If you want to kill a messianic movement in the first century, produce the body. Rome knew how. The priests knew how. Nobody did.
The earliest Christian claim is not “Jesus lives in our hearts.” It is that a crucified man was seen again, eaten with, touched, and then the cowards who ran became the men who would not recant.
Hallucination does not eat fish. Legend does not get you crucified upside down a few years later. Conspiracy does not survive the first man who can trade the secret for his life.
The empty tomb is not a stained-glass metaphor. It is a historical problem. Every rival explanation has to do more work than the one the witnesses actually gave: He is risen.
