Were the angels at the tomb sitting or standing?

The accounts describe different moments of the same morning. Matthew’s angel sat on the stone after rolling it away, which the guards saw before the women arrived (Matthew 28:2–4). Inside the tomb, Mark says, the women saw a young man “sitting on the right side” (Mark 16:5), and John’s two angels, “sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the feet” (John 20:12), were seen later, on the harmony followed in these answers, by Mary Magdalene alone, after Peter and John had gone home (20:10). Only Luke has them standing, and his verb, epestēsan (from ephistēmi), is used of someone suddenly appearing beside a person, as when the angel of the Lord “came upon” the shepherds (Luke 2:9) and Peter in prison (Acts 12:7). It says that the two were suddenly there beside the women, not that neither had been sitting a moment before.

Even read as posture, the accounts fit easily. Barnes puts it simply: when the women entered, the angel was sitting; as they came in, he rose and stood. A seated figure who rises to speak is a natural sight. How many figures there were, whether men or angels, and the order of that morning are taken up in ‘Whom did the women see at the tomb: one angel or two, men or angels?’.