Excellent post! I have some quarrels with some of the red jelly beans, but I will only have room to go after one, one which I think is important, if you'll allow me to explain.
Transmittance of religious truth through mundane means: all religions transmit and receive their ideas through mundane means, such as human mouthpieces of God or sacred texts; these means can be and are equally employed by contradictory religions and by non-religious false claims.
While it is obviously true that, in the Christian case, the belief in resurrection was transmitted through mouthpieces and sacred texts, it is the quality of these "mouthpieces" and "sacred texts" that is what is in question. There is first hand evidence in the New Testament for the resurrection appearances of the risen Christ, namely that of Paul and the Beloved Disciple (cf. John 21:24 which tells us, through the hand of an editor, that the BD wrote a part of the gospel), and also early evidence (1 Cor 15:3b-5) that seems to have been coined by some of the closest followers of Jesus. We also have the rest of the gospel material regarding the resurrection.
While one cannot, in an historical-academic setting, assert that the resurrection occurred (and for good reason1), I think that there is strong testimonial evidence that cannot simply be discounted or written off.
Some charge the gospels with being legendary, however this can hardly be the case. First of all, the greek word used for the resurrection event in 1 Cor 15:4 is egeiro (raised), and according to James Ware:
"the Greek verb means to get up or stand up, that is, to raise from a supine to a standing position. Thus the verb is regularly used to denote the raising or rising up of one who has fallen (Matt 12:11; Mark 9:27; Acts 9:8), or of one kneeling or prostrate being raised back to a standing position (Matt 17:7; Luke 11:8; Acts 10:26), or of one sitting who rises to stand (Matt 26:46; Mark 3:3; 10:49; 14:42; Luke 6:8; John 11:29; 13:4; 14:31). The verb is also frequently used of one lying down, very often of one lying sick, who is restored to a standing posture (Matt 8:15; 9:5, 6, 7; Mark 1:31; 2:9, 11, 12; Luke 5:23-24; John 5:8; Acts 3:6–7; James 5:15). The use of egeiro as resurrection language grows out of the semantic map of the verb sketched above. In resurrection contexts, the verb does not denote that the dead ascend or are assumed somewhere; rather, the verb signifies that the corpse, lying supine in the grave, gets up or arises to stand from the tomb."
https://hbu.edu/news-and-events/2016/07/15/jesuss-resurrection-according-paul-apostle/
Since the phrase for the resurrection event itself indicates that Jesus's body stood up into an erect position in the tomb/grave, the implication is that the resurrection of Jesus was understood to be bodily in nature, in accord with the gospel portrayal of the risen Christ.
Second, the appearance narratives in the gospels retain far too many embarrassing details in them for one to credibly hold that they are heavily embellished as a whole. As Wedderburn says in his book Beyond Resurrection (1999):
"The stories [the appearance narratives] can't . . . just be written off or discounted a pure fiction: there are too many puzzling features about them which are unlikely to be sheer invention (page 37)
Wedderburn continues:
"There are features of these accounts which defy explanation as mere story and which compel us to take them more seriously as accounts of what happened, features which seem in some measure to establish their claim historicity" (page 39)
Dale C. Allison Jr. agrees with Wedderburn in his book Resurrecting Jesus, 2005, p. 288
J.D Atkins in his recent book The Doubt of the Apostles and the Resurrection Faith of the Early Church (Mohr Siebeck, 2019) takes a look at one of these "features," namely, the doubt of the apostles.
Doubt/Disbelief as a Motif
Early Church Condemnation of Doubt/Disbelief
"In the first two hundred years of Christian literature unbelief is regularly depicted as sin. It is placed in the same category alongside lawlessness, cowardliness, sexual immorality, shameful lusts, murder, idolatry, lying, darkness, and even demonic activity (Matt 17:17; Luke 9:41; 1 Cor 6:14; Rev 21:8; Prot. Jas. 19.3-20.1; AJ 33.6-8; Sib Or. 2.260-262; 4.39-43; 8.182-187, 287; Clement, Adumbr. 3 (on 1 John 3:15); similarly, Wis 14:25; 2 Macc 8:13).
For a number of early Christian writers, unbelief is not simply a sin like any other but a root sin. According to Paul, "whatever does not proceed from faith is sin" (Rom 14:23). In the Gospel of John, not believing is the quintessential sin of which must be convicted (16:8-9). And the Shepherd of Hermas depicts unbelief as the first and most powerful of sins (Sim. 9.15.3 [92.3])
The general principle of judgement is stated in 4 Ezra 15.4 ("For every unbeliever shall die in his unbelief" [Metzger, OTP]) - possibly an echo of John 8:24 (For Unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins"). The author of the Testimony of Truth restates the same principle by paraphrasing John 3:18: "For this is Christ; [those who] believed in him [have received life]. Those who did not believe [will die]" (49.7-10). The causal link between unbelief and divine condemnation was so ingrained in early Christian thinking that some authors refer to the fate of unbelievers as shorthand for judgement. For example, in the Epistula Apostolorum, the disciples ask the risen Jesus if Christians who sin will be treated "like unbelievers" and so be judged (36.8-9)
Still others read the notion of unbelief into biblical texts that do not mention it. Although there is no support for the idea in the text of Genesis, Tertullian can assume that his readers knew that the flood came as judgement on "human unbelief" (Scap 3.2). Similarily, Clement of Alexandria interprets the phrase "children of wrath" in Eph 2:3 to be a reference to "those who are still unbelievers" (Protr. 2.27.2.6). Whereas Ephesians connects "wrath" with "disobedience," "desiders of the flesh," and "trespasses," Clement connects it with unbelief.
[...] Thus, for "unbelievers nothing is pure; but both their minds and their consciences are defiled" (Titus 1:15). With "unbelief" the mind is darkened by vain lusts (2 Clem. 19.2). Not surprisingly, then, Christians are warned against the inevitable apostasy of an "evil, unbelieving heart" (Heb 3:12). One later Christian writer goes so far as to say that those who refuse, despite much evidence, to believe in the resurrection of the flesh are "deserving of great shame"([Ps-]Justin Res. 5:16).
The early church's perspective is here worlds apart from the post-Enlightenment view in which doubt is esteemed as an intellectual virtue, indeed as the key to all knowledge."
(J.D Atkins, The Doubt of the Apostles and the Resurrection Faith of the Early Church, Mohr Siebeck, 2019, p. 70-72, 74-75)