This contribution examines the contrasting versions of the appearance of the Risen Christ in the writings incorporated into the New Testament: from the denied presence of Jesus, who does not appear as risen in the oldest manuscripts of the Gospel of Mark, to the Gospel of John, where the Risen One asks Mary Magdalene not to hold on to him. His absence - or his presence - will become palpable only later for Thomas. Loss, however, did not lead the disciples to forget him. On the contrary, faith in the resurrection, understood as the materialization of physical absence through the image of the Risen Christ, became a structural element for reworking Jesus' sayings and deeds. Why, at a certain point, did someone begin to claim that the tomb was empty and to explain that emptiness through the resurrection? Had the disciples stolen the body, as an accusation already attested in Matthew maintained? Why "invent" women as witnesses to such an extraordinary event if a woman was not considered credible even in court on far more plausible matters? Did the emotional impact caused by the loss of Jesus generate a hallucination in a "hysterical" woman, as the pagan Celsus would later describe her? Starting from these questions, the aim is to analyze the conflicting accounts of the appearances of the Risen Christ in order to investigate specifically the role of women - one or two, not present in all versions - in relation to their rights and their credibility as witnesses within a cultural and legal context, such as that of the period, marked by profound gender disparities. Far from assuming that it is possible to present even remotely satisfactory reconstructions on a topic of such magnitude, which deserves the utmost respect, this study nonetheless maintains that historical inquiry cannot retreat in the face of phenomena of faith. For if the resurrection is certainly a matter of faith, faith in the resurrection is also a historical matter.