What were Jesus and early Christians like?

[watchamadoodle]

Who were the early christians you were taught to emulate?

That's a good question... Paul always turned me off, and I ignored his epistles. My favorite NT books were Matthew, 1 Peter, 1 John, and James. I'm not sure who actually wrote those books, but I liked them.

The characters I admired in the NT were doubting Thomas, Pilate, Judas, John, and of course Jesus (he was the bee's knees with those parables).

EDIT: Pilate and Judas probably seem weird, so let me explain. I admired Pilate, because he said "what is truth", and he generally seemed to be a decent person. I didn't admire Judas, but I felt sorry for him. He wasn't such a bad guy that he deserved to be hated so much by Christians IMO.

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@DeistPaladin, I'm sure you're familiar with the quote from Josephus about the stoning of James. How do you reconcile that quote with the idea that Jesus was not a historical figure?

I know it's not addressed to me but three possibilities if one wants to take the Christ-myth route:

1) Josephus is just, in all likelihood, repeating what Christians thought about James: that he was a brother of Christ, whether biologically or spiritually.
2) James was part of a sect called "brothers of the Lord" or "brothers of Christ."
3. The identification with Christ is a later interpolation that was not originally written by Josephus.

From wikipedia: "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus

Regardless of whether James was a sibling, cousin, or fraternal brother, this seems to suggest a real person named Jesus who was called Christ (Anointed/Messiah/...) by some. The stoning of James happened when Josephus was an adult, and he was an important Jew. The Christians were unpopular enough that James was stoned. This was only a few decades after the crucifixion. It seems to me that if there was some question about the existence of Jesus, then Josephus would have mentioned that in his quote.