What is the difference between Mark Chapter 16 verses 1-8 and Luke Chapter 24 verses 1-12?

Answer 1

A:Biblical scholars have demonstrated that Mark's Gospel (written approximately 70 CE) was the original gospel and that Luke's Gospel was based on it, as well as on sayings material from the hypothetical 'Q' document, with some changes and additions. Thus, the passage in Mark 16:1-8 is the original gospel account of the empty tomb. Mark originally finished at 16:8, and the 'Long Ending' (Mark 16:9-20) was added much later to provide literary evidence of the resurrection.

Mark's account tells us that Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome went to the tomb with sweet spices to anoint Jesus. Along the way, they wondered how they would move the stone, but when they arrived at the tomb it had already been moved aside. Entering the sepulchre, they saw a young man who told them Jesus was risen. He told the women to go and tell the disciples and Peter to go to Galilee, where they would see Jesus, but the women fled in terror, telling no one.

Luke's account says that Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and other women went to the tomb and, once again, found the stone already rolled away. When they entered, they found two men in shining garments, who told them that Jesus was risen. This time, the women told the apostles, who did not believe them, so Peter ran to the tomb and saw that it was empty, except for the linen. Afterwards, two of them were walking to the village of Emmaus when they met Jesus but did not recognise him. They told Jesus how the women had found the tomb to be empty.

The discrepancies in the resurrection 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."