Horsham: 27th March 2026

In my last post, we were reflecting on the burial of Jesus in a garden tomb owned by Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Jewish council, who placed a large stone across the entrance to the tomb. We noticed that the Jewish leaders were in no doubt that the body was still in the grave when the Roman soldiers or temple guard arrived to secure the tomb. 

Around dawn on the Sunday morning Mary Magdalene, some of the other women, and then the disciples, discovered that the stone had been moved and the tomb was now empty.

‘Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance.‘ John 20:1

So, our next reflection is, who moved the stone?

The stone has been rolled away
The Sabbath lasted from 6pm on Friday evening until 6pm on Saturday. By that time it was dark, so it seems entirely reasonable that the women waited until dawn on Monday before heading to the tomb to anoint the body for burial. Mark’s Gospel tells us that as they approached they were anxious. ‘They had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” ‘(Mark 16:3) As we know, by the time they arrived, the tomb was opened – the stone had been moved. By who? How?

The Guards Story
There’s no indication that, when she arrived at the tomb, Mary encountered the guards. In fact, by the time Mary was arriving at the tomb, the guards were in the city, throwing themselves on the mercy of the Jewish leaders. We are left to assume that these soldiers were the source of the story which comes to us in Matthew’s Gospel that in the early morning there had been a violent earthquake, during which an angel appeared and rolled away the stone. Since none of teh other gospels mention the earthquake, it seems likely that whatever happened was localised – confined to the area of the tomb itself. In their terror, the guards were unable to move and became ‘like dead men‘. (Matthew 28:2-4). Whatever happened, these hardened men were sufficiently terrified to abandon their post and admit that they had lost the body.

The Jewish Leaders Version
The Jewish leaders would have been horrified when they heard the story of the guards. Jesus had spoken about his resurrection, and their greatest fear was that stories that he had risen would start circulating. Their solution is crude. Bribe the guards to tell a different story – that the disciples had broken in and stolen the body. We saw in the last post that the leaders broke their own commandments by violating the sabbath. On hearing the story of the guards, we now see them indulging in bribery, deceit and lies to control the narrative

¹² When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, ¹³ telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ ¹⁴ If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” ¹⁵ So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.’ (Matthew 28: 12-15)

The Women’s Version
We’ve already noted that from Matthews’s version, we can assume that the guards were in the city by the time the women arrived (Matthew 28:11). There is no mention of the story of the guards in the other gospels, which rather affirms that neither the women or the disciples witnessed either the earthquake or the supernatural removal of the stone. It’s probable that they knew nothing about the guards or their story. We have already noted the concerns of the women on the way to the tomb about how they could remove the stone, yet by the time they arrived, the tomb was open and accessible.

Who moved the stone
In our last post we noted that the actions of the teachers of the Jewish leaders tend to support the idea of resurrection which they sought to deny. Now, we notice that the only explanation of the removal of the stone is provided by the guards. Who moved the stone? The guards offer an answer. Their testimony is that the ground shook, and they witnessed the stone being moved by an angel. They were sufficiently frightened to abandon their post (a decision which could have brought them the death penalty) and rush into the city.

End Piece
So, who moved the stone? Let’s assume for one moment that the story of the removal of the stone which is attributed to the guards is correct. This would mean that the first witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus were not the disciples, or the women, but the guards.

Everyone involved in this story, the women, the disciples, the Jewish leaders, and obviously the guards, believed that something extraordinary, something supernatural, had happened. Yet it was the Jewish leaders, in their determination to discredit Jesus, who paid generously for the silence of the guards, and to promote a false narrative, that the body had been stolen. Once more, the actions of the leaders of Israel tend to support the truth of the resurrection.

Richard Jackson: Horsham,West Sussex