Who informs Peter of the empty tomb, Mary or the other women?
Mary Magdalene "runs" back and tells John and Peter, John 20:2b. "Peter THEREFORE went", verse 3a. Obviously what followed was Peter and John's FIRST discovery of the EMPTY tomb.
John does not inform us that Mary also told the other women ---one concludes that she did. This implies the women were not with Peter and John when Mary had told them.
So Peter and John knew that the tomb was empty, BEFORE any women did!
Which again explains the fact that the women together went to the tomb the first time "bringing with their spices prepared and ready" ---thinking that the body was still in the sepulchre, and not knowing that the tomb was left empty by Jesus already in Luke 24.
Now it is Luke who tells that Peter went to the tomb ON HIS OWN and it is readily concluded from Luke’s story that Peter’s was a second visit not only because he is mentioned as having gone to the tomb on his own, but from how Peter ---like Cleopas and his fellow traveller--- also must have been “astonished” by the women’s report received from the two “messengers” that Jesus had been raised.
So Peter’s solo visit was after the women had learned about the empty tomb and Resurrection, and later than his first visit with John recorded by John. Luke 24 tells in verse 12 how Peter “was wandering in himself at that which was come to pass"— obviously the women’s discovery of the empty tomb and encounter with the two angels who told them that Jesus had had raised --- something not the women or he could have thought possible.
There is no doubt therefore that Peter at his first visit went because Mary had told him that she had seen the stone away from the tomb BUT DID NOT KNOW AND ONLY SURMISED that the body must have been removed from the tomb. So Peter and John went to make sure about the STONE and whether the body was really taken away or not as Mary had thought.
But Peter made his second journey to go and ascertain what the several women on instruction of the TWO ‘angelic’ WITNESSES had told the group of disciples before daybreak on ‘Sunday’ morning. Maybe he expected to find out from the messengers himself. We do not know. We only know he was confused— but this time by the report of Jesus’ Resurrection!
I therefore am of the opinion Nestle and Aland made a BIG MISTAKE to omit Peter’s visit at the tomb in Luke 24, and that Erasmus was absolutely RIGHT to include it.
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