Would Christians hate to invent (as a lie), “Mary & women are the empty tomb’s witness-heralds!”

• C. E. B. Cranfeld: “One feature of all four gospel accounts which goes a long way towards authenticating the story as a whole is the prominence of women; for this is a feature which the early Church would not be likely to invent…” [The Gospel According to Mark: Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary (Cambridge, 1959), 463.] The point is often made, with scholars most often emphasizing how blatantly suboptimal using women witnesses would be: • Adela Yarbro Collins: “[On the empty tomb] The status of women in the ancient world was such that a story fabricated as proof or apology would not be based on the testimony of women.” [The Beginning of the Gospel (Wipf and Stock, 2001), 127.]
• James Dunn: “Mary has the honour of reporting the empty tomb to the other disciples — apostola apostolorum. Yet, as is well known, in Middle Eastern society of the time women were not regarded as reliable witnesses… Why then attribute such testimony to women — unless that was what was remembered as being the case? In contrast, can it be seriously argued that such a story would be contrived in the cities and/or village communities of first-century Palestine, a story which would have to stand up before public incredulity and prejudice?” [Jesus Remembered (Eerdmans, 2003), 832-833.]
• Stephen Davis: “[If legendary] why is it that the story is made to hang so crucially on the testimony of women, whose evidence was not legally admissible in Jewish proceedings?” [Risen Indeed (Eerdmans, 1993), 73.]
• Robert Stein: “The later the creation of the story and the greater the apologetic motive for its creation, the more difficult it is to imagine creating in terms of almost exclusively female witnesses. Added to this difficulty is the fact that apart from the empty tomb tradition, women played almost no role in the resurrection traditions.” [Jesus the Messiah (IVP, 1996), 264-65.]
• C. F. D. Moule: “…it is difficult to explain how a story that grew up late and took shape merely in accord with the supposed demands of apologetic came to be framed in terms almost exclusively of women witnesses, who, as such, were notoriously invalid witnesses according to Jewish principles of evidence. The later and the more fictitious the story, the harder it is to explain why the apostles are not brought to the forefront as witnesses.” [The Significance of the Message of the Resurrection for Faith in Jesus Christ (SCM, 1968), 9.] They may be hinting at a nearby argument, namely that the account chokes apologetics. (see here). Either way, there’s no reason to use these women: • William Placher: “For a good many years, I thought the whole empty tomb tradition was just a story that had grown up later among Christians … If someone had invented the story, however, I can think of no reason why women would have been cited as the witnesses.” [Jesus the Savior (Westminster, 2001), 169.] Similar comments are often made concerning Mary’s primary role, given that she is a Demoniac. • Ben Witherington: “You don’t make up a first appearance of the risen Jesus to a Galilean peasant woman who was formerly demon possessed—not if you want to start an evangelistic religion.” [article]