Who found it empty?

Nobody would invent these witnesses.

All four Gospels say the first people to find the tomb empty were women: Mary Magdalene and her friends. In that world, a woman's word counted for little; the historian Josephus records a rule that women's testimony shouldn't be accepted in court. If you were making this story up, you'd never pick them as your witnesses. You'd name them only because that's what happened.

A round stone rolled to one side of a dark, open tomb doorway cut into rock. — An ancient Jewish rolling-stone tomb at Abu Ghosh, west of Jerusalem, with the stone rolled aside. Photographed in the 1940s.Photo: Matson Photo Service, Library of Congress · Public domain

Luke 24:11The Bible (NIV)

But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.

Tap the women to follow them to the tomb.

Mark names three women, Luke adds Joanna, and John mentions only Mary Magdalene. Nobody smoothed the stories into one script. All four agree on the core: women went first, and the tomb was empty.

Mark 16:1 · Luke 24:10 · John 20:1

Check it yourself:Mark 16:1–8 John 20:1–2 Josephus, Antiquities 4.219

Up nextCount the witnesses.