Do most scholars agree upon four historical facts about Jesus of Nazareth?

Question

In this article, William Lane Craig claims:

Fortunately, Christianity, as a religion rooted in history, makes claims that can in important measure be investigated historically. Suppose, then, that we approach the New Testament writings, not as inspired Scripture, but merely as a collection of Greek documents coming down to us out of the first century, without any assumption as to their reliability other than the way we normally regard other sources of ancient history. We may be surprised to learn that the majority of New Testament critics investigating the gospels in this way accept the central facts undergirding the resurrection of Jesus. I want to emphasize that I am not talking about evangelical or conservative scholars only, but about the broad spectrum of New Testament critics who teach at secular universities and non-evangelical seminaries. Amazing as it may seem, most of them have come to regard as historical the basic facts which support the resurrection of Jesus. These facts are as follows:

FACT #1: After his crucifixion, Jesus was buried in a tomb by Joseph of Arimathea.

FACT #2: On the Sunday following the crucifixion, Jesus’ tomb was found empty by a group of his women followers.

FACT #3: On multiple occasions and under various circumstances, different individuals and groups of people experienced appearances of Jesus alive from the dead.

FACT #4: The original disciples believed that Jesus was risen from the dead despite their having every predisposition to the contrary.

In summary, there are four facts agreed upon by the majority of scholars who have written on these subjects which any adequate historical hypothesis must account for: Jesus’ entombment by Joseph of Arimathea, the discovery of his empty tomb, his post-mortem appearances, and the origin of the disciples’ belief in his resurrection.

Do most scholars/historians who have seriously investigated the history of Jesus of Nazareth (including secular ones) agree upon these four historical facts?

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Note 1: The "Consensual knowledge" section of the Historical Jesus Wikipedia page appears to support the claim about the crucifixion (first half of fact #1), but is silent about the other claims (second half of fact #1 and facts #2 through #4). Therefore, it does not fully answer the question.

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Note 2: The related question Did Jesus live? is mainly concerned with Jesus' existence, not with the academic consensus regarding the more specific four historical facts that William Lane Craig uses to build an "inference to the best explanation" for the resurrection. Therefore, the related question does not (fully) answer this question.

Answer 1

I will address these from the point of view of Bart Ehrman, using quotes from his 2014 book How Jesus Became God. I am doing this because Ehrman is generally viewed as a reliable voice on scholarly Biblical criticism and history. He devotes several pages in his book to explaining why these apologist arguments are not the central focus of academic Biblical historians, which is why I don't think you will find a better response than this.

FACT #1: After his crucifixion, Jesus was buried in a tomb by Joseph of Arimathea.

Ehrman responds that this is contradicted by Acts 13:28-29, which says that Jesus was buried in a tomb, but not by Joseph. Because it is widely agreed that Acts and Luke have the same author, and Luke follows the Gospel account, Ehrman concludes that Acts 13:28-29 is quoting an earlier source which had no knowledge of the Joseph of Arimathea part of this story. Therefore it is not a determined fact, since early Christian sources disagreed about it. (Edit: I acknowledge the answer asked about "most scholars" and this response seems like a stretch by Ehrman, which may not be widely held by other Biblical scholars. See comments to this answer)

FACT #2: On the Sunday following the crucifixion, Jesus’ tomb was found empty by a group of his women followers.

Ehrman responds that the earliest primary text in Christianity, the letters of Paul, do not mention an empty tomb; the first source to mention it is Mark, who had reason to invent it, namely,

“There would be plenty of reasons, just from his literary perspective, to do so. The more you know about Mark’s Gospel, the easier it is to think of reasons. I’ll give just one. Mark makes a special point throughout his narrative that the male disciples never understand who Jesus is. Despite all his miracles, despite all his teachings, despite everything they see him do and say, they never “get it.” And so at the end of the Gospel, who learns that Jesus has not stayed dead but has been raised? The women. Not the male disciples. And the women never tell, so the male disciples never do come to an understanding of Jesus. This is all consistent with Mark’s view and with what he is trying to do from a literary standpoint.”

This is not to say that it's implausible this happened. For example, maybe a disciple moved the body by himself for religious reasons. There are plenty of reasons for an empty tomb, but Ehrman's point is that we have no reason to assume the story was not invented.

FACT #3: On multiple occasions and under various circumstances, different individuals and groups of people experienced appearances of Jesus alive from the dead.

This is obviously true. It's widely agreed that the letters of Paul are mostly authentic writings by an actual historical person who did have a vision of a "living" Jesus, and that Paul believed this to be a real person, "alive from the dead". But Paul didn't claim to interact with Jesus as a flesh-and-blood person. If you want to go further into history, other people have had visions of Jesus as well as other deities and powerful figures throughout the centuries. It's true there's a consensus here, but it doesn't build a case for Christianity.

The reason this "fact" has been written this way is because the Christian apologist is having trouble merging Paul's experience together with the disciples. Ehrman has plenty to say about the accounts of disciples witnessing Christ in the flesh.

FACT #4: The original disciples believed that Jesus was risen from the dead despite their having every predisposition to the contrary.

This is the oddest one because Ehrman uses this as an argument against Christianity being true. Quote:

“And then comes one of the most puzzling verses in all of the New Testament. In Acts 1:3 we are told that after his resurrection Jesus spent forty days with the disciples—forty days!—showing them that he was alive by 'many proofs.' Many proofs? How many proofs were needed exactly? And it took forty days to convince them?”

Ehrman accepts the premise that the disciples came to believe Jesus rose from the dead, but responds that the need for many "proofs" and even the disposition against resurrection suggests a process of spiritual visions (for example, bereavement visions) being elaborated into experiences of resurrection in the flesh.

Here is a fairly reasonable statement about this from Ehrman's book:

“In theory, for example, a historian could look into the question of whether Jesus really was buried in a known tomb and whether three days later that same tomb was found to be empty, with no body in it. What the historian cannot conclude, as a historian, is that God therefore must have raised the body and taken it up to heaven. The historian has no access to information like that, and that conclusion requires a set of theological presuppositions that not all historians share.”

Conclusion

One of the most widely respected scholars of Biblical criticism rejects the second half of fact #1 and all of fact #2, and accepts facts #3 and #4 but finds nothing in them to suggest the truth of Christianity. It is incumbent on secular scholars to take facts #3 and #4 as phenomenological facts about human experience, not religious facts about God interacting with humanity.