Marduk

I don’t know for sure if this practice was in effect ca. 30 CE but Jewish funerary rites are such that the tomb should not be sealed with a stone till 3 days AFTER the person died, relatives would check periodically for three days to make sure the person was really dead to avoid the dreaded premature burial.

Peter Kirby

You're moving the goal posts, Paul. I don't have the TLG cd-rom yet, so I can't do a search of the ancient Greek literature. But I don't have to do so. You said that kuliein was the only verb available to describe the movement, even if it was more of a sliding than a rolling. But Greek, like English, has generic words for movement (kinew) and pushing (wqew). You were mistaken to suggest that the word for "rolling" was the only option available.

best,
Peter Kirby

Paul Baxter

It seems, Peter, I wasn't as clear as I had hoped I was. This is normally the case, especially if you ask my wife. My suggestion was that it was possible that the gospel story writers were only accustomed to using the one verb when talking about maving large stones, and that while the verb technically means "rolling", it could also be used benerically about moving big stones. I just imagine this posibility based on the fact that most of the time if you need to move a big stone, you have to roll it. I believe it is also true in English that sometimes certain verbs get "attached" to certain nouns, but I can't think up examples off the top of my head. This is purely guesswork on my part, to be sure. My thesis would however be undermined to a large degree by extant uses of other verbs in the context of moving big stones. I have to specify big stones as small rocks can of course be moved in a greater number of ways.

On the other hand, my thesis would be proven, to some extent, if one could find evidence of the use of the rolling verb applied to stones which were clearly from the context not being "rolled".

Toto

Did you miss this from Carrier's essay:

edited to add: this could not have been the only possible verb to use for moving the stone, since gJohn uses a different verb:

Haran

There is an interesting article on the "rolling stone" issue by Amos Kloner in the Sep./Oct. 1999 issue of Biblical Archaeological Review (BAR) entitled 'Did a Rolling Stone Close Jesus' Tomb?'.

The article says: "...more than 98 percent of the Jewish tombs from this period {i.e. "Jesus' day"}, called the Second Temple period (c. first century BCE to 70 CE), were closed with square blocking stones. Of the more than 900 burial caves from the Second Temple period found in and around Jerusalem, only four are known to have used round (disk-shaped) blocking stones."

Also from the article: "...archaeology suggests this {i.e. "rolled away"} might not be the best translation of the original Greek term, kulio, which can also mean "moved" or disloged." Author Amos Kloner suggests that if we replace the term "rolled away" or "rolled back" with "moved" or "pulled back"...we will come closer to understanding the scene that confronted the two Marys."

I just thought I'd throw that out there for others to chew on. I remembered reading it...gosh...quite a while back now and had to go searching for it. I remember finding the article an interesting read. There is also a good article on the late scholar, Avraham Biran, the one who discovered the Tel-Dan Stele.

Toto

This is the article that Richard Carrier quotes and critiques. He says there is no support for Kloner's speculation that kulio can mean "moved", as opposed to "rolled".

Haran

Missed that, sorry. I won't speculate on the term since I haven't really investigated it. What does BDAG say (or has someone presented that already too)?

CX

The word used in GMt 28:2 for example is APEKULISEN which is a conjugation of the verb APOKULINW. It derives from the Greek roots APO (= apart, away) and KULINW = to roll. I've checked 4 lexicons and nowhere is there any indication that it means other than "to roll". Additionally AMt uses words to mean remove or move (cf. METHREN GMt 13:53) elsewhere. It is clear that the intention is that the stone was rolled and therefore was round. In fact if AMt had intended to convey the meaning that a square stone was lifted up and shifted over the verb METAIRO would have been a much more explicit choice. As it stands I can see no way to make APOKULINW mean "move" instead of "roll away". Incidentally there appears to be no entry in Kittel's TDNT for APOKULINW or it's root KULINW.