Even a few years is enough time for grieving, expectant followers to convince themselves of something. Legends don’t need generations; they can form in weeks.

Fair, and it shifts the discussion from legend to group psychology, which is where it belongs. What the early date rules out is the older theory that the resurrection was a theological layer added generations later onto the memory of a simple prophet. Whether a group could persuade itself within weeks that a crucified leader was alive, and then persuade a hostile persecutor and a skeptical brother as well, is a different question, and it is the one the hallucination and grief-vision explanation is meant to answer.