A:Mark's Gospel, the first New Testament gospel to be written, says that Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome were told by a young man inside the tomb, that Jesus was risen, and ran from the tomb in terror, telling no one (Mark 16:8). This was the original ending of this gospel.
Matthew's Gospel says that Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were told by an angel who came down from heaven, that Jesus was risen, and ran to tell the disciples. This closely approximates the expectations for just two women to run and tell the disciples.
Luke's Gospel says that Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and other women were told by two men inside the tomb, that Jesus was risen. They went and told the disciples.
In John's Gospel, only Mary Magdalene went to the tomb, but returned to tell the others as soon as she saw the stone had been moved. It was not until the beloved disciple and Peter arrived, that they knew the tomb was empty.
The discrepancies in the gospel accounts prompted Archbishop Peter Carnley to write, "The presence of discrepancies might be a sign of historicity if we had four clearly independent but slightly different versions of the story, if only for the reason that four witnesses are better than one. But, of course, it is now impossible to argue that what we have in the four gospel accounts of the empty tomb are four contemporaneous but independent accounts of the one event. Modern redactional studies of the traditions account for the discrepancies as literary developments at the hand of later redactors of what was originally one report of the empty tomb... There is no suggestion that the tomb was discovered by different witnesses on four different occasions, so it is in fact impossible to argue that the discrepancies were introduced by different witnesses of the one event; rather, they can be explained as four different redactions for apologetic and kerygmatic reasons of a single story originating from one source."
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