Reply #79: May I please elaborate.

[megatherium]

The 'oral remembrances' are those of a small community of people, who were the followers of those who originally followed Jesus. Things got garbled. E.g., the timing of the crucifixion differs from Gospel to Gospel. John says Jesus's public ministry lasted three years, the other three Gospels say it was one year. Some legendary or mythological material entered the oral traditions and ended up in the Gospels (the two very different Nativity stories, in Matthew and Luke, are a good example). And some of the Gospels appear to have material that is fictional or pointed (the miracle of Jesus walking on water, or the miracle of his changing water to wine). Modern scholars who have tried to sort out what is true from what is legend or myth have found that the Gospels are extremely difficult to sift; there are endless theories as to who Jesus really was and what he really taught. The best guess: Jesus was an itinerant rabbi who taught that the religious authorities were hypocrites, and that everyone had direct access to God through prayer. Apparently, he staged a dramatic demonstration in the Temple grounds of overturning money-changers' tables. This apparently led to the authorities finding him a threat, and he was soon crucified.

A more interesting point: The Gospels are not contemporaneous. But a large section of the New Testament consists of the letters of Paul. There are 12 of these. Five of them are accepted by secular scholarship as genuine (two more, possibly; five definitely not). In these letters, including the first letter to the Corinthians, Paul clearly believes in the resurrection. 1 Corinthians was written in the late 50s -- within living memory of the life of Jesus; Paul gives a direct statement as to who saw the risen Jesus in chapter 15 of that letter. Paul in fact mentions some of these witnesses as still being alive. To Paul in 58 CE, the end of Jesus's life was more recent than the resignation of Richard Nixon is to us.

Now Paul did not know or meet Jesus; his letters contain little information about the life of Jesus. But Paul was in contact with the original disciples (apostles) of Jesus. Paul met with the other apostles at the Council of Jerusalem, to hash out a serious theological issue (did Gentiles have to become circumcised or otherwise follow Jewish law, when they became Christian). The Council was in about 50 CE. So it is clear to me that Paul's teachings reflected what the early Church taught, in the first two or three decades after the death of Jesus. Central to these teachings is the doctrine that Jesus appeared to his followers after his death. (Of course, we cannot determine if there is any objective reality to this; as I suggested in my post #47, apparitions or visions are not unusual even today.)