Can Cognitive Dissonance Explain the Resurrection?

[resurrectionnerd]

_"In fact, believing He had been resurrected created a far greater dissonance—for Jews in Jesus day, resurrection was only possible at the end of the age for all people at once.  An individual resurrected prior to the end time was about as intelligible as a square circle.  Resolving this dissonance would be much more difficult."_

But Jesus and the disciples believed they _were_ living at the end of the age and so it follows that the resurrection was necessarily linked to that time period. If that is the case then it follows that they expected the resurrection to occur and would be prone to applying the concept to Jesus after his sudden death especially since, as the gospels record, he preached and predicted the Resurrection.

As for applying the concept to an individual, Paul rationalizes this by calling him the first fruits - 1 Cor 15:20 which meant they expected the general resurrection to happen quite soon. Obviously, they were wrong about this though.