The First Witness

In John 20:11–18, Mary Magdalene, weeping at the empty tomb, becomes the first human being to see the risen Christ. She mistakes Him for the gardener until He calls her by name — “Mary!” — and she answers “Rabbouni” (“Teacher”). He tells her “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father” and sends her to the disciples with the news. This scene is the foundation of her whole standing in the Church, and the women’s role as first witnesses across all four Gospels is among the strongest internal evidences of the narratives’ authenticity.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Equal-to-the-Apostles, Myrrh-bearer)

The Scene at the Tomb

John’s account is the fullest and the most personal. Mary comes to the tomb “early, while it was still dark,” finds the stone taken away, and runs to tell Peter and the Beloved Disciple, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him” (John 20:1–2, RSV). The two disciples run to the tomb, see the linen cloths, and return home; “but Mary stood weeping outside the tomb” (John 20:11). She stoops to look in and sees “two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet” (John 20:12). They ask why she weeps; she answers, “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him” (John 20:13). Her grief is for a stolen body; the Resurrection is not yet in her thoughts.

Then comes the turn. “Saying this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus” (John 20:14, RSV). Supposing Him to be the gardener — fittingly, for the garden of the tomb recalls the garden of Eden, and the Fathers note that the Second Adam is met by Mary as a “gardener” in a garden (cf. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, on 20:15) — she says, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away” (John 20:15). She is still seeking a corpse to anoint.

“Mary!” — “Rabbouni”

The recognition comes not by sight but by the voice and the name. “Jesus said to her, ‘Mary.’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbouni!’ (which means Teacher)” (John 20:16, RSV). The single word of her own name accomplishes what the sight of His face had not: she knows Him when He calls her, as the sheep know the shepherd’s voice, “he calls his own sheep by name… and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice” (John 10:3–4) — a connection the Fathers draw explicitly (Augustine, Tractates on John 121; Chrysostom, Homilies on John, Hom. 86). Her answer, “Rabbouni,” John preserves in the Aramaic, an intensified form of “Rabbi,” “my Master” — the cry of a disciple who has found her Teacher alive.

“Do Not Cling to Me”

The Lord’s next words are among the most discussed in the Gospel: “Jesus said to her, ‘Do not hold me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brethren and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God’” (John 20:17, RSV). The Greek mē mou haptou is a present imperative — better rendered “stop clinging to me” or “do not cling to me” than the older “touch me not” (KJV); the sense is not that she may not touch Him at all (the other women take hold of His feet in Matthew 28:9) but that she must not hold Him back, must not try to keep Him in the old way, for a new order has begun and she is to be its herald (Chrysostom, Homilies on John, Hom. 86, reads it of her clinging as before the Passion). [Disputed: the precise sense of *mē mou haptou* (John 20:17) has been read variously — (a) "do not cling to / detain me," the now-dominant rendering, taking the present imperative as forbidding continued holding; (b) the older "touch me not" (Vulgate *noli me tangere*; KJV), read by some Fathers as bearing on a transitional state of the risen body before the Ascension; the Eastern Fathers generally take it in sense (a), as a summons from clinging to mission. The contrast with Matthew 28:9, where the women "took hold of his feet," tells against an absolute prohibition of touch.]

What is not disputed is the commission that immediately follows. The risen Lord sends Mary: “go to my brethren and say to them…” (John 20:17). She is given a message and a mission, and she fulfills it: “Mary Magdalene went and said to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’; and she told them that he had said these things to her” (John 20:18, RSV). This sending is the root of her title “apostle to the apostles” (see Apostle to the Apostles): the first to see the risen Christ is the first sent to proclaim Him, and she is sent to the apostles themselves.

The Women as First Witnesses Across the Gospels

John’s intimate scene is the fullest, but all four Gospels agree that women — and Mary Magdalene above all — were the first to find the tomb empty and the first to receive the news of the Resurrection. Matthew has the risen Lord meet “Mary Magdalene and the other Mary” as they run from the tomb, and they take hold of His feet and worship Him (Matt. 28:9). Mark’s longer ending states plainly that He “appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons” (Mark 16:9). Luke has the women find the empty tomb and be told by the angels, then report to the Eleven, “but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them” (Luke 24:9–11, RSV). The agreement is remarkable: in every Gospel the first proclamation of the Resurrection is entrusted to women.

This is the famous “criterion of embarrassment.” In first-century Jewish society the testimony of women was not held equal to that of men, and was in some legal contexts not admissible; Josephus reflects the prejudice when he writes that the testimony of women was not accepted “on account of the levity and boldness of their sex” (Josephus, Antiquities 4.8.15). Had the early Church been free to invent its foundation narrative, it would not have built the proclamation of the Resurrection — the very ground of its faith — upon witnesses whose testimony the culture discounted. That all four Gospels nonetheless do so is widely regarded as a strong sign that the tradition is reporting what was remembered rather than what would have been convenient (cf. N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 2003, on the women as “embarrassing” first witnesses). The discounted witness of women is, paradoxically, an argument for the truth of the account.

The Theology of the First Witness

The Eastern tradition reads Mary’s primacy at the tomb as a deliberate reversal woven into the economy of salvation. The kontakion of the myrrh-bearers sets the “Rejoice” spoken to the women against the lament of Eve (The Pentecostarion, kontakion of the Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women); the Fathers extend the figure: as death entered through a woman’s ear, so the news of life is first given to women, and as Eve was the mother of the living in the flesh, the myrrh-bearers are heralds of the Living One (cf. Gregory of Antioch, Homily on the Myrrh-bearing Women, sixth century, who gives the risen Lord the words “Be the first preachers to the preachers”). Mary Magdalene is thus, in the Eastern reading, the firstfruits of the new creation’s proclamation — the first to seek, the first to see, the first to be sent.

References

The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version: John 20:1–18; Matthew 28:1–10; Mark 16:9–11; Luke 24:1–11; John 10:3–4.
Chrysostom, John. Homilies on the Gospel of St. John, Hom. 85–86. Trans. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series I, Vol. 14.
Cyril of Alexandria. Commentary on the Gospel of John, on John 20:15–17. Trans. P. E. Pusey / T. Randell.
Josephus, Flavius. Jewish Antiquities 4.8.15. Trans. H. St. J. Thackeray, Loeb Classical Library.
Wright, N. T. The Resurrection of the Son of God. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003.
The Pentecostarion. Trans. Holy Transfiguration Monastery. Boston, 1990.