"If Christ rose at all, he rose on the very day on which he was buried. According to Matthew, a guard of Roman soldiers was placed at the entrance of the sepulchre to watch that no dead person came out, and that no living person went in. But Matthew admits that one night had passed before the guard was placed at the door of Roman militarism, with its unbending and inexorable discipline, does not need to be assured that the smartest corpse that was ever laid in a tomb would not be able to pass a Roman guard without being reduced to the kind of corpse that does not require a sealed stone and a squadron of soldiers to keep it from rising. If Christ rose at all, he rose before the soldiers walked sentry in front of his tomb; in other words, he rose on the very night of the very day he was placed in the tomb." W.S. Ross, "Did Jesus Christ Rise from the Dead?" An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism (ed. Gordon Stein, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1980), p. 210.