Whom did the women see at the tomb: one angel or two, men or angels?

The figures were angels, and Luke himself says so. His “two men” in shining garments (Luke 24:4) are described a few verses later as “a vision of angels” (Luke 24:23). Angels in the Bible often appear as men, like the two at the ascension: “two men stood by them in white apparel” (Acts 1:10). So ‘men’ (or Mark’s ‘young man’ in a long white garment) tells us what they looked like, and ‘angels’ what they were.

As for one or two, Matthew and Mark mention the angel who spoke; Luke and John mention both. A writer who speaks of one does not deny that there was a second unless he says ‘only one’, and neither does.

Sitting and standing belong to different moments. Matthew’s angel sat on the stone when he had rolled it away, as the guards saw; inside, Mark has the women see an angel sitting on the right. Luke’s verb, epestēsan (from ephistēmi), is used of someone suddenly appearing beside a person, as the angel did to the shepherds (Luke 2:9), and says more about their sudden appearing than about their posture. John’s two angels sitting at the head and the feet were seen later, on the harmony followed in these answers, by Mary Magdalene alone, after Peter and John had gone home (John 20:10–12).

Two parties of women

Some harmonists think the women arrived in two groups: the first met the single angel who spoke (Matthew and Mark), and the second, with Joanna, met two (Luke). On this view too the accounts describe different moments, not conflicting ones.