[madnak]

But the Bible is also the only source you have for the actions of those disciples (I'm including the apocrypha when I say "Bible"). And it's second-hand.

It's a plausible hypothesis, but it's not very testable and it doesn't indicate much.

Personally I'm in the "Jesus led a cult" camp. I find it much less surprising that his followers remained loyal after his death than that (for example) the followers of Jim Jones killed themselves at his command.

Psychology also established that certain factors (authority and conformity in particular) can cause people to doubt their own memories and factual evidence. I think there's significant evidence that false memories can arise in certain situations (but I'm not too familiar with it). So it's certainly possible that some of his disciples really believed that they saw him after he died. I think one of two things is more likely, though - either someone in Jesus' group had some power they didn't want to give up (and perhaps they even used the name of Jesus to increase their power over his followers) and so fabricated the resurrection story, or it's a matter of cumulative embellishment as in the game of "telephone."

The gospels were written decades after Jesus died. And even in the gospels themselves, the description of the resurrection is inconsistent - earlier gospels describe it as a straightforward event, but later gospels add angels and earthquakes and other fireworks. My guess is that the whole story of Jesus as we know it is the product of oral transmissions that became more and more exaggerated over time. The original story of the resurrection? People very often have experiences of being "contacted" by loved ones after their death, and Jesus almost certainly had some very devoted followers. I'm guessing that some of those followers had similar experiences of Jesus and believe he wss communicating with them after his death - perhaps even "telling them" that he was alive. These people could easily have ended up being eyewitnesses to a physical resurrection later on - particular given the vague and surreal quality of the supposed experiences.

But the information really is limited, so everything is speculation.