What is the oldest of the false teaching about the resurrection?

Answer 1

It is unclear whether the question refers to teachings about the resurrection that are described in the New Testament gospels, or to other teachings that arose in subsequent centuries. Regardless of this question, most Christians regard the gospel stories of the resurrection as being entirely and literally true. Nevertheless, I will canvass the age of these accounts.

The earliest of the gospels is now known to be Mark's Gospel, written approximately 70 CE. This originally finished at verse 16:8, when the young man explained that Jesus had risen, and the women fled in fear, telling no-one. So the oldest teaching was merely that an unknown young man simply said that Jesus was risen, leaving the reader to decide whether this was literally true or whether, for example, the young man was a grave robber. The "Long Ending" (there was also, at one stage, a "Short Ending"), which tells of the resurrection appearances, was added much later and therefore can not be the oldest teaching about the resurrection.

The resurrection accounts in Matthew, Luke and John are so different that, at most, only one of them could be literally true. Matthew's Gospel says that Jesus appeared only once, to the disciples at the mountain in Galilee, some considerable time after the crucifixion. Luke's Gospel says that Jesus appeared to the disciples in amd near Jerusalem and then gives a graphic account of Jesus ascending bodily into heaven on the evening following the resurrection. And John's Gospel describes two meetings with the disciples in Jerusalem, then at the Sea of Galilee. Since we now know that the authors of Matthew, Lukeand John relied directly or indirectly on Mark's Gospel for everything they knew about the life of Jesus, and Mark's Gospel was entirely silent on the resurrection appearances, there can be no doubt that these accounts were literary creations of the three evangelists. The oldest of them is that in Matthew's Gospel, believed to have been written during the eighties of the first century CE.