John 20:18 is the eighteenth verse of the twentieth chapter of the Gospel of John

Gospel of John

The Gospel According to John , commonly referred to as the Gospel of John or simply John, and often referred to in New Testament scholarship as the Fourth Gospel, is an account of the public ministry of Jesus...

 in the Bible

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

. It occurs after Jesus

Jesus

Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...

' resurrection

Resurrection

Resurrection refers to the literal coming back to life of the biologically dead. It is used both with respect to particular individuals or the belief in a General Resurrection of the dead at the end of the world. The General Resurrection is featured prominently in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim...

 and appearance to Mary Magdalene

Mary Magdalene

Mary Magdalene was one of Jesus' most celebrated disciples, and the most important woman disciple in the movement of Jesus. Jesus cleansed her of "seven demons", conventionally interpreted as referring to complex illnesses...

. In John 20:17

John 20:17

John 20:17 is a verse in the Gospel of John in the New Testament. The verse takes place in Jesus's tomb just after Mary Magdalene has realized that he has returned from the dead....

 he gave Mary a message to deliver to his disciples. John 20:18 describes Mary's delivering of this message to the disciples.

In the King James Version of the Bible the text reads:

Mary Magdalene went and told

the disciples that she had

seen the Lord, and that he

had said these things to her.

The World English Bible

World English Bible

The World English Bible is a public domain translation of the Bible that is currently in draft form. Work on the World English Bible began in 1997 and was known as the American Standard Version 1997...

 translates the passage as:

Mary Magdalene came and told

the disciples that she had

seen the Lord, and that he had

said these things to her.

John gives far less detail of this event than the other Gospels who go into some detail about the meeting between Mary and the disciples and discuss who they did not believe what Mary had told them, John ignores all of this. Some of the other Gospels also mention other appearances by Jesus. For instance in Luke 24 he appears to two of the disciples while they are travelling on the road to Emmaus and tells them to seek out and inform the other disciples. John only describes Mary as being given the task. That it was Mary who was sent to tell the disciples of the resurrection is considered by many scholars to reflect the central importance of Mary. The event led Saint Augustine

Augustine of Hippo

Augustine of Hippo , also known as Augustine, St. Augustine, St. Austin, St. Augoustinos, Blessed Augustine, or St. Augustine the Blessed, was Bishop of Hippo Regius . He was a Latin-speaking philosopher and theologian who lived in the Roman Africa Province...

, for instance, to call Mary the "Apostle to the Apostles."

This passage is not completely consistent with the other Gospels. Some scholars, such as Norman Geisler

Norman Geisler

Norman L. Geisler is a Christian apologist and the co-founder of Southern Evangelical Seminary outside Charlotte, North Carolina, where he formerly taught. He holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Jesuit Loyola University...

, feel that for John's resurrection account to fit logically with the other three gospels John must have left out several events occurring between Mary's leaving Jesus and her meeting with the disciples. These include the events related in Matthew 28:9

Matthew 28:9

Matthew 28:9 is the ninth verse of the twenty-eighth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament. This verse is part of the resurrection narrative...

as well as certain incidents in Mark and Luke.