The Time
According to John the visit was on the first day of the week (Sunday, the day after Shabbat, the end of the Jewish week), while it was still dark. According to Mark and Luke it was light. Alfred Loisy believed that the original form of John here was similar to that recounted in the Codex Sinaiticus, and was intended to point to the Virgin Mary as the sole visitor, while later copyists substituted Mary Magdalene so that the gospel according to John matched accounts given in the other gospels more closely. An attempt at resolving the discrepancy in order to preserve the idea of infallibility describes Mary as making two different trips to the tomb, the first being in the dark on her own and the second at dawn with a group of women, including the other Mary.
Mark and Luke explain that the women were intending to continue the Jewish burial rituals. Matthew merely says that they came just to look at the tomb. John makes no mention of ritual and the apocryphal, heterodox Gospel of Peter claims that she came to mourn. Rabbi Bar Kappara was of the opinion (recorded in the Midrash Rabbah) that the third day was often the prime point for mourning in those days.
Read more about this topic: Empty Tomb
Famous quotes containing the words the time and/or time:
“Revolution begins with the self, in the self.... We’d better take the time to fashion revolutionary selves, revolutionary lives, revolutionary relationships. Mouth don’t win the war.”
—Toni Cade (b. 1939)
“I know, it must have been my imagination, but it makes me realize how desperately alone the Earth is. Hanging in space like a speck of food floating in the ocean. Sooner or later to be swallowed up by some creature floating by.... Time will tell, Dr. Mason. We can only wait and wonder. Wonder how, wonder when.”
—Tom Graeff. Young astronomer, Teenagers from Outer Space, after just seeing the invading spaceship through his telescope, and dismissing it (1959)
“What a devil hast thou to do with the time of the day? Unless hours were cups of sack, and minutes capons, and clocks the
tongues of bawds, and dials the signs of leaping-houses, and the blessed sun himself a fair hot wench in flame-colored
taffeta, I see no reason why thou shouldst be so superfluous
to demand the time of the day.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)