John 20:18 - Definition and Overview

John 20:18 is the eighteenth verse of the twentieth chapter of the Gospel of John in the Bible. It occurs after Jesus' resurrection and appearance to Mary Magdalene. In John 20:17 he gave Mary a message to deliver to his disciples. John 20:18 describes Mary's delivering of this message to the disciples.

In the King James Version of the Bible the text reads:

Mary Magdalene went and told

the disciples that she had

seen the Lord, and that he

had said these things to her.

The New International Version translates the passage as:

Mary Magdalene went to the

disciples with the news:

"I have seen the Lord!" And

she told them that he had

said these things to her.

John gives far less detail of this event than the other Gospels who go into some detail about the meeting between Mary and the disciples and discuss who they did not believe what Mary had told them, John ignores all of this. Some of the other Gospels also mention other appearances by Jesus. For instance in Luke 24 he appears to two of the disciples while they are travelling on the road to Emmaus and tells them to seek out and inform the other disciples. John only describes Mary as being given the task. That it was Mary who was sent to tell the disciples of the resurrection is considered by many scholars to reflect the central importance of Mary. The event led St. Augustine, for instance, to call Mary the "Apostle to the Apostles."

This passage is not completely consistent with the other Gospels. Some scholars, such as Norman Geisler, feel that for John's resurrection account to fit logically with the other three gospels John must have left out several events occurring between Mary's leaving Jesus and her meeting with the disciples. These include the events related in as well as certain incidents in Matthew and Luke.

References

• John Calvin's commentary on John 20:16-18 (http://www.ccel.org/c/calvin/comment3/comm_vol35/htm/x.iii.htm)
• Jesus Appears to His Disciples (http://bible.gospelcom.net/resources/commentaries/?action=getCommentaryText&cid=4&source=1&seq=i.50.20.2)
• Comparisson of the ressurection accounts (http://www.new-life.net/resurrct.htm)
• The Resurrection Account: Does it Make Sense? (http://www.apuritansmind.com/Apologetics/ResurrectionAccount.htm)