Replacing Peter

A group of women from Galilee suddenly appears in Matthew 27:55.  They are “beholding from a distance” ( makrothen ), having “followed” Jesus ( eklouthesan ).

This is precisely the description given of Peter in 26:58: When Jesus is arrested, he too “follows Him at a distance” ( ekolouthe auto apo makrothen ).  The women have not only taken up the place of the disciples in general, but specifically of Peter, who had confessed Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of the living God.

In fact, the women are the ones who have been following Jesus throughout the gospel.

Matthew uses the disciple-word “follow” some 24 times in his gospel.  Initially, the word describes the disciples’ immediate forsaking of their nets to follow Jesus (4:20, 22; cf. 9:9), but almost immediately the multitude takes the place of the twelve as those who “follow” Jesus (4:25; 8:1; 12:15; 14:13; 19:2; 20:29, 34; 21:9).  Apart from Jesus’ initial call, Matthew doesn’t say that any disciples “follows” Jesus except Peter in 26:58, and he’s following from a distance.  Peter says he’s forsaken everything to follow Jesus, and Jesus agrees (19:27-28), but we don’t actually see it happening.

All along, though, a crowd of “many women” have been invisibly part of the “multitude” following Jesus from Galilee.  While, in Matthew’s telling. the multitude and disciples have abandoned Jesus at the cross and tomb, however, these women stick around.  While Judas betrays, and Peter denies, and the crowd cries out for Jesus’ blood, the women from Galilee are near enough to watch and wait, and to become witnesses of Jesus’ resurrection.