Much is made of alleged inconsistencies among the New Testament resurrection accounts. Their common ground is often underestimated. One thing they have in common that doesn't get discussed much is the shortness of the period when the large majority of the appearances occurred. I'm allowing an exception for the later appearance to Paul, but he acknowledges that his experience was unusual (1 Corinthians 15:8). Paul has the other appearances occurring before the one to him. And the gospels and Acts align well with what Paul reports. Luke puts the pre-Pauline appearances within a forty-day timeframe (Acts 1:3). John refers to multiple weeks of appearances (John 20:26), but doesn't exceed the forty days referred to by Luke. They're consistent. Matthew and Mark don't set down a timeframe, but the modest amount of appearance material in both gospels (Mark does anticipate the appearance in Galilee, though he doesn't narrate it) lines up well with the sort of shorter timespan found in the other sources.
A good way to appreciate this agreement among the sources is to think of how easily they could have disagreed and what motives they could have had for doing so. Reports of later resurrection appearances could have been used by later church leaders to get more authority or attention. Even among the original apostles, if there wasn't much concern about accuracy, carefulness, and such, then why think all of the sources would end up with the same timespan? Why wouldn't one or more of them extend the pre-Pauline appearances out to several months, a few years, or whatever other length of time?
There isn't maximal evidence of agreement among the sources on these issues. There is some ambiguity. But there is substantial agreement in a context in which they could easily have disagreed a lot instead.
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