156 | Why Paul Ignored the Most Convincing Evidence of Christ’s Resurrection?

Jesus’ Resurrection is the key to our Christian faith. As Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 15:4, “if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” So the Apostle spent several verses in chapter 15 providing evidence of the resurrection. But in the process Paul missed the most compelling argument,…

Painting of Jesus appearing to Mary Magdalene — Jesus appearing to Mary Magdalene by Alexander Andreyevich Ivano, 1835, Wikipedia, Public Domain

156 | Why Paul Ignored the Most Convincing Evidence of Christ’s Resurrection?

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Jesus’ Resurrection is the key to our Christian faith. As Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 15:4, “if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.”

So the Apostle spent several verses in chapter 15 providing evidence of the resurrection. But in the process Paul missed the most compelling argument, proving it was not a fabrication.

This is because the first people to discover the empty tomb and to see the risen Christ were women.

Mark writes in chapter 16:1, that when Mary Magdalene, Salome and Mary the mother of James went to Jesus’ body with spices, they found the the stone rolled away and Christ’s body missing

An angel told them that Jesus had risen from the dead in verse 6.

The women rushed back to tell Peter and John what had happened.

The two men along with Mary Magdalene ran to the tomb. After arriving, Peter and John went inside and saw it was empty in (John 20:4-8).

When Peter and John left, Mary stayed behind. John says she wept.

But she became the first person to encounter the resurrected Christ. Initially, Mary thought Jesus was the gardener and asked if He had removed Christ’s body (John 20:14-19).

When Jesus said, “Mary!”, she realized this was Christ and grabbed onto Him. The Lord then told her to stop clinging, because He had not yet ascended.

Jesus then told Mary to go tell the Apostles. Matthew intimates that other women also saw the resurrected Christ before the men.

Yet, when Paul provided his evidence on Christ’s resurrection in 1 C orinthians 15, he makes no mention of these women. He didn’t say that the Lord first appeared to Cephas or Peter only that the Lord quote “appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.” He then refers to the 500 brothers and sisters who saw the resurrected Christ. Paul adds that many of them were still alive at that time.

Paul then says that Jesus appeared to James, the Lord’s brother, and then last of all, him.

So, why was the women’s testimony ignored?

Well there was a a good reason. At this time, women were rarely used as witnesses to testify in court. When they did, their testimony was considered to be worth far less than a man’s.

Paul ignored the women’s testimony because it would have been irrelevant to his readers.

But it shows us that if the Gospel writers were fabricating this story, they would ensured that men were the first to see the empty tomb and the risen Christ, to give it more credibility.

I don’t know why Jesus appeared to Mary first. Maybe the Lord was responding to her tears? Maybe, Jesus was making a point that He was not a respecter of persons? Whatever the case, in its own strange way, the women’s testimony validated the Resurrection story.

The tomb was empty. Jesus had risen.