Abstract

If one goes to the fountainhead of the Gospel accounts concerning women as witnesses to Christ's resurrection, one has good reason to posit the following: (a) that women were the first to hear the Easter message; (b) that women, in gathering Jesus' disciples together again, played a crucial role in the founding of the earliest Christian community; and (c) that Mary Magdalene deserves a place in the creedal formulas that cite the names of those to whom the risen Christ first appeared