How did the myth of Jesus' resurrection originate?

[xpastor]

... So my answer is cognitive dissonance.

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.

The problem with such explanations is that they can also support opposite scenarios.

For instance, consider yourself. You believed. Then you read some things in the OT and judged god as unworthy. This sets up cognitive dissonance - if you continue to believe you end up in hell and don't want to consider that. So, you found reasons to discontinue belief.

I'm not saying that's what actually happened. I'm just saying that broad concepts like cognitive dissonance can generate tales that go any which way, and so don't really have much value.

Very slick argument, John.

I did later on apply the term cognitive dissonance to my departure from the ministry, but I don't even think I knew it at the time.

The dissonance was between the picture of God presented by an unfiltered reading of the OT on the one hand and the idea of God which I had formed from innumerable Bible studies and volumes of apologetic writings like C.S. Lewis on the other hand. Also the contrast between churchgoers enthusiastically belting out "they'll know we're Christians by our love" and the actual conduct of the majority. I'm pretty sure that the fear of hellfire never entered my thoughts, not when I became a Christian and not when I abandoned Christianity. I always was partial to Origen's universalist heresy.

Notwithstanding the concession above, I believe the defence against cognitive dissonance is usually to try to maintain the status quo as the Millerites did in arguing that Jesus did something very important on October 22, 1844 even if we couldn't see it. In my case, the obvious defence against the negative picture of God would have been to start arguing that the Amalekites were soooo evil they had it coming.