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Did Jesus Really Rise From the Dead?
*a short excerpt from the link*
A legend begins with a basic story (true or false) that grows into something more embellished and exaggerated as the years pass. When we look at the documents of the resurrection of Jesus, we see that the earliest accounts are very simple, later retellings are more complex, and the latest tales are fantastic. In other words, they look exactly like a legend.
The documents that contain a resurrection story[30] are usually dated like this:
Writer Date Resurrection passage
Paul: 50-55 (I Cor. 15:3-8)
Mark: 70 (Mark 16)
Matthew: 80 (Matthew 28)
Luke: 85 (Luke 24)
Gospel of Peter: 85-90 (Fragment)
John: 95 (John 20-21)
This is the general dating agreed upon by most scholars, including the Westar Institute. Some conservative scholars prefer to date them earlier, and others have moved some of them later, but this would not change the order of the writing [31], which is more important than the actual dates when considering legendary growth. Shifting the dates changes the shape but not the fact of the growth curve.
I made a list of things I consider "extraordinary" (natural and supernatural) in the stories between the crucifixion and ascension of Jesus: earthquakes, angel(s), rolling stone, dead bodies crawling from Jerusalem graves ("Halloween"[32]), Jesus appearing out of thin air ("Now you see him") and disappearing ("Now you don't"), the "fish story" miracle[33], Peter's noncanonical "extravaganza" exit from the tomb (see below), a giant Jesus with head in the clouds, a talking cross, and a bodily ascension into heaven. Perhaps others would choose a slightly different list, but I'm certain it would include most of the same.
Then I counted the number of extraordinary events that appear in each account:
Writer Extraordinary events
Paul: 0
Mark: 1
Matthew: 4
Luke: 5
Peter: 6
John: 8+
Putting these on a time graph produces illustration 1.[34]
Notice that the curve goes up as the years pass. The later resurrection reports contain more extraordinary events than the earlier ones, so it is clear that the story, at least in the telling, has evolved and expanded over time.
In finer detail, we can count the number of messengers at the tomb, which also grows over time, as well as the certainty of the claim that they were angels:
Paul: 0 angels
Mark: 1 young man, sitting
Matthew: 1 angel, sitting
Luke: 2 men, standing
Peter: 2 men/angels, walking
John: 2 angels, sitting
Other items fit the pattern. Bodily appearances are absent from the first two accounts, but show up in the last four accounts, starting in the year 80. The bodily ascension is absent from the first three stories, but appears in the last three, starting in the year 85.
This reveals the footprints of legend.
The mistake many modern Christians make is to view 30 CE backward through the distorted lens of 80-100 CE, more than a half century later. They forcibly superimpose the extraordinary tales of the late Gospels anachronistically upon the plainer views of the first Christians, pretending naively that all Christians believed exactly the same thing across the entire first century.
