Proving The Resurrection By the Minimal Facts Approach

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When I mentioned Paul, I had in mind his report of his own experience of the risen Christ, which is clearly not physical in nature.  As for his memorized formula, at the risk of nit-picking, there is nothing there that necessitates an interpretation that he is speaking of a bodily resurrection -- of a person literally walking out of a tomb.  It merely states that Jesus was buried and raised on the third day before appearing before a number of witnesses.  For all we know, these 'appearances' could have been 'spiritual' in nature as Paul's alleged experience seems to have been.  He doesn't really say there was an empty tomb.  The empty tomb stories we have are from the Gospels, which come later.

The gospels were WRITTEN a few years later based upon the testimony of men who had seen Jesus risen from the dead BEFORE Paul wrote. Those were the men Paul conferred with when he traveled to Jerusalem around AD 35-36.

Do you think that Peter, James and John just left out the part about Jesus being alive (and his tomb being empty) during Paul's visit?

Ok, a few things.  First, not that I expect you to agree or grant this any weight, but I find Paul to be a uniquely poor source for much of anything.  Simply put, I don't trust him.  To me, his letters read like the ravings of a fanatic (first a fanatical opponent of the movement and then a fanatical convert).  I suppose you'll wish to know how I account for this change of heart, but the assumption that his conversion is the result of encountering bedrock truth in his alleged encounter with Christ isn't the only possibility, and any additional speculation is simply that -- speculation.  Paul may have been a bit unhinged.  Who knows?  In ancient times, people a few cards short of a full deck were often granted a special status as having a more direct line to the spiritual realm.  He may have been power-hungry and saw an opening within the movement for fulfilling his own needs for power or status.  Again, who knows?  But I refuse to grant special status as a source of truth to a guy who openly says he will be all things to all people in the pursuit of his self-appointed mission.  Paul seems to me to be the religious equivalent of a used car salesman.  Again, I don't expect you or any other believer to agree with me, but don't in turn expect me to swallow Paul's claims about himself wholesale, any more than you would expect me to uncritically buy whatever the car dealer says when I suspect he's trying to sell a lemon.

Second, you ask if I think that Peter, John, and James would forget to mention something like an empty tomb during their encounters with Paul.  It's a fair question.  But again, why the jump to assume that these alleged appearances were physical in nature or that an empty tomb was even mentioned?  Couldn't Jesus' appearances (mind you, I'm simply granting the historicity of these appearances for the sake of argument) have been of a "spiritual" nature?  That would be more in line with a Jesus who passes through walls/doors and ascends into the sky.  You're simply assuming an empty tomb based on later Gospel claims.  And if Peter, el al, had mentioned an empty tomb, why is Paul not explicit about it?  For that matter, if there really was such a meeting or series of meetings between Paul and Jesus' direct followers, why is Paul apparently ignorant of or uninterested in Jesus' actual teachings during his ministry?  Did his closest followers just happen to forget to mention any of that too?

Finally, if Paul is not misrepresenting what happened, how is it that he comes up with a theology (for lack of a better word) that is apparently so diametrically opposed to what we can glean about James based on the epistle that was apparently penned by one of James's followers, if not by the man himself?  Did Jesus' own brother so completely misunderstand what Jesus was about that he needed a guy who never met Jesus to get it right?  Perhaps you find that plausible.  I don't.