How did the myth of Jesus' resurrection originate?

[xpastor]

Many would answer that it was borrowed from the Osiris myth.

If 'they' did then it would be obvious they knew nothing of the mythos surrounding Osiris.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osiris

Not my theory as I made plain. However, Tom Harpur, one-time professor of New Testament Greek at Wycliffe College, sees the Jesus-figure of the gospels as a retelling of the archetype embodied in the Horus myth of ancient Egypt.

Perhaps. However, I start from the premise that Yeshua was a historical figure, an itinerant rabbi with considerable rhetorical prowess, who got himself crucified by the Romans and remained dead.

So my answer is cognitive dissonance.

do you have 'proof' for your answer?

I don't need to prove that he was a historical figure since that is accepted by those who would oppose my theory. Cognitive dissonance is a theory which is intended to explain the data. We have never seen a re-animated corpse but there were stories of such not just in the NT but attributed to pagan miracle workers like Apollonius of Tyana. We do know from experience that people often begin by denying the death of a loved one. We do not know from experience that corpses come back to life. Therefore my theory is inherently more probable than yours.

When people believe something intensely, and it fails to happen, they can't live with that. They have to invent a story to prove that it really did happen in an unexpected way.

so... if the apstoles made up the resurrection of Christ then why wasn't is quickly squashed? The Jews knew that a bodily resurrection would confirm the Deity of Christ and therefore had Rome place an imperial seal on the tomb. A Broken seal meant the deaths of the contingent of soliders placed there to guard that seal

People go on making up stories to support a position they have taken. Person A says Jesus returned to life. Person B says the disciples probably stole the body. Person A then comes up with a cock-and-bull story that it couldn't have happened because a guard was posted to prevent that very thing. Mind you, I don't even think the disciples actually stole the body. The story just got started that Jesus was alive as with the stories about Elvis or Amelia Earhart.

We have seen this in the recent history of apocalyptic prophecy. William Miller predicted that Jesus would return on October 22, 1844, and it obviously did not happen. The result was the birth of Seventh-Day Adventism, which "arrived at the conviction that Daniel 8:14 foretold Christ's entrance into the Most Holy Place of the heavenly sanctuary rather than his second coming." (Wikipedia) I have no idea what that is supposed to mean, but it satisfied them. Likewise, the first Jehovah's witnesses predicted that Jesus would return in 1914. When no one spotted him, they said he had returned "invisibly."

So?

So it proves that people including Christians make up weird shit when their ideas get shot down.

Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet expecting the Son of Man to come and usher in the Kingdom of God within his own lifetime.

proof?

29 “Soon after the trouble of those days, the sun will grow dark, the moon will no longer shine, the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers in space will be driven from their courses. 30 Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky; and all the peoples of earth will weep as they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. 31 The great trumpet will sound, and he will send out his angels to the four corners of the earth, and they will gather his chosen people from one end of the world to the other. 32 “Let the fig tree teach you a lesson. When its branches become green and tender and it starts putting out leaves, you know that summer is near. 33 In the same way, when you see all these things, you will know that the time is near, ready to begin. 34 Remember that all these things will happen before the people now living have all died. 35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.

Sounds like a definite prophecy of the end of the world within that generation. Not to the day like William Miller or Harold Camping, but no wiggle room for stretching it out centuries into the future

Of course he died without seeing any such event.

How do you know what Christ saw?

Don't be so thick. The world is still here, ain't it? Ergo, Jesus did not see it end.

I suppose his followers said things like, "I just can't believe he's gone."

Again proof?
How do you know what His followers said?

What part of the verb "suppose" do you not understand?

all right so let me out line your 'logic' for you. 'We' have a written record of what took place durning that time. Something you have cast doubt on and expressed several times you can not believe it often times sighting the lack of 'proof.' But, at the same time you have taken a measure of modern pop psycology Something that at best only describes the psychological nature of a 'modern' western person in a very general sense, and have applied it to the senerio outlined in the very same bible you have all but dismissed, and seriously present this argument of what you think happened in place of what the bible says happened... Cherry pick much? Maybe that is why you failed as a preacher. You take elements almost at random from modern times and from the bible and simply start combining whatever allows you to support your foregone conclusion.. In otherwords from the evidence you have left here you have come to the conclusion that Christ never resurrected Himself from the Dead. Then you took elements out of the Historical account of the bible and then you took just enough of pop psycology to support what you though, and have completely ignored the continuity Issues. In that pop psycology does not even represent the 'greiving' process of all currently known cultures, let alone span 2000 years and can be proven to be true about a middle eastern culture... Who's views of life and death are no where near our own. The fact that they had life and death gladiatorial tournments speaks to this. Yet you forced this conclusion because it makes 'sense' to you, allowing to completely ignore what is actually written.

And what makes you an expert on the grief process in other cultures? I have read lots of ancient literature and the elegy grieving the loss of a loved person is a common form. What do gladitorial combats have to do with it? Yes, crowds of people would enjoy the sadism, and I have no doubt the parents or spouse or children of a slain gladiator would grieve for him. If we do not have a common humanity, your theory of Jesus' dying for our sins has no meaning.

Christians will protest that no one would make up the story of the resurrection, but they do in fact come up with all sorts of fictional details to promote their faith.

Me thinks someone is 'projecting' his process of faith onto everyone else.

I can't make any sense out of what you are trying to say here.

To take a few trivial cases, I have received an email which presents the young Albert Einstein as a defender of the Christian faith against his atheistic professor although Einstein was a non-observant Jew who explicitly disavowed any belief in a personal God. Or there is Lady Hope's well-known story of Charles Darwin's deathbed reversion to Christianity, although Darwin's children say she was nowhere near the great scientist in his last years.

So what? Again just because there are people like you who first formulate a conclusion and then look to support it with 'evidence' (as apposed to simply following wherever the evidence leads them, and then compile it and formulate a conclusion based on what is available, thus remaining honest and true to the available facts) Does not mean everyone does this.

This goes to establish the existence of a genre I call "lying for Jesus" there are plenty of examples of it in the modern world and back through the ages, so I do not find it difficult to believe that it happened in the original writing of the NT. To be fair, maybe I should call it "self-deception for Jesus." The wack jobs who think that the Bush government orchestrated the 911 attacks sincerely believe their own crazy theories.

Again you whole argument rests on the idea that the men who lived in Israel 2000 years ago process grief the same way we do. That the culture wanted to accept Christ and change everything they knew for 3000 years prior to that moment in time. That these people did not were not the ones who turned Christ over to be crucified. That the masses who converted on the day of Pentecost who were all gathered to celibrate a Jewish holy-day were ready at the drop of a hat to turn their backs on the only religion they knew for the sake of 'greif?' or maybe because of some sort of peer pressure... Bullying maybe?

No. They saw something of God that day. Something that confirmed and cemented who God was and the direction God want them to go. They found the 'proof' that God has left for all of us, and were simply faithful to what God had given them.

I did not say that the later converts believed because of denial in the grief process. That, I suppose, happened with Jesus' followers. There are plenty of examples to show that once a person has adopted a delusional belief, he will go to extraordinary lengths to maintain that belief. So you had sincere believers preaching the resurrected Christ to the local population, need I add yet again, in what was a totally credulous era.