Paul writes:  "If Jesus is not risen, then your faith is in vain." (1 Cor 15:17)

After we pull back all the many veils that shroud the resurrection events [especially the divergent accounts in the New Testament], Paul's proclamation of a belief in the resurrection is what transformed the Jesus movement into the world religion of Christianity.

Paul was NOT a witness to the resurrection - Paul never met Jesus during Jesus' lifetime.  What artifact of the resurrection events was profound enough to ignite this faith in a 'Risen Christ' in the faithless Saul of Tarsus? What really happened on the road to Damascus? 

We know from archeology of mid-1st century Christian tombs that the cult of belief in the resurrection was already a strong faith in the decades before the New Testament began to be written down: an inscription on a Jewish Christian ossuary proclaims, "Lord Jesus, Raise Up!"

What sparked the transformation of the "Jesus of history" to become "the Christ of faith?"