Which women went to the tomb on Easter morning, and how many were there?

None of the Gospels says that only the women it names went to the tomb. Each names the women who matter for its account, and Mary Magdalene is in all four. Luke shows that the group, the women from Galilee who had watched the burial and prepared spices (Luke 23:55–56), was larger than any one list: besides the three he names there were “other women that were with them” (Luke 24:10).

John tells the story through Mary Magdalene because he follows her back to Peter and then to the tomb again. Even so, he lets slip that she had not come alone: her first words to Peter are “we know not where they have laid him” (John 20:2), with the plural ‘we’ (Greek oidamen). Matthew names the two Marys, who had sat watching the tomb on the Friday evening (Matthew 27:61); Mark adds Salome, and Luke adds Joanna, whom his Gospel had already introduced (Luke 8:3).

A shorter list would contradict a longer one only if it said ‘these and no others’, and none does. Different witnesses naming different members of one group is what we expect from independent accounts, and it fits the single harmony of the morning followed in these answers: the women came together; Mary Magdalene, seeing the stone moved, ran back to Peter and John; and the others went on into the tomb.

Two parties of women

Some harmonists suggest that the women came in two groups from different lodgings, perhaps the two Marys and Salome in one and Joanna and her companions in another, arriving one after the other. That would also explain why the Gospels group the names differently. The texts do not say so, but nothing in them rules it out.

No Gospel gives the total number of women. Luke’s wording implies at least five.