Myths can and do develop even while their subjects are still alive. It’s mostly a matter of how fast information is transmitted, and how permanently it can be recorded – neither of which capacities was at an all-time high in first-century Judea.
Myths about people who are still alive develop among those who have heard stories, but have never actually met the person.
Peter and the other Apostles
lived with Jesus for three years. If he farted, or picked his nose, they knew about it. (They didn’t record whether he did this or not, but they would have known about it.) They were not gazing from afar, or seeing only His public performances. They were with him, day in and day out.
Paul wasn’t even there. How would he know first-hand?
The only thing St. Paul could have known first-hand was whether or not he had seen the Risen Christ at some point after the Crucifixion.
He claims that he did - and that this experience changed his life completely, from attacking Christianity to embracing it.
It is perhaps a way of saying ‘the accounts probably don’t match up’ less likely to cause people here to start vomiting up the usual bile, yes. I’m not trying to give anyone a heart attack or severe gastrointestinal problems here, I’m trying to respectfully disagree and say that I consider accounts given in a particular religion’s holy book insufficient ground for proving the historical verity of that same religion. Circular logic will get you nowhere.
We have at least four first-hand witnesses writing books of the New Testament, who all agree on certain basics. They disagree or don’t remember how many women went to the tomb to anoint Jesus. (They were probably still asleep when the women got up to go out, so they would not have counted how many women went.)
What they
do remember is that the woman or women who went to do this came back with an astounding story that they had seen Jesus risen from the dead, and that the tomb was open and empty. They recall that they thought the women were delusional. Later, they themselves saw Jesus - he came through a wall, and started eating dinner with them. He did that more than once - how many times exactly, again, they don’t remember, but they all recount more than one time.
You only need two witnesses for a court case, and they don’t have to agree on every detail. All they have to agree is on the basic incident
itself, and “Yeah, that was the guy - the one sitting in the prisoner’s dock.” In fact, they will throw the testimony of the witnesses out, if the witnesses agree on too many things, because people naturally perceive different things, even when they are all seeing the same event, and it is perfectly natural for one witness to see four women where another witness only saw one woman, because they are focused on different things while they are actually observing the incident.
