Illustration by David Pugliese

I'm tired of people bitchin' all the time about how the gospels don't make sense because Mark says something different from Matthew who says something different from Luke, and then John goes off on a whole crazy tangent. How long we been doing this, people? Three hundred years?

Let's settle this, all right?

Today I will prove how the apparent differences in scripture have a perfectly logical explanation.

Read this and then stop bugging me about it.

Okay. We're gonna look at four accounts of one event: What happened at the goldurn tomb?

Lemme sum it up for you . . .

Text Numero Uno: Matthew 28:1-8:
A. Two women went down to the tomb. Mary Magdalene and "the other Mary."
B. They went before sunup.
C. There was an earthquake and an angel rolled away the stone, and there were trembling guards watching.
D. The angel sat his butt down on the stone.
E. The angel invited the two ladies into the tomb and told them to inform the disciples that he would be showing up in Galilee.
F. The ladies ran away and didn't tell anybody.

Okay, got that one? Moving on.

Text Numero Two-o: Mark 16: 1-8:
A. Three women go down to the tomb—Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome. They have spices with ‘em.
B. They went after the sun was already up.
C. The stone was already rolled back.
D. They saw a young man in white. Maybe he's an angel and maybe he's not.
E. The man in white tells them to inform the disciples that he'll be showing up in Galilee.
F. The ladies ran away and did tell the disciples.

Okay, I know what you're thinking. Those are some major differences, right? Just hold your horses a minute, I'm not done.

Text Numero Three-o: Luke 24: 1-12:
A. A whole bunch of women go down to the tomb, including Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James, and they have spices.
B. They go right at the crack of dawn.
C. The stone was already rolled back.
D. The ladies go inside, and two men in white show up.
E. The two men in white don't say diddly squat.
F. The ladies tell the disciples what they saw, but the disciples all say, "Oh you did not."

Okay, so much for the three "synoptic" gospels, as they call ‘em. But you know it's gonna get freaky now, right? Whenever you get to John, you got a whole ‘nother infomercial going on. No wonder John went to live in Turkey—after a while nobody would talk to him, because it was like, "Yeah, was over at John's just now, you don't wanna know what he said." So here goes . . .

Text Numero Four-o: John 20: 1-13:
A. Mary Magdalene shows up at the tomb alone.
B. It's still dark outside.
C. The stone is already rolled away.
D. Here's the interesting part. Based on the other three, we're expecting her to go inside right now, but instead she hauls ass out of there.
E. She goes and finds Peter and tells him the stone is rolled away. She also informs the "beloved disciple."
F. Meanwhile, she gets curious and goes back to the tomb, right behind the two men, and she hangs around after they're gone. Then she sees two angels in white, plus she sees Jesus, but she thinks he's a gardener.

I told you John would be freaky.

Okay, so what have we learned today?

First of all, never send women to report on something. Obviously at some point the combination of Mary and Mary Magdalene arguing over what they saw became an ancient version of The View, with Salome as the Rosie O'Donnell character who shows up late and starts to believe that she was there, too. By the year AD 39, you've got about 300 women who think they were there, plus some Roman guards who are badmouthing one another for who did the most trembling.

But the way to see through all the crapola is to not to concentrate on who was there, or what time it was, or whether the stone rolled away by itself or because of an earthquake, or whether one or two angels did or did not say anything about making for Galilee, but the very last part of the story. Who did she tell? (Or, okay, who did they tell?)

In Matthew, the women don't talk at all, they keep the whole deal to themselves. What could possibly be the explanation for this? I'll tell you what. Matthew was out of the loop. He was pissed. So when he wrote his gospel, he's like, "Sure they ran and told you guys, yeah, right. That's the way God works. He only tells one of us. What do you have, like, secret knowledge?" So he writes it as: hey, these ladies saw something, and they've been talking about it ever since. Who knows?

In Mark, the women run away and tell "the disciples." Nobody specific. They just told a bunch of disciples. Mark doesn't care because he was, like, eight years old at the time. There were so many guys in beards around, he's like, "Uh, yeah, Dad, it was that one with the crooked nose." No help at all. He just knows that somebody got told.

Then we've got Luke. He creates this whole drama where a bunch of breathless women are running up to the disciples and they're going, "Oh yeah, right, you talked to an angel—what are you doing, Cult of Ishtar astrology or something? Hardy har har." This was always Luke's big issue—that every time anything was revealed to the disciples, they acted like idiots. Luke assumes that everybody is a doofus up to the time of Pentecost, and then the disciples all suddenly become spiritual master-warriors. The fact is, Luke doesn't care who the women told, because he was probably a med school student at the time and just didn't have a dog in that fight.

Which brings us to the Weird Gospel. Why would John basically call bullstuff on all the other gospel accounts? First of all, he's the only guy who says it was Mary Magdalene, nobody else, who went down there in the dark. He probably told this version to Matthew, Mark and Luke, and all three of them go, "Only the hooker? That's it? There had to be lots of women down there." And John says, "Yeah, only the hooker." Then what does she do? Hauls ass! She's terrified—there might be grave robbers inside there, mutilating the body. Not the kind of story you would make up, right? And then who does she tell? Not "the disciples." She tells two specific people—Peter and "the beloved disciple." And we know who the beloved disciple is—that was the shy way they had for referring to John himself in his own gospel. So it's basically an eyewitness account. Mary Magdalene runs up wild-eyed and raving, and they tell her, "Well, don't worry, that was God." And so later, after she calms down, she goes back and sees the two angels and then Jesus himself, only she doesn't recognize him, so he has to tell her, "Hey it's me, but don't touch me." And then she runs and tells everybody that story, which explains why all the other gospel writers have women running all over the place telling the story. And then adding in the other Mary later because they're thinking "Hey, how can the hooker go before his mom goes?" And then, when it gets really crazy, adding in additional random females like Salome.

So the answer is: Mary Magdalene sees the tomb and freaks out. Two men tell her what she saw. Jesus confirms it. Women gossip about it for the next 50 years.

The Exegete has spoken.