How did the myth of Jesus' resurrection originate?

[xpastor]

Be careful with what you [rightcoaster] present as being "fact".

You claim that "there are very few bits of the NT narrative that can be granted that lofty status (fact)" and "the weight of evidence – internal as well as external -- is that the story is contrived". Offering such broad generalizations without any detail of why you consider something unreliable is the typical response from Atheists who have already dismissed all of the evidence without considering if any of it is relevant, reliable or corroborated.

As you already know, much of the events in the NT are already internally corroborated. The fact that Luke makes such extensive use of Mark as well as writes Acts, and many of the events in Acts are externally corroborated, is itself corroboration for Mark - it means that Luke took the Gospel According to Mark and found it to be trustworthy and reliable. [my emphasis]

Duh, or it proves that Luke was as credulous as the people who uncritically forward emails to make a religious point. My personal favorite is the allegation that Canadian Members of Parliament are conspiring to remove the slogan "In God We Trust" from our currency—a truly remarkable feat since it was never on Canadian money.

And your claim that there's a lack of external evidence is wrong.

As you can clearly see, this Roman official [Pontius Pilate] that held office - mentioned only on this inscription and in the NT - has no surviving Roman literature written about him!

The point that most people in your position would try to make is that "well there's no evidence for Luke's census" - and yet there is internal evidence, but no external evidence - and my response to this has always been "so?" So what, so there's one detail that hasn't been externally corroborated, may never be corroborated, and even if it turned out to be wrong it would not mean that any other detail is wrong.

I'm not aware that the historicity of Pontius Pilate was ever questioned. After all, as Minimalist points out, he was mentioned by three near-contemporaries. Even if he had not been mentioned outside the NT, it would not be straining credulity to assume that one Roman governor of a not-very-important outpost fell through the cracks of history.

The fictional census of Quirinius is a whole different ball game. Taxing all the empire would be a vast undertaking. It is utterly implausible that it would not leave a huge paper trail, which we would find traces of, more traces than exist of manuscripts of the small and obscure Christian sect, which assuredly have been found. It is equally implausible that it would not be mentioned in the many histories of the reign of Augustus which have survived. The whole story is implausible with its ridiculous claim that everyone had to go back to the home of their ancestors. It's just a mechanism to deal with the problem that Jesus was known to be a Nazarene but Christians had come to believe an OT verse prophesied his birth in Bethlehem. In the case of the census absence of evidence most certainly offers some corroborating evidence of absence.

RC: It is plausible and consistent with Jewish law and practice that even the Temple authorities who were wronged would have sought proper burial for a Jew executed by the Romans for a minor crime, so as not to have him hang dead overnight. There surely was a real person responsible for arranging this obligatory burial of Roman-executed criminals, but the name and that he was a follower are at best speculations.

It's not speculation, it's recorded in every Gospel!

The fact that the reference is found in all four gospels is neither here nor there. Majority scholarly opinion places the gospels between ca. 65 CD (Mark) and 95 CE (John). So it all goes back to the oral tradition which was bubbling up at least 35 years before any text that we have. Do the specific names like Little John and Will Scarlet prove that the Robin Hood legend is accurate history?

Jesus was placed in a rock-cut tomb. A rich man's tomb. The purpose of this type of tomb is to prepare to body for later burial inside an ossuary. The women prepared spices to embalm the body - this is also recorded in the gospels.

Even if you're right - and somebody removed the body to bury it in the ground - who? And why would they break the Roman seal to do so? And how did they did a grave so early in the morning that they were able to did the grave, roll away the stone, and remove the body before the women reached the tomb?

I'm sorry but your account is nonsensical. No one would have had the opportunity to remove the body: 1. they had to dig a grave, 2. they had to break the Roman Seal (a capital offence) and 3. the tomb was guarded and they had to overpower the Roman Guards (also a capital offence). Seems like way too much trouble when the body is already lying in a tomb.

All this assumes what is to be proved, that the details in the NT such as the Roman guard are history rather than legend.

Your account would claim that somebody dug a grave at night on Sunday, then stole the body without permission from the Romans and put it in the grave? That's the only window of opportunity, and yet it makes no sense!

I don't think anyone knows what happened to the body of Jesus, but I am pretty sure that it did not fly up into the stratosphere as per that sober historian Luke.

There is only one point in rightcoaster's analysis which I would seriously quibble with, and that is his description of the resurrection narrative as a "cover story." It's a bit too cynical for my taste, suggesting a deliberate lie. I think what we know of weird human behavior covers it well enough. People were reporting (sincerely I assume) sightings of Elvis soon after his death. Possible mechanisms are the denials typical of bereavement (I can't believe he's dead) being misinterpreted by others or the bereavement hallucinations mentioned in another thread.