“…the body was wrapped in linen and laid in the tomb. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary sat down in a place from where they could see it… Two days later, in the early hours of Sunday, the women went to the tomb. When they got there, they found it open and went in, but did not see Jesus’ body inside…” — (my paraphrase of the eyewitness accounts reported in the compilations of Mark and Doctor Luke)
Among the evidence that Jesus’ tomb really was empty is the fact that women are reported as the first witnesses. To understand the importance of this point, you need to know at least two things about the place of women in first-century Jewish society:
Women were not accepted as credible witnesses at that time.
Flavius Josephus, a first-century Jewish historian, records the following: “From women, no evidence shall be accepted, because of the levity and rashness of their sex” — Antiquities iv.8.15. This statement is in no way related to the Old Testament; it’s just Josephus’ own account of the practices of the patriarchal Jewish society of the first century.
Women were second-class citizens
Some examples that, compared to men, women were second-class citizens can be found in some Jewish texts of the time:
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“Better that the words of the Law be burned than taught to women”
JT Sotah 3:4, 19 -
“Happy is he whose children are males, but unhappy is he whose children are females”
Kiddushin 82b
Given their low social status and inability to be witnesses, it’s striking that women are reported as the discoverers of the empty tomb! To give you an idea, see how Luke reports the behavior of the male disciples when they heard the story told by the women:
”… they left the tomb and ran to tell everything to the Eleven and the rest. Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women who were with them reported the facts to the apostles, but they did not believe a single word of what they said, thinking it was something the women made up in their heads.” — Luke 24:9-11
There is no reason at all for women to be reported as the first eyewitnesses unless that really had been the truth.
If the gospel authors felt they had the liberty to manipulate the historical narrative, they would certainly have every reason in the world to remove the account that women were the first to see Jesus. There was no advantage, for the church, in adding to the story the fact that the first eyewitnesses to the empty tomb and the resurrected Jesus were women. This detail would, at the very least, weaken the credibility of the account.
If the empty tomb were a legend, then surely the male disciples would be reported as the ones who discovered the scene.
Even though it was inopportune and embarrassing that women, whose testimony would have been deemed worthless, were the main witnesses of the empty tomb, the compiler of these events chose to be faithful to the eyewitness account. This is the only explanation that makes sense.