The Empty Tomb

Whatever was added after it, the Gospel of Mark in its earliest recoverable form reaches its climax in the empty-tomb narrative of 16:1–8: the women coming at dawn with spices, the great stone already rolled away, the young man clothed in white announcing “He is risen; he is not here,” the charge to tell the disciples and Peter, and the women fleeing in fear and trembling, saying nothing to anyone. This file reads the empty-tomb scene on its own terms — its proclamation, its mystery, and the awe with which Mark leaves his reader.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle and Evangelist)

The Women at the Tomb

Mark’s resurrection narrative opens with the faithfulness of the women. “When the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him” (Mark 16:1, KJV). These are the same women who alone of Jesus’ followers remained at the cross when the male disciples had fled (15:40–41), and who watched where the body was laid (15:47). Coming “very early in the morning the first day of the week… at the rising of the sun” (16:2, KJV), they worry over a practical obstacle: “Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre?” (16:3, KJV). The detail is characteristically Markan — concrete, human, attentive to the women’s anxiety. The Orthodox tradition honors these women as the Myrrh-bearers (Myrophoroi), celebrated on the third Sunday of Pascha, and as the first witnesses of the resurrection — the women who came to anoint a corpse and found instead the empty tomb.

The Stone and the Young Man

The first sign is the stone. “And when they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away: for it was very great” (Mark 16:4, KJV). Mark gives no angel descending, no earthquake (as in Matthew); the stone is simply, already, moved — the obstacle the women feared removed before they arrive. Entering the tomb, “they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment; and they were affrighted” (16:5, KJV). The figure is a neaniskos, a “young man,” in a white robe — Mark does not call him an angel, though the white garment and the women’s terror mark him as a heavenly messenger. Many readers note the deliberate contrast with the other neaniskos of the Gospel: the young man who at Jesus’ arrest fled naked, abandoning his linen cloth (14:51–52; see The Way of the Cross). The one fled in shame and nakedness from the cross; this one sits robed in white at the empty tomb, proclaiming the resurrection — failure answered by glory, nakedness by the white robe of victory.

“He Is Risen; He Is Not Here”

The young man speaks the Gospel’s central proclamation: “Be not affrighted: Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him” (Mark 16:6, KJV). Every word is weighed. The one they seek is named in his full earthly identity — “Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified” — and of this crucified one it is announced that he “is risen” (egerthe, “he has been raised”) and “is not here.” The empty place — “behold the place where they laid him” — is the silent witness; the tomb that held the crucified is empty because death could not hold him. The messenger then gives a commission: “But go your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee: there shall ye see him, as he said unto you” (16:7, KJV). The naming of Peter is tender and pointed — Peter, who denied his Lord three times (14:66–72), is singled out by name for the good news, a word of restoration to the chief of the apostles who had fallen (see Peter and the Gospel).

“For They Were Afraid”: The Ending in Awe

Then comes the famous, abrupt close: “And they went out quickly, and fled from the sepulchre; for they trembled and were amazed: neither said they any thing to any man; for they were afraid” (Mark 16:8, KJV). On the reading of the earliest manuscripts, the Gospel ends here, on the women’s fear and silence (on the textual question see The Endings of Mark). This ending has troubled and fascinated readers for centuries: a Gospel of the resurrection that ends not with a triumphant appearance but with terrified women who “said nothing to anyone.” Yet many interpreters find in it a profound theological fittingness. The fear and trembling (tromos and ekstasis) are the proper response to the inbreaking of God — the same awe that runs through Mark before the holy and the divine. The silence is, in the narrative’s irony, not the last word: the very existence of the Gospel proves the women did not stay silent forever; the reader, holding the book, is implicitly charged to take up the proclamation the women first fled from. On this reading, Mark ends with an open door: the risen Lord “goeth before you into Galilee,” and the reader is sent to follow and to find him.

The Orthodox Reading of the Empty Tomb

The Orthodox Church receives the empty-tomb narrative within the full proclamation of Pascha and reads it alongside the resurrection appearances supplied by the longer ending (16:9–20) and the other Gospels. The empty tomb is, for the Fathers, the first and indispensable sign — “Why seek ye the living among the dead?” — but it is not the whole; it points beyond itself to the risen and ascended Lord and to his descent into Hades, which Orthodox iconography places at the center of the Resurrection icon (the Anastasis, Christ raising Adam and Eve from the tomb). The Myrrh-bearing women are honored in the liturgical calendar precisely as those who, in love and fidelity, came to the tomb and became the first heralds of the empty grave (the Sunday of the Myrrh-bearers, the third Sunday of Pascha). The awe and fear with which Mark ends are, for the Orthodox reader, no defect but the truthful note: before the conquest of death, the right posture is trembling worship, which the Paschal services transfigure into joy — “Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered” — as fear gives way to the radiant proclamation, “Christ is risen!” The silence of 16:8 is the held breath before the Paschal shout (see Great Feasts).

See Also

References

  • The Gospel according to Mark (14:51–52, 66–72; 15:40–47; 16:1–8). King James Version and Greek New Testament consulted.
  • France, R. T. The Gospel of Mark (NIGTC). Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002 (on 16:1–8 and the abrupt ending).
  • Marcus, Joel. Mark 8–16 (Anchor Yale Bible). New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.
  • Juel, Donald. A Master of Surprise: Mark Interpreted. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994 (on the ending in fear).
  • The Pentecostarion (the Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women; the Paschal services and the Anastasis).