What were Jesus and early Christians like?

[DeistPaladin]

As I keep saying, if we try holding these texts to standards that simply don't apply to ancient texts, we are setting the parameters in a way that simply makes no sense. Yes, it would be nice if we had some "secular or humanistic documents". But in ancient history, we usually never do. So we have to make do with the sources we do have and just treat them with the right kind of care, caution and scepticism.

There is a difference between a historical account with supernatural embellishments and a story about the supernatural. The distinction is this: when you remove the supernatural, do you still have roughly the same story?

We can read a historical account and simply omit the fanciful embellishments. When you omit the supernatural from a story specifically about something supernatural, the story makes no sense.

Most of the anecdotes about Jesus in the Gospels either revolve around supernatural claims (such as when he walked on water) or only make sense if he was a supernatural being (such as when he single-handedly cleared out the temple of merchants) or were punctuated by a miracle (usually some argument with the pharisees). Remove the supernatural stuff from the Jesus story and you wind up telling a very different story about a very different character.

Kind of like telling the story of Superman but without the super powers, costume or Krypton.
Or retelling the tales of Dr. Who but without the time traveling, regeneration or TARDIS.
Or rewriting Harry Potter but in a world without all that magic.

With Jesus, the divinity and the miracles ARE the story. Discard the supernatural and you've gutted the Gospel tales.