The misplaced stone

"Proof of the Resurrection" is common to the more aggressive form of Christian apologetic. I got into it with some such apologists in the late 1990s, back when such apologetic was prevalent here. But these propagandists haven't given up: from 2016, here's Youtuber Cross Examined. That Tuber's strategery was to raise up a straw aggressive atheist, whose arguments may be knocked down with a clear conscience.

I am not an atheist. I am, as it happens, a Christian in Augustine's tradition. As such a Christian, I prefer that our arguments be cogent. Cross Examined owns a narrative about that Empty Tomb. So let's bring in his witnesses.

We are independently sure of a burial tradition; Paul quotes it in a creed. My question here is on how secure was the burial. Those witnesses are four, presently, since we lack the endings of Berlin 11740 and(/or?) of Egerton. And we agree to reject the Gospel of Peter so-called; and Epistula Apostolorum.

(Papias tended to rely on Mark for a general narrative; if he disliked Mark's narrative frame, the burial story wouldn't be affected since - where else ya gonna tell it. Also Papias owned a Judas tradition in common with Luke - and not with Matthew / Ignatius; and some of our Lord's sayings now in John.)

John 19:38-42 details Joseph of Arimathea, a believer in what Mark would call "God's Kingdom" - that is: of Jesus' message. Joseph, on the Day Of Preparation before "the Sabbath" (which may be Friday, or may be the day before Passover), laid Jesus' body to rest in an unused tomb. Mark 15:42-7 says about the same. In John 20:1 / Mark 16:3-4, Mary Magdalene (perhaps with others) went to the tomb expecting to see a sealing rock there; and she did see such a rock, but off to a side. Mary, needless to say, could not have moved such a boulder herself nor with a whole flock of females. Mary duly reported back to Peter and to other disciples, ignorant of these events, that the stone had been "removed" and (in John 20:2) we don’t know where they have put him. Neither Gospel mentions a guard at the tomb. Neither does Luke, following Mark.

John adds to ch. 19 Nicodemus, in chiasm with the first part of that gospel; he adds also that Joseph was a Believer in secret. Mark for his part adds instead Mary and "Umm Joses" as observers (like Luke 23:55), anticipating the expectation 16:3. Then, Mark 16 fills out the Johannine "we": that accompanying Mary to the tomb were "Umm Jaqob" and Salome (Luke 24:10 will name Mary, Umm Jaqob, and Joanna, in retrospect). But these are quibbles. What concerns me here is Mark 15:42-7, that someone did roll the stone over that tomb in the first place: Joseph of Arimathea.

John - who, remember, puts two men at the site - does not record that they had moved the rock. On the other extreme is Matthew 27:62-6, setting a guard over that rock; and 28:11-15, explaining why the guards said nothing. (If Goodacre's thesis that Luke knew Matthew holds, Matthew 27:62-6 + 28:11-15 imply a later addition to this text. Also see what Justin had heard from the Jews in Trypho 108, not perhaps yet in his Gospel.)

Perhaps this very discrepancy informed the Jews in (pseudo)Matthew's time: if the stone had never been placed there, and if there was no guard, and if there were no disinterested witnesses . . .