"Do you have any other explanation?"
You're demented....you don't understand so you make up an explanation of ghosts and spirits?????
IOW, you don't.
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" Why did lots of the early people who claimed to be eyewitnesses of the risen Christ give their lives up on behalf of what you claim is a lie? "
Is there a verified list of such people? Did they testify to the sighting themselves.....the tomb was supposed to have been a cave...was it destroyed by someone.?????
Not a complete one, but many of them are known. Take Peter, for example, put to death in Rome 64AD. James, Jesus' brother, put to death in AD 62 in Jerusalem. Stephen, John, ..... most of Jesus's disciples, probably all of them.
Did they testify to someone - yes, to the gospel writers.
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"why would people in the Roman empire start a bogus religion based on someone who'd been executed ignominously by the Romans?"
Lots of religions are started for lesser reasons
Can you give another example of a religion founded by someone martyred before the founding of the faith?
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......I recently read that the Romans did not execute people by crucifixion...is this true?
Its a lie. Atheists invent new lies all the time. Crucifixion is attested to by non-Christian historians:
Josephus:
" I saw many captives crucified, and remembered three of them as my former acquaintance. I was very sorry at this in my mind, and went with tears in my eyes to Titus, and told him of them; so he immediately commanded them to be taken down, and to have the greatest care taken of them, in order to their recovery; yet two of them died under the physician's hands, while the third recovered."
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And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross.
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In the very next paragraph Josephus recounts the crucifixion in Rome of the priests of Isis, ordered by the Emperor Tiberius himself, for their misdeeds in arranging the sexual seduction of a virtuous women.
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Antiquities 17: Book 10
Following the death of Herod in 4 B.C.E. there were outbreaks of revolt throughout Judea. Varus, the Roman legate of Syria took two legions and brutally pacified the country, particularly in Galilee.
10. Upon this, Varus sent a part of his army into the country, to seek out those that had been the authors of the revolt; and when they were discovered, he punished some of them that were most guilty, and some he dismissed: now the number of those that were crucified on this account were two thousand.
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Antiquities 20: Chapter 5
The sons of Judas the Galilean, who had led a revolt in 6 C.E. over the Roman taxation census, were crucified by the Roman procurator Tiberius Alexander (46-48 C.E.), who was the nephew of the philosopher Philo.
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Jewish War 4: Chapter 5
Josephus reports on the Jewish custom of taking down the bodies of those crucified by the Romans during the Great Revolt and burying them, if permitted, before sundown.
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War 5: Chapter 6
Josephus reports that the Romans crucified many before the walls of Jerusalem during the siege of 70 C.E. The idea was to terrorize the population and force a surrender. The number reached 500 a day at one point until there was no wood left in the area for this purpose! .......
before they died, and were then crucified before the wall of the city. This miserable procedure made Titus greatly to pity them, while they caught every day five hundred Jews; nay, some days they caught more: yet it did not appear to be safe for him to let those that were taken by force go their way, and to set a guard over so many he saw would be to make such as great deal them useless to him. The main reason why he did not forbid that cruelty was this, that he hoped the Jews might perhaps yield at that sight, out of fear lest they might themselves afterwards be liable to the same cruel treatment. So the soldiers, out of the wrath and hatred they bore the Jews, nailed those they caught, one after one way, and another after another, to the crosses, by way of jest, when their multitude was so great, that room was wanting for the crosses, and crosses wanting for the bodies.
religiousstudies.uncc.edu
6,000 survivors of the revolt captured by the legions of Crassus were crucified, lining the Appian Way from Rome to Capua.[39]
Appian, Civil Wars, 1.120.
penelope.uchicago.edu*.html#120
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