A critical take on Inspiring Phiosophy's evidence for the Resurrection

[Abigail]

Where is the word used for a specified square shape object? And are you really trying to compare dice that fit in your hand to a "very large" tombstone?

Sigh. It doesn,t matter that they are small it is to demonstrate that we can and do use the word roll of non-round objects when experience tells us they are easier to roll than drag. The same applies when I move large paving slabs in my garden by rolling. yes they do slap down a bit as they roll from corner to side but still it is easier than dragging them because that really is back aching work because of the friction.

Urban C. von Wahlde is not an archaeologist. Kloner says "The most surprising of my findings is that the blocking stone in front of the tomb was square, not round. So it could not, as many New Testament translations have it, be “rolled away”; it could only be pulled back or away."
http://www.jacksonsnyder.com/yah/man...l_of_jesus.pdf

Yes but von Wahlde actually tried ways of moving the stones and guess what he found you need to use rolling at some stage. Pages back I posted a link https://beliefmap.org/jesus-resurrec...-square-stone/ which contained this quote about an archaeologist with twenty years experience

Shimon Gibson (Leading Archaeologist; prof., 20+yrs excavating): “However, I think this unlikely, and from my own (back-breaking) experience in archaeological excavations with the opening of stone doors of tombs, it is clear to me that even a rectangular or square stone had to be “rolled” in and out of position when a tomb was being closed or opened. There are hundreds of examples of tombs from this period in the Jerusalem area, with small entrances sealed with rectangular or square doors.” [The Final Days of Jesus (Harper Collins, 2009), 157.]
Dale Allison (NT & Early Chr. prof.): “Kloner suggests that προσxυλίω and äποκυλίω could refer to rolling or moving an unrounded object. This seems plausible; cf. Josh 10:18 LXX; 2 Kgs 9:33 LXX; Diodorus Siculus 17.68.2.” [Resurrecting Jesus (Continuum Int., 2005), 363.]

These people are talking from experience and that would be what the same for the women at the tomb.

The important bits to take away from this.

"But when he steadfastly refused this petition (for he was a man of a very inflexible disposition, and very merciless as well as very obstinate)"

"...in respect of his corruption, and his acts of insolence, and his rapine, and his habit of insulting people, and his cruelty, and his continual murders of people untried and uncondemned, and his never ending, and gratuitous, and most grievous inhumanity. Therefore, being exceedingly angry, and being at all times a man of most ferocious passions, he was in great perplexity, neither venturing to take down what he had once set up, nor wishing to do any thing which could be acceptable to his subjects, and at the same time being sufficiently acquainted with the firmness of Tiberius on these points."

Surely the important bit is that the Jews got him to change his mind as a fuller quote shows. Here following on in the very next sentence from where you left off

And those who were in power in our nation, seeing this, and perceiving that he was inclined to change his mind as to what he had done, but that he was not willing to be thought to do so, wrote a most supplicatory letter to Tiberius. (304) And he, when he had read it, what did he say of Pilate, and what threats did he utter against him! But it is beside our purpose at present to relate to you how very angry he was, although he was not very liable to sudden anger; since the facts speak for themselves; (305) for immediately, without putting any thing off till the next day, he wrote a letter, reproaching and reviling him in the most bitter manner for his act of unprecedented audacity and wickedness, and commanding him immediately to take down the shields and to convey them away from the metropolis of Judaea to Caesarea, on the sea which had been named Caesarea Augusta, after his grandfather, in order that they might be set up in the temple of Augustus. And accordingly, they were set up in that edifice. And in this way he provided for two matters: both for the honour due to the emperor, and for the preservation of the ancient customs of the city.