The eyewitnesses to Jesus’ death and resurrection started proclaiming it almost immediately. And Peter and Jesus’ other Apostle’s started preaching the Gospel message to the masses less than two months after Jesus’ death and resurrection. The extraordinary event of the resurrection is why the early church grew daily and continued to do so. The extraordinary event of the resurrection is why there was an explosive growth in the early church soon after it happened, and even Bart Ehrman concedes to these facts. And these things transpired well before the New Testament documents ever even existed.
The extraordinary event of the resurrection is the reason that the powerful Jewish Temple and the mighty Roman Empire, both of whom tried to squash early Christianity out of existence, failed miserably at doing so.
The assertion that this extraordinary event went “mainstream unnoticed for 40 years” is clearly a false assertion.
