Someone stole the body!

[Jehanne]

The earliest "visions" of Jesus were those of Paul and were non-physical:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion...e_accounts

The appearances to the disciples came before the appearance to Paul. Paul's writings use the egeiro and anastasis 'physical' terms applied to the resurrection. No-one is claiming that the appearance to Paul was seen as physical, but all sources, including Paul, agree that the appearances to others were.

As I stated in another thread of mine, thousands of individuals claim to have been abducted by aliens, and in those accounts, their descriptions of the aliens are much more vivid and physical than anything found in the New Testament.  Now, do you accept those testimonial accounts, those of alien abductees?

Actually, that's the most thoughtful question I've seen for a long time.

I would need to study the accounts in more detail than I have time for, but my vague understanding is this:

Alien abductions (AAs) seem to begin once fiction and mass media are available to suggest, and continue suggesting, such things to the population. By contrast, the idea of resurrection was pretty much unknown before Jesus, although as with AAs, once started, resurrection accounts become much more common.

Once in the public imagination, one would expect a small proportion of the large population to get involved in AAs. That's people for you.

Vivid isn't necessarily good for an eyewitness account (the 'true' ones tend to be muddled and vague). I would also expect some form of corroborative evidence by now (esp. neutral witnesses). You might reject it as inadequate (and in some cases we would agree), but unusual supporting phenomena have gone on for a couple of thousands of years of Xianity.

I'm not sure what “more physical” means; both of them were physical (Jesus eating fish and chips etc).

AA accounts don't seem to do much more than produce minor personality changes. The resurrection accounts produced a total overhaul in religious belief, national understanding, and understanding of death etc etc ad nauseam etc.

People who believe they have been abducted by aliens usually have previous New Age beliefs, a vivid fantasy life, and suffer from sleep paralysis, according to a 2003 study by Harvard University.

Those claiming the resurrection were in for a short life of pain and suffering. Large bald men with hard faces and hard baseball bats would turn up at night to engage in theological debate. Not something to hold on to if you can avoid it. AA claimants get a little mild ridicule, but can also get free drinks and a hero's welcome at UFO conferences.

First of all, you're idea of Roman persecutions of early Christians is just plain false.  Roman persecutions of Christians were isolated; the Empire, in fact, respected the catacombs of the early Christians.  The earliest mentions of any disciples of Jesus being martyred were from the apocryphal accounts of the mid to late 2nd century, which no historian accepts.  Of course, Paul mentions the "appearances" of Jesus to the other disciples (1st Corinthians 15) and nowhere does he differentiate at all the appearance of Jesus to him (which is entirely consistent with an epileptic seizure) from those which the other disciples experienced.  In fact, we can interpret Paul's words as indicating that his experience was identical to that of the other disciples. In addition, Jesus was not the first individual to be "resurrected" from the dead and ascend into Heaven; multiple attestations of such accounts predate Jesus by centuries.

You're dismissal of alien abduction experiences is most intriguing; to expand things a bit, do you accept the "apparitions" of the Blessed Virgin Mary, such as ostensibly occurred with the Miracle of the Sun (some 70,000 witnesses), Lourdes, etc., or the visions of Sister Faustina?  Just google those for more information.

As for the later descriptions of Jesus' resurrection appearances, everyone agrees that there was embellishment upon embellishment from Mark to Matthew/Luke to John, and finally, the Gospel of Peter, which has a mile-high cross emerging from the tomb; just curious if you accept that later account?  In addition, we have the "zombie resurrection" accounts in Matthew; just curious if you accept that, along with the earthquake and darkness over Jerusalem, events which no one else bothered to record?

By the way, the followers of Charles Manson claims that he had levitated a bus over a ravine; just curious if you accept those accounts, also?