You don't know what you are talking about.
The NT Jesus story claims he resurrected on the third day.
NT authors claimed their Jesus born of a Ghost conquered death.
Well, yes, obviously. Getting power over death via some kind of struggle and/or suffering was stock and parcel for virtually all personal saviour cults that we know of. And for the dying and raising kind of gods, yes, that involved dying and then rising again. (Surprisingly enough. It's almost as if the clue is in the "dying and raising god" title
)
It wasn't even something new, really. Inanna had beaten them to that punchline by almost 2000 years, and Osiris by even more.
But nevertheless, to believe that he is a dying and raising god, first you have to believe the "dying" part. (Again, it's almost as if the clue is in the name
) You can't ask someone to believe that X rose from the dead, unless they also believe that X was at some point dead. Otherwise there's nothing to rise FROM.
Same for Jesus, really. It's nonsense to say that they would believe the rising from the dead part, without believing that he died first.
So your assertion that they wouldn't worship some guy who got nailed and died 'like a dog' is blatantly false. That is EXACTLY the story that Xians asked you to believe, and EXACTLY the kind of guy they were asking you to worship: a guy who let himself be captured, got nailed to a stick and died. In fact to this day, THAT is the story that the church asks you to believe.
Yes, they also asked you to believe that he self-resurrected, but again: that doesn't negate the fact that he had to die first for that to be even possible.
I'm assuming that what you actually were trying to say is that they wouldn't worship him if they knew he STAYED dead. But that's a different claim, AND
1. Knowing that assumes a level of information that, again, just wasn't even possible to every peon 3000km away in the ancient world. They didn't have Internet or anything.
Especially for a crucified criminal, who would just be dumped into some unmarked mass grave nearby. I don't think anyone would have a handy record of every grave, for you to be able to go check if all the bodies are still in.
2. Even if checking that kind of stuff were possible -- which it wasn't -- you'd pretty much need everyone to be a skeptic, which REALLY wasn't the case back then. (And still isn't, even in this day of having Snopes, and generally the Internet and all.) Because if even just 1% are the gullible kind who'll just believe any nonsense they really want to believe -- see Paul's argument that it has to be real because otherwise we don't get our reward -- in a city of 90,000 like Corinth that would get you some 900 potential recruits. More than enough to start a church.
But more to the point we know that they didn't check much more outrageous claims.
E.g., Matthew's several hours eclipse on a full moon was a physical impossibility that would have been a lot easier to check if anyone recalls it, than whether some random tomb in Judaea was actually empty. Yet nobody did. In fact even when later some more educated guys figured out that it's physically impossible, they just handwaved it as, see, it means it's a real miracle.
E.g., Matthew's zombie invasion into a major city like Jerusalem would be a lot easier to check if it really happened. You just needed to find anyone from Jerusalem (including the thousands of slaves brought from there after the revolt) and ask them if they've ever heard of THAT monumental an event. I mean, wth, they didn't even have to be alive at the time. If even their granddad had witnessed a zombie horde descending into Jerusalem, they'd have heard about it.
Etc.
So really the idea that they'd have checked their facts before believing a religious tall tale, is plain old counter-factual.
3. When Mark or Matthew do seem to fear that their story doesn't stand to scrutiny (probably unjustified fear, btw), they have no problem just making it a literal conspiracy theory. Mark has Jesus ask everyone to keep it a secret after pretty much every miracle and most public appearances, and apparently everyone just did. Matthew says there's a literal conspiracy by the Jews to say that the resurrection never happened.
Basically, early Xianity is LITERALLY a conspiracy theory.
Which not only shows that they knew how to deal with knowing that their story is counter-factual, but shows that their audience was really THAT gullible. Because in effect Mark and Matthew don't even wait for you to ask for evidence or witnesses, they're telling you up front that, uh, no, everyone will tell you it didn't happen. Because they're all keeping it secret.
But obviously their audience isn't even fazed by being told up front that all witnesses would contradict the story.
