A Fresh Look at the Road to Emmaus

In Luke 24:13-32, we’re told about a mysterious encounter two disciples had with the risen Jesus, in the afternoon on the day of his resurrection. It’s sometimes called “The Emmaus Road Encounter,” because these two disciples encounter him while they’re on their way to Emmaus, a small village about seven miles outside of Jerusalem. At first they don’t know it’s him, and the text strongly implies that somehow or other they are being supernaturally prevented from recognizing him. They start sharing with him the bewildering story they'd heard that morning, about an empty tomb and a risen Lord, and he explains to them how it had all been predicted in the Old Testament Scriptures. When they finally reach their destination, and he joins them for dinner, we’re told that they suddenly recognize him “in the breaking of the bread.” The instant it dawns on them who they’ve been talking to, however, he vanishes, leaving them with racing thoughts and burning hearts.

It’s a great story, one of the most famous post-resurrection encounters in the New Testament. One Easter I was researching it for a sermon, however, when, like the disciples recognizing Jesus in the breaking of the bread, I came across some details that helped me recognize someone in the story I'd never seen before.

 

You see: every illustration of the road to Emmaus I’ve ever seen has always been roughly the same. Two men are seen, walking along an idyllic country road, with a mysterious stranger (usually in white) walking between them. I’ve sprinkled a few samples throughout this post to help you imagine it.

The details may vary somewhat from picture to picture, but, in addition to the presence of the mysterious stranger, there’s one detail they all share in common. The two disciples are always both depicted as being male. I’ve never seen a painting of the Emmaus Road Encounter that bucks this trend: a mysterious Jesus walking along the road with two men.

Now, this post is primarily an exegetical reflection, not an advocacy piece, but let me humbly point out that there is nothing in the text that would require both disciples to be male, and there are, actually, strong exegetical reasons to suspect that one of the two was, in fact, female.

Certainly, one of them is quite clearly male. We’re told he’s named Cleopas, and he seems to be doing most of the talking. The other disciple remains unnamed throughout the encounter, and, though he or she may have spoken at some point, the narrative uses a plural verb, “they said,” to describe it; that is to say, it only describes the second disciple speaking with Cleopas together, so we don't have any specific personal pronouns we can use to determine his or her gender. 

All we know that he or she was traveling with someone named Cleopas, and they apparently lived together; at least, they’re staying at the same house when they arrive at Emmaus.

This details stands out pretty markedly when you go looking elsewhere in the New Testament for evidence of who this Cleopas might have been, and who might have been living with him in Emmaus.

In John 19:25, we’re told that when Jesus was crucified, a woman named Mary, was standing at his cross, along with Jesus’s mother, Jesus’s aunt, and Mary Magdalene. This fourth woman, we’re told, was “Mary the wife of Clopas.”

Could that Mary, the wife of a man named Clopas, be the same disciple in Luke 24:13, walking along the road with a man named Cleopas? 

Before you answer, I should point out that: (a) both names are a variation on the Greek name Cleopater; (b) some ancient manuscripts spell the name in John 19:25 as Cleophas; and (c) at least some Christian traditions hold that they are the same person.

Of course, if the Cleopas that Jesus met on the road to Emmaus really was the same Clopas mentioned in John 19:25, whose wife was standing at the cross when the Lord died, then it doesn’t take much to connect the dots. It’s very likely, and certainly not impossible, that the second disciple on the road to Emmaus was a woman, Clopas’s wife, herself a devoted follower of Jesus Christ.

Even if these exegetical arguments don’t satisfy, it does raise some crucial questions: why do we always assume that the unnamed disciple in the story was male, when there’s nothing in the text itself to justify that assumption?

And what does it say about us and our biases when reading Scripture, our tendency to project onto the text what we assume is there, instead of opening ourselves to see what’s really there?

And what else might we be missing in our reading of the Scripture—who else might we be excluding from the story—because our cultural biases, our complacency with tradition, and/or our spiritual prejudices have blinded us to their presence?