What were Jesus and early Christians like?

[DeistPaladin]

I’m not sure what “written accounts of the same story” means here.

I mean rather than "A" happened, then B, C, D, and E all reported on A, my proposal is A happened, B wrote a story about A (to what extent of accuracy or fanciful addition is another matter), C and D each wrote their own mutually incompatible fanfic versions of B's story and then E comes along and writes a new story based on the political/religious needs at the time.

Just to introduce where I come from on this issue, I'm a "Jesus Mooter". The biggest problem with the Jesus Myth is that The Historical Jesus is so vaguely defined as to be little more than some-guy-named-Yeshua-who-was-some-kind-of-religious-leader-or-something. This shadowy character quickly disappears into the gaps of our knowledge of the time and place and, with a little slight of hand, either the fundy or the secular historist can shift the burden of proof on the mythicist.

I also think it's a tactical mistake for the skeptic to debate the Christian apologist using the mythicist approach. This is the kind of debate they seem to love, since, for a change, they're actually supported by scholarly consensus. It's a better application of time and energy to focus on the Bible and how inconsistent and unreliable it is.

The existence of some-guy-named-Yeshua does nothing to help their position. Crazy cultists have been "dying for a lie" for all recorded history including the 20th century. The Elvis sightings pretty well discredit any notion that people wouldn't have come up with a resurrection story if it wasn't true. The "Trilemma" argument is easily dealt with as an over-simplified false dilemma (or trilemma as it were) with strawmanned alternatives.

Now my willingness to leave The Historical Jesus alone doesn't mean I don't tear apart the Gospel stories. I will point out how they contradict one another or contradict history, how they have been subject to change over time (Mark 16:8 forward is a good example), how unreliable the "eye-witnesses" were even if we accept the traditional attributions of authorship, etc.

Since The Historical Jesus makes no difference as far as arguments for the supernatural go and since we know next-to-nothing about what the real story was, then Jesus becomes moot. Hence, I'm a Jesus Mooter.

That’s true for the infancy narratives but much less true for the rest of their accounts. They also share the Q material, which seems to have been based on at least one common source, possibly more.

This is not inconsistent with my point, that Mark came first and Matt and Luke both wrote their stories according to what was in Mark. It's kind of like playing "Telephone" where "A" tells "B" who tells "C" rather than "C" relating his own account of the witnessed events of "A".

I note that Matthew does correct Mark on occasion where Mark's knowledge of Jewish theology seems faulty. One example that leaps to mind is how Mark's Jesus forbids divorce while Matthew's Jesus notes the exception if the bride wasn't chaste before marriage. It does seem from reading Matthew that he was taking the story written by Mark, making some corrections, inserting alleged "fulfillment" of OT prophecy here and there and adding a birth narrative.

Yet gJohn tells some of the same stories and deals with several of the same issues (eg. Why was Jesus being baptised by his supposed subordinate John?)

John actually glosses over the whole baptism. Notice how JtB never baptizes Jesus at all in John.

Perhaps my use of the word "complete" was a bit dramatic. That said, I wouldn't be the first to notice how John sits oddly alongside the others. The new Jesus is bolder, bombastic and much closer to Trinitarian ideas of a "Son" who is equal to his "Father".

It doesn’t matter to me much whether he was crucified in 33, 36 or 37 AD.

Or sooner. I posted earlier that reading John indicates a date of 29 CE, based on the reference to the temple construction.