...is meaningless. Don't get me wrong: of course, the story of the resurrection means a lot to the religiously committed. But everyone else will doubt the stories and deny that they are as important as Christians believe.

There are about a dozen different things one could speculate about regarding the Gospel accounts. First of all, the Gospels are kerygmatic in nature. They are preaching texts, religious proclamations - euangelion, good news. In addition, they are also apologetic in nature. They are meant to defend the faith against attacks from outside.

First, the resurrection of Jesus is not provable because even the immediate context speaks of apologetics and dramatization. The accounts of the trial are apologetic. Pilate presents a choice of Jesus or Barabbas, according to the custom that a  prisoner may be released at Passover. The Jewish crowd chooses Barabbas, a known robber and murderer (Matt.27:6, Lk 23:19). We have no corroborating evidence of this custom. Such a custom would have been nonsensical: the defeated Jews were to demand freedom for imprisoned rebels and murderers. Pilate was an extremely cruel ruler who executed people for less. The purpose of the story  in the Gospels is to portray the Jews as the culprits in the execution of Jesus. According to the Gospels, it is the Jews who call for Jesus’ execution, not Pilate (Mark.15:13, Matt.27:22-25, Lk.23:21). The Christians who told and eventually wrote down these stories in the second half of the first century did not want to be seen idolizing a man executed justly by a Roman official. Therefore, they blamed the Jews for Jesus' crucifixion.

The moment of Jesus’ execution is dramatized with many supernatural motifs. The dead rise from their graves, the sky darkens, the earth shakes, and the veil of the Jewish temple is torn. The Gospels literally scream at the reader not to be taken seriously. The question arises: if the stories preceding the crucifixion are so clearly apologetic and dramatized, why would anyone accept that the details of the crucifixion are historically reliable?

The story about the Roman soldiers guarding Jesus' tomb (Mt. 27:62–66) can be explained as apologetics toward Jewish suspicions. It is likely that the Jews were making the accusation that Jesus' body had been stolen. By placing guards at the tomb, this accusation was refuted. The guards at the tomb are mentioned only in the Gospel of Matthew, the most Jewish of the Gospels.

The piercing of Jesus' side (John 19:31-37) on the cross is clearly apologetic in character as well. There is no reason to assume that a Roman soldier would bother to grant this kind of amnesty to a Jewish criminal like Jesus. The purpose of crucifixion as a method of execution was to prolong the victim's suffering and humiliate him to the utmost. The soldier would have risked severe punishment by his officers if he had done so. Moreover, this detail is told only in the Gospel of John, which is the latest of the Gospels and generally considered the least historically reliable.

Some have tried to prove the authenticity of the resurrection by pointing out that women found the empty tomb. According to this apologetic, women were not considered credible witnesses in ancient times. Therefore, it is unlikely that the story was fabricated. However, women were primarily responsible for anointing the dead.¹ This is the reason why women were the first at the tomb: it simply would not have made sense for the Gospel writers to have men find the empty tomb.

There are numerous other aspects of the resurrection story about which one can speculate. Many theologians, such as John Dominic Crossan, Matti Myllykoski, and Bart Ehrman have suggested that Jesus was buried in a mass grave. This could have been the reason that an empty tomb was found. It would be unlikely that a carpenter like Jesus would have had a special tomb, especially if he was actually labeled a blasphemer.

One can also speculate about the nature of the early Christians' experience. It could be that his disciples had hallucinations. It is known that grief hallucinations are common when people lose a loved one. The sense of presence can come in a variety of forms: visual, auditory, tactile and olfactory hallucinations. Just as often, it can be a feeling that the person is nearby. After the death of the Hindu mystic, Swami Vivekananda, many claimed to have seen him alive and to have spoken to him in dream-like visions. The philosopher Sri Aurobindo claimed to have heard Vivekananda's voice for weeks. Chandrashekhara Udupa claimed to have received a vision of Vivekananda's face in 1971.

Was it really Jesus on the cross? Muslims believe that Allah saved Jesus when his enemies tried to kill him by switching his physical appearance with that of another man. Some Christians in Syria believe that Jesus’ brother Judas (Mark 6:3), was really his twin. Perhaps the Romans captured and crucified this man because they believed he was Jesus. One legend says that he arrived in Japan while his brother, Isukiri, took his place on the cross. There are also stories from India that say Jesus arrived there after his crucifixion.

The accounts of the resurrection in the Gospels seem to change in each gospel. There are numerous contradictions in the accounts, such as  how many women went to the tomb and when, what they saw, what was said, and to which disciples Jesus appeared. The earliest version of Mark's Gospel contained no account of visions of Jesus. Could this be evidence that imagination and deliberate theological development played a role in the stories?

Perhaps the most plausible explanation for the disciples’ resurrection visions is that he did not die on the cross. He may have been within an inch of his life – but not dead. It is impossible to know for sure, how bad his scourging was. Jesus' scourging is not even mentioned by Luke. Is it possible that Jesus, like any human being, did what was necessary to survive? Perhaps Jesus played dead on the cross and waited to be saved. He probably knew that the book of Deuteronomy commanded the Jews to remove the bodies of the executed from the cross by the end of the day (Deut.21:22-23). It is likely that someone obeyed the commandment, took Jesus down from the cross and shortly after, he was "miraculously" full of life again. After that, he may have been seen by someone, perhaps even a a group of people (1. Cor. 15:3-8). In oral tradition, stories about the "resurrected" Jesus became more elaborate over the decades.