Book-Who Moved the Stone by Frank Morison

Frank Morison
1881–1950

      Albert Henry Ross, (pseudonym Frank Morison), was an English journalist and novelist.

      Ross grew up in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. Using the pseudonym Frank Morison, he wrote Who moved the stone?, first published in 1930, which analyses texts about the events related to the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. The book has been repeatedly reprinted (in 1944, 1955, 1958, 1962, 1977, 1981, 1983, 1987, 1996 and 2006).

      Ross claimed to be a skeptic regarding the resurrection of Jesus, and set out to analyse the sources and to write a short paper entitled Jesus - the Last Phase to demonstrate the apparent myth. In compiling his notes, he came to be convinced of the truth of the resurrection, and set out his reasoning in the book Who moved the stone?. Many people have claimed to have become Christian after reading the book, and some have used the work as a reference for more work on the subject.

Book	Who Moved the Stone? Preface       This study is in some ways so unusual and provocative that the writer thinks it desirable to state here very briefly how the book came to take its present form. In one sense it could have taken no other, for it is essentially a confession, the inner story of a man who originally set out to write one kind of book and found himself compelled by th ...read
	Who Moved the Stone? 1. The Book that Refused to be Written       I suppose that most writers will confess to having hidden away somewhere in the secret recesses of their most private drawer the first rough draft of a book that, for one reason or another, will never see the light of day. Usually it is Time -- that hoary offender -- who has placed his veto on the promised task. The rough outline is drawn up in ...read
	Who Moved the Stone? 2. The Real Case Against the Prisoner       In attempting to unravel the tangled skein of passions, prejudices, and political intrigues with which the last days of Jesus are interwoven, it has always seemed to me a sound principle to go straight to the heart of the mystery by studying closely the nature of the charge brought against Him. I remember this aspect of the question coming home ...read
	Who Moved the Stone? 3. What Happened Before Midnight on Thursday       I suggested on an earlier page that considerations of time played a peculiar and decisive part in determining the events that immediately preceded the death of Christ. If we wish to get at the real truth about this matter we must study it with our eyes, as it were, constantly upon the clock. Particularly is this the case when we approach two very i ...read
	Who Moved the Stone? 4. A Psychological Parallelogram of Forces       If anyone thinks that in approaching the trial of Jesus of Nazareth by Pontius Pilate he is approaching the simple and the obvious he is making a big miscalculation. This thing is extremely subtle: Outwardly, it has all the placidity of still waters, but beneath the apparent stillness there are deep and hidden currents that make it incomparably ...read
	Who Moved the Stone? 5. The Situation on Friday Afternoon       If we are to gain a teal insight into the events immediately following the death of Christ we shall have to begin by studying carefully the situation as it probably existed about four o'clock on Friday afternoon. Hitherto we have approached this subject almost exclusively from the official and priestly point of view. That point of view was extre ...read
	Who Moved the Stone? 6. Thirty-Six Hours Later       By all the ordinary standards of human reasoning, the mystery attaching to the person of Christ ought to have terminated with His death and burial. That He really did die in the full physical meaning of that term we have already judged to be one of the certainties of history, and we have seen how a consistent and straightforward account is given of ...read
	Who Moved the Stone? 7. On the Behavior of Two Sisters and the Men Who Fled in the Night       Before we can consider what these facts mean, and especially what validity attaches to the various explanations that have been brought forward to account for them, it is necessary to complete the general picture of the historic background that has hitherto engaged our thought. We saw in a preceding chapter that the sudden and unexpected arrest o ...read
	Who Moved the Stone? 8. Between Sunset and Dawn       It is strange that there is no escaping the clock in all this baffling story of the closing phase of the life of Jesus. We saw in an earlier chapter how the inexorable pressure of events precipitated the arrest, forced the hands of the authorities, prolonged the hour of the preliminary hearing, and modified profoundly the character of the Roman ...read
	Who Moved the Stone? 9. The Historic Crux of the Problem       Whoever comes to this problem has sooner or later to confront a fact that cannot be explained away or removed by any logical processes whatever. It looks us persistently in the face as the one concrete and unassailably attested certainty of the situation. This fact is that, sometime between the close of the thirty-six-hour gap and a period we ca ...read
	Who Moved the Stone? 10. The Evidence of the Principal Fisherman       There are three men in particular whose testimony concerning this matter, if it could be obtained, would be absolutely final and conclusive. The first is the fisherman, Peter, who himself led the attack on Jerusalem, and who was for several years the unchallenged leader of the movement. The second is the Prisoner's brother, James the Just, who for ...read
	Who Moved the Stone? 11. The Evidence of the Prisoner's Brother       With one single exception, which I shall deal with later, there is nothing in the whole of this strange story that impresses me so profoundly as the part played by the individual known to the ancient church as James, the Lord's brother, or, alternatively, as James the Just. For our knowledge of this man we are not entirely dependent on sources f ...read
	Who Moved the Stone? 12. The Evidence of the Man from Tarsus       It is almost impossible to imagine anything more fortunate from a purely historical point of view than the fact that, just at the moment when Christianity was taking the measure of its adversaries, there chanced to come to Jerusalem a young man, who, judged even by high modem standards, can claim to be a very competent and almost impartial observer ...read
	Who Moved the Stone? 13. The Witness of the Great Stone       I suppose that no one can read through the earliest account of the Resurrection as it is given in the Gospel of Mark without being arrested by the extraordinary significance of what we are told about the golal or great stone that, according to the evidence, was placed against the entrance to the grave. We are all familiar with the kind of shock ...read
	Who Moved the Stone? 14. Some Realities of that Far-Off Morning       What is the secret of this silent and impenetrable tomb? It is a question that presses insistently for an answer, and I propose to discuss it in the present chapter. Certain things about this story impress me profoundly. They are not the kind of things that can lightly be set aside as of minor or only relative importance. They belong to the fund ...read
	Who Moved the Stone? 15. The Servant of the Priest       Who was the young man who, if this interpretation be the true one, anticipated the women and shared with them the earliest experiences of that memorable morning? We shall probably never know, for if Mark withheld his name it must have been for very good and sufficient reasons. But there is one thought in that connection that I venture to think will ...read