We also know that there are an awful lot of problems with the resurrection stories.
We know that we have no record of the Empty Tomb story before the Gospels - we have Paul talking about the Resurrction of Jesus, but not the Empty Tomb. We also know that the text of the Synoptic Gospels is often too close for them to be independent- including the Empty Tomb story, and there are reasons to think that John is dependent on the same source.
We also know that the appearance stories are all over the place. Paul’s list doesn’t tell us only that people thought they saw Jesus in some sense - and in his case we know it was a visionary experience. Mark doesn’t actually get to the appearances, simply indicating that they happened in Galilee. Matthew has a single appearance in Galilee. Luke/Acts has an elaborate story which puts all the appearances except Paul’s vision in and around Jerusalem. John has the double ending - there are Jerusalem-set appearance stories and a perfectly good ending, then a set of Galilee-set appearance stories and another ending. None of them actual stories matches, nor do the Gospel stories match Paul’s list.
This really does not make any sense if the stories are held to be at all accurate. That they are largely fiction seems to be the only reasonable explanation.
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