John 20:11
Encyclopedia
Gospel of John
The Gospel According to John , commonly referred to as the Gospel of John or simply John, and often referred to in New Testament scholarship as the Fourth Gospel, is an account of the public ministry of Jesus...
. Peter and the Beloved Disciple have just departed, leaving Mary Magdalene
Mary Magdalene
Mary Magdalene was one of Jesus' most celebrated disciples, and the most important woman disciple in the movement of Jesus. Jesus cleansed her of "seven demons", conventionally interpreted as referring to complex illnesses...
at Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
' tomb.
In the King James Version of the Bible the text reads:
- But Mary stood without at the
- sepulchre weeping: and as she
- wept, she stooped down, and
- looked into the sepulchre,
The World English Bible
World English Bible
The World English Bible is a public domain translation of the Bible that is currently in draft form. Work on the World English Bible began in 1997 and was known as the American Standard Version 1997...
translates the passage as:
- But Mary was standing outside
- at the tomb weeping. So, as
- she wept, she stooped and
- looked into the tomb,
Mary has not been mentioned since John 20:2
John 20:2
John 20:2 is the second verse of the twentieth chapter of the Gospel of John in the New Testament. Mary Magdalene has just discovered that the tomb of Jesus has been opened. In this verse she seeks out and tells this news to Peter and the Beloved Disciple....
and the Gospel does not mention how she made her way back to tomb or if she was present while Peter and the Beloved Disciple were examining it. C.K. Barrett states that it is unknown if Mary was a witness to the examination of the tomb by the two disciples that found the grave clothes still present. The presence of the clothes imply something other than a robbery and if she was aware of them she might not have been weeping.
Why she decides to wait outside the tomb is unknown. According to Leonard, Saint Augustine
Augustine of Hippo
Augustine of Hippo , also known as Augustine, St. Augustine, St. Austin, St. Augoustinos, Blessed Augustine, or St. Augustine the Blessed, was Bishop of Hippo Regius . He was a Latin-speaking philosopher and theologian who lived in the Roman Africa Province...
proposed that "when the men went away, a stronger affection kept the weaker sex firmly in place." John Wesley
John Wesley
John Wesley was a Church of England cleric and Christian theologian. Wesley is largely credited, along with his brother Charles Wesley, as founding the Methodist movement which began when he took to open-air preaching in a similar manner to George Whitefield...
wonders if Mary had remembered the prophecies that he would arise on the third day. Bruce believes that Mary was hoping someone would pass by who could give her some information.
Why Mary does not seek out Joseph of Arimathea
Joseph of Arimathea
Joseph of Arimathea was, according to the Gospels, the man who donated his own prepared tomb for the burial of Jesus after Jesus' Crucifixion. He is mentioned in all four Gospels.-Gospel references:...
, the owner of the tomb, for information is also a question. Joseph, in fact, is never again mentioned in the Gospel. One theory is that Joseph was so far above Mary's in terms of social class that it would not be right for her to disturb him.
According to Schnackenberg the Codex Sinaiticus
Codex Sinaiticus
Codex Sinaiticus is one of the four great uncial codices, an ancient, handwritten copy of the Greek Bible. It is an Alexandrian text-type manuscript written in the 4th century in uncial letters on parchment. Current scholarship considers the Codex Sinaiticus to be one of the best Greek texts of...
has Mary waiting inside the tomb, but this wording does not make much sense with regards to the succeeding verses.
Some scholars feel that Mary's peering into the tomb should follow directly after John 20:1
John 20:1
John 20:1 is the first verse of the twentieth chapter of the Gospel of John in the New Testament. John 20 covers the resurrection of Jesus after his crucifixion. In this verse Mary Magdalene travels to Jesus' tomb and finds it opened....
and see everything in between as an interjection. Brown
Raymond E. Brown
The Reverend Raymond Edward Brown, S.S. , was an American Roman Catholic priest, a member of the Sulpician Fathers and a major Biblical scholar of his era...
has argued that John 20 is a synthesis of two sources and that they are only partially integrated. To many it seems illogical for Mary to not have actually looked into the tomb before going and telling Peter and the Beloved Disciple that Jesus' body was gone. This theory also helps explain a number of inconsistencies between John 20:2-10 and the later sections.
One of these inconsistencies is the architecture of the tomb. That Mary stooped to look into the tomb is consistent with what archaeologists know about tombs from this era. Tombs were accessed from doors at ground level which were generally less than a metre tall. These tombs either had a lone chamber for a single individual, or they entrance led to a passage lined with entrances to a number of tombs. Most accounts make it seem that Jesus was in one of the individual type tombs. However John 20:6
John 20:6
John 20:6 is the sixth verse of the twentieth chapter of the Gospel of John in the Bible. Peter and the Beloved Disciple have just arrived at the empty tomb of Jesus. The Beloved Disciple, who arrived slightly ahead of Peter, paused outside the empty tomb...
mentions that Peter and the Beloved Disciple walked into the tomb, implying a much larger structure that would probably not require stooping. One proposed solution is to argue that there was a large antechamber that could comfortably fit the disciples, and that the actual burial place of Jesus was in a chamber to the side.
Mary's weeping in this verse and subsequent ones is the origin of the word maudlin which is a corruption of the name Magdalene and refers to a person who his sorrowful.