Someone stole the body!

[Vicki Q]

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.

The NT, of course, talks about persecutions of Xians, writing within easy living memory. We have Nero's 64AD persecution (Suetonius),  Josephus Antiquities (93/94 AD) mentions the earlier stoning of Jesus brother, and Pliny's Epistulae X.96 (110AD) discusses the torture and other routine nastiness to Xians. Those are just the ones off the top of my head.

The Xian message said to the Jewish authorities that the Jesus messianic movement was still very active. To the religious authorities that the Temple was no longer relevant. To the Zealots and Pharisees that following Torah was unnecessary. To the Jewish nation that being Jewish wasn't a passport to God's Kingdom. To the Romans that Jesus, not Caesar was king, and to the city states that the gods that protected them were to be ignored.

Pretty much anyone in the Mediterranean with a history of violence regarded hurting you as their duty. The best modern parallel would be wandering around Tehran, wearing FSM tee-shirts, preaching that Islam has got it wrong.

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

1 Corinthians 15 he sensibly chooses a word to cover both types of appearance on his list. To repeat what I said earlier, Paul's appearance wasn't physical, but his choices elsewhere of egeiro and anastasis confirms the Gospel accounts that the others were.

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.

I'd be interested for you to give examples. Please choose your best two; best avoid the relevant Wikipedia page, because I've been there, undone that.
 

...to expand things a bit, do you accept the "apparitions" of the Blessed Virgin Mary...Lourdes...visions of Sister Faustina...Gospel of Peter, which has a mile-high cross..."zombie resurrection" accounts in Matthew...Charles Manson

With apologies, but I'm really not up for thoroughly researching every fringe theory. Three I can do off the top of my head- Gospel of Peter, no (for the reasons it never became canonical); Matthew's pre-resurrection appearances would need a long answer; appearances of the BVM dunno.
One final, inevitable, one:

Loch Ness monster, no. ( Go there- it's a lovely place to visit, and you can find out why not at the display).