…after the crucifixion it took a miracle to generate the church—indeed even to generate the inner circle of Jesus' followers. Our earliest sources, by their own confession, are clear that almost the entire inner circle of male disciples denied, deserted, or betrayed Jesus, while the women watched him die and then went to lay a wreath, as it were, on the tomb. It is the historical event we call Easter that reversed this drastic trend, without which the story of Jesus would have been left in the dustbin of history.
Ben Witherington III, What Have They Done with Jesus? Beyond Strange Theories and Bad History—Why We Can Trust the Bible
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