What were Jesus and early Christians like?

[Mudhammam]

Discussion of John the Baptist made me look-up Mandaeism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandaeism

Apparently there is a backlash against connecting Mandaeism with early Christianity, but there are a lot of parallels.
- way of light and darkness (like Dead Sea Scrolls)
- cross as their symbol
- John the Baptist
- theology in the language of parables
- gnostic
- sometimes called "Nasoreans" (similar to Nazarenes)

It makes me wonder if Nazareth was the name of a religious center (like Qumran) for followers of John the Baptist. Jesus tried to take over after John the Baptist was imprisoned or executed. Then Jesus was executed too. James the brother of Jesus took over and the early Christians began rationalizing and mythologizing the failure of Jesus to deliver Israel?

As a side note, as far as I know, no archaeological finds locate Nazareth as an inhabited village until many years until after Jesus is said to have lived. It may not prove that Nazareth didn't exist (even if no writer mentions it until the Gospels---not even Josephus, who mentions a number of insignificant towns in the vicinity) but mythicists have made something of it nonetheless.