I know that much has been written on this topic, but it is hard for me to gather what the consensus is right now. I know that cases have been made for the resurrection being an historical event, it being a deliberately crafted fiction to support an upcoming faith and psychological/sociological explanations. I am interested in what the sources and our current knowledge says about whether the disciples believed that Jesus came back to live or not.
Thank you for your time!
There is a very wide consensus that the earliest Christians believed that Jesus resurrected from the dead. There are a few exceptions (Burton Mack, Robert Price) who disagree, but it's a very small position. There is disagreement about what exactly the early Christians meant by using the word 'resurrection' however, though I would still say there's pretty wide agreement.
A view that was popular in the mid and early 19th century (best argued and represented by Bultmann) that when the first Christians spoke of Jesus' resurrection they weren't speaking of a body exiting a tomb, but of Jesus' spirit ascending to Heaven. This isn't nearly as popular as it used to be, but there are still those who defend it.
The dominant view today amongst critical scholars is that the first Christians meant that Jesus was physically raised but in a spiritual body. When you start talking about exactly what those terms reflect and if the first Christians were consistent in their intended meaning then the consensus starts to break down. For instance, NT Wright argues in The Resurrection of the Son of God that the image of resurrection in Paul is consistent with the image in the gospels. Bart Ehrman, on the other hand, argues in How Jesus Became God that Paul and the Gospel authors are describing different things. Both of these authors agree that the earliest Christians believed that Jesus was physically raised with a spiritual body, but they don't exactly agree on what that means specifically. I'll post some good pieces of scholarship below on this from multiple perspectives if you're interested.
How Jesus Became God - Bart Ehrman
The Resurrection of the Son of God - NT Wright
The Resurrection: History and Myth - Geza Vermes
Resurrecting Jesus: The Earliest Christian Tradition and its Interpreters - Dale Allison
The Birth of Christianity - John Dominic Crossan
The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach - Mike Licona
I'd also recommend This lecture by Dale Martin where he discusses the distinction between spiritual and immaterial