when the disciple whom Jesus loved looked in, he did not see an angel, nor did Peter when he actually went into the tomb. Some time later, Mary looked into the tomb and saw two angels inside. The story does not say who the angels were.

Answer 2

The answer depends on which gospel is relied on:

• Matthew's Gospel

  Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. an angel came down and rolled the stone aside and sat on it, telling the two women that Jesus was risen. They did not look inside to confirm this, but ran back to tell the disciples.

• Mark's Gospel

  Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome came to the tomb. They went inside and saw the tomb was empty, and a young man told the three women that Jesus was risen.

• Luke's Gospel

  The women who came with Jesus from Galilee and certain others (Luke 24:1) went to the tomb. Finding the stone already moved aside they went inside and found that Jesus was not there. Two men in shining garments told the women that Jesus was risen.

• John's Gospel

  Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone was moved. She returned apparently without seeing that the body was missing, although she told Peter that they had taken away the body. Peter and the 'disciple whom Jesus loved' went to the tomb and found Jesus gone. At this stage they had no reason to believe that Jesus was risen, although John 24:8 says that the disciple 'believed'. Later, Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene who in this account becomes the first to really know that Jesus was risen, although at first she thought that he was the gardener.

Answer 3

A:The one person who all the gospels agree saw the empty tomb was Mary Magdalene.

Matthew's Gospel says that Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to the tomb. An angel came down from heaven and told them that Jesus was risen, so they did not go inside and check for themselves. In this gospel, there were also several guards present.

Mark's Gospel says that Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome went to the tomb. Mark describes a young man who was sitting in the tomb when the women arrived and went inside. He told them that Jesus was risen, and they fled in terror, telling no one.

Luke's Gospel says that Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and other women went to the empty tomb, in which they also saw two men in shining garments, who told the women that Jesus was risen. Later, Peter ran to the tomb, to see for himself.

John's Gospel says that Mary Magdalene went to the tomb, but only seeing the stone moved, ran back and told the disciples. Alone of the four New Testament gospels, John says that Peter and an unnamed disciple, traditionally thought to be John, then went to the empty tomb. Afterwards, Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene near the tomb, but she at first thought he was the gardener.

The discrepancies in the gospel accounts prompted Archbishop Peter Carnley to write: "The presence of discrepancies might be a sign of historicity if we had four clearly independent but slightly different versions of the story, if only for the reason that four witnesses are better than one. But, of course, it is now impossible to argue that what we have in the four gospel accounts of the empty tomb are four contemporaneous but independent accounts of the one event. Modern redactional studies of the traditions account for the discrepancies as literary developments at the hand of later redactors of what was originally one report of the empty tomb...

There is no suggestion that the tomb was discovered by different witnesses on four different occasions, so it is in fact impossible to argue that the discrepancies were introduced by different witnesses of the one event; rather, they can be explained as four different redactions for apologetic and kerygmatic reasons of a single story originating from one source."

We now know that this one source was Mark's Gospel, and that it originally ended at verse 16:8, with no resurrection appearances.

Answer 4

Gabriel