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It predates Paul's letter, of course, but by how much is pretty hard to say. I'd guess it probably wasn't composed a week before, and probably more than a year, but beyond that, who knows? Sometimes you'll see people confidently say things like "the creed dates to within six months of the crucifixion" which is just bizarre; there's no way anybody could possibly know that. Not to mention, Paul is clearly adding to the creed, since obviously when it was handed down to Paul it didn't include the appearance to Paul. So what else has he added to it? And who else added to it before him?
Well, precisely to preempt that objection. It wouldn't take much for the author of the gospel to think, 'huh, what if people say the body was stolen?'
It's possible. I tend to think both 'liberal' and 'conservative' scholars have a bad tendency to overstate the weight and quality of the evidence on dating one way or the other. IMO getting more specific than "after the crucifixion, before AD 100" is pretty tenuous. Nevertheless, even if you wanted to posit some super early date like AD 40 (earlier than even the most conservative critics are generally willing to go), I think ten years is more than enough time for legend to grow up.
I guess Genesis 3 is an exception now that I think about it insofar as it includes a non-human enemy of God, but the serpent is not a fallen angel or a god, he is...a snake. He loses his legs for telling the woman about the fruit. 'The Satan' (here it is a title, not a name) in Job is not God's enemy; he's a member of the Heavenly court who comes among the other "sons of God" to present himself before Yahweh. His job (ha) appears to be to test the faith of human beings, but he is not presented as an evil figure. The story of Lucifer the rebel angel doesn't really appear anywhere in the 66 books of the Bible.
Ehhhh, I'm familiar with this argument but I think it's weak. In both gospels Jesus clarifies what he means by the coming of the kingdom--"the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done" This clearly was not fulfilled during the transfiguration. Not to mention saying, "some here will not taste death" is a weird thing to say about something that's going to happen next week. Nobody tasted death by next week.
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