The Passion, the Tomb, and the Appearances

The four gospel accounts share a sequence. A final meal is eaten in Jerusalem at Passover; there is an arrest at night in a garden after a betrayal; a hearing before the high priest and the council; a transfer to the Roman prefect, who orders crucifixion; execution outside the city between two others, with a titulus naming him king of the Jews; a death after some hours; and burial in a rock-cut tomb belonging to a member of the council. On the first day of the week women come to the tomb and find the stone moved and the body gone, and are told that he is risen. Appearances follow, to individuals and to groups, in Jerusalem and in Galilee, and the accounts end with a commission and a departure.

They differ, and the differences are on the surface of the text rather than hidden in it. The number and names of the women vary; one gospel has one figure at the tomb, another two, and they are described as a young man, as men in dazzling clothes, or as angels; the appearances are located in Galilee in one gospel and in and around Jerusalem in another; the last words spoken from the cross differ between accounts. The earliest written testimony is not narrative at all: it is a compressed list that Paul quotes in a letter as material he had received and passed on, naming those to whom the risen Christ appeared, and it is usually dated to within a couple of decades of the events it describes.