Theists: What makes your claims right and the claims of other theists wrong?

[Esquilax]

Both are used to research historical questions perfectly well. We know what the disciples said happened, because we have a mass of material, all of which points in the same direction.

The historical evidence is somewhat overwhelming about what they believed they saw.

There's a larger issue here, which I think you're missing, which is that when sources for other historical figures mention magic or supernatural things, those claims are set aside as representative of the magical thinking of the time, and not taken seriously, as I expect you'd want us to be doing with the claims of the resurrection.

Go ahead and take a look; you can see references to omens and blessings from other gods all over historical writing. Punishments for witchcraft occur all throughout recorded history- clearly someone was convinced they saw witchcraft- and yet we don't credit witches as existing, do we? We quite rightly attribute that to the ignorance and superstition of those people, at that time.

Folks arguing for the historicity of biblical supernatural claims always seem to want a special exemption from this standard practice of historical skepticism for the bible, but why should that be the case? In many respects the bible's case relies on worse evidence than other discarded supernatural claims; merely arguing over the sources of the bible, even if we were to grant them accuracy, still puts it on the same level as those other historical claims.