"The resurrection is a legend that grew over decades"

Stories grow in the retelling. Over forty or fifty years, a dead teacher became a risen god. The resurrection is legendary development, like every other miracle tale.

Legends need time, and here there is very little. In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul hands on a summary he says he received — "Christ died for our sins… was buried… was raised on the third day… appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve… then to more than five hundred, most of whom are still alive." The wording is a set formula, and critical scholars across the spectrum date its origin to within a few years of the crucifixion, traced to the Jerusalem apostles Paul met. That is not a legend that had decades to form; it is an early, public claim naming living witnesses.

An early claim is still just a claim. People believe strange things quickly.

They do — but two facts are hard to explain away. First, the movement began in Jerusalem, the one place where the burial site was known and Roman and Jewish authorities had every reason and ability to produce a body. They never did; the counter-story that circulated was that the disciples stole it, which concedes the tomb was empty. Second, the earliest opponents — the Jewish leadership, later Roman writers — dispute the meaning of the events, not that the followers were suddenly, sincerely convinced they had seen him alive.

Sincere belief in a vision is not a bodily resurrection. Grief hallucinations happen.

Individual grief experiences are known; group experiences of the same detailed, interactive appearances over weeks are not, and they would not produce an empty tomb. And the transformation runs the wrong way for a comforting delusion: the leaders who claimed to have seen him — Peter, James the brother of Jesus who had not believed during the ministry, Paul who had been persecuting the church — moved into lives of hardship and, for several, execution, still refusing to recant. People will die for what they wrongly believe to be true; they do not generally die for what they know they made up.