Imagine this. You’re sitting in a packed room in a house in the Mediterranean. You’re there, listening to a story from a new scroll and the reader says, “Overcome with terror and dread, they fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.”

The new story, from Mark’s Gospel, is about Jesus’s resurrection. Three of the women in the room with you remember the day well—they were there. Forty years have past since Salome, Mary the mother of James, and Mary Magdalene took spices to the tomb where Jesus was placed after the Crucifixion and discovered he was gone.

Before this story was written in Mark’s Gospel, you heard Mary Magdalene tell it herself. After describing her initial terror, Mary would continue, “But it didn’t take long, and the fear melted away.” She would describe seeing Jesus alive aga ...