All four gospels report that the tomb in which Jesus was buried was found empty on the morning of the third day after his crucifixion. Each also reports subsequent appearances: to Mary Magdalene and other women at the tomb, to two disciples on the road to Emmaus, to the eleven remaining apostles gathered together, and, in Paul's account in his first letter to the Corinthians, usually dated within about twenty five years of the crucifixion itself, to more than five hundred people at one time, most of whom Paul says were still alive and could be asked directly.
Paul's list, in 1 Corinthians 15, is treated by most historians, believing and skeptical alike, as the earliest surviving testimony to the resurrection claim, older than any of the gospels as a written text even though the gospels describe events set earlier. What the sources agree on is the shape of the claim: an empty tomb, and a series of encounters afterward that the earliest Christians understood as a bodily return, not merely a vision or a continuing spiritual presence. Paul's letter itself states he is passing on what he "received," language scholars read as technical, indicating an already-fixed formula rather than his own composition, which pushes the tradition close to the events themselves, within a very few years of the crucifixion by most datings.