Did the women reach the tomb while it was still dark, or at sunrise?

All four Gospels describe the same short stretch of time between first light and sunrise, each from a slightly different point. Mark himself puts the two ideas side by side: the women came “very early in the morning” (Greek lian prōi, very early indeed) and “at the rising of the sun” (Mark 16:2). He plainly did not think these contradicted each other; he means the very start of the day, as the sun came up. Luke’s phrase, orthrou batheos, means ‘at deep dawn’, the first grey light, and Matthew says that the day was beginning to dawn.

John describes Mary Magdalene coming “when it was yet dark” (John 20:1). The women had a walk to make, through or out of the city, and from the first light of dawn to sunrise is only about an hour. It is natural for one account to describe the women setting out and going on their way while it was still dark, and another to describe them arriving as the sun came up. Barnes sums up the time as the break of day, ‘while it was yet so dark as to render objects obscure’.

Mary Magdalene a little earlier

Some harmonists think Mary Magdalene went ahead of the other women, or came from different lodgings, and so reached the tomb a little earlier, while it was still dark; the others arrived as the sun rose.

Matthew 28:1 as Saturday evening

Matthew’s words can also be read ‘late on the sabbath, as the first day of the week drew on’; the same verb is used in Luke 23:54 of the sabbath ‘drawing on’ at sunset. A few interpreters therefore think Matthew 28:1 refers to a visit on the Saturday evening. Most take it, with the other Gospels, as Sunday dawn.