CRITICAL VIEWS CONSIDERED For many critical scholars today the appearance stories recorded in the Gospels are legends. But what is intriguing is that, while these same scholars are not prepared to admit that Jesus actually rose bodily from the dead, most by far, if not all of them, will acknowledge the historicity of Jesus’ death by crucifixion under Pontius Pilate, the subsequent despair of his disciples, their “Easter” experiences which they understood to be appearances to them by the risen Jesus,