What were Jesus and early Christians like?

[abaris]

And the references in Josephus and Tacitus to Pilate and in Josephus to James, the Baptist and Caiaphas all make the chronological setting pretty likely. It also fits with some of what Paul says about the timing of his conversion. So we have multiple vectors of evidence, both Biblical and extra-Biblical, all supporting the idea that this stuff happened sometime in the late 20s or early to mid-30s AD.

Big fucking deal that educated people knew who was governor and high priest at a certain point in time. Even the common people, who probably provided these stories would have known. Everything else, at least as told in the bible, is seriously off. The story of Jesus and Caiaphas or Jesus and Pilate don't make any sense at all. The jewish priesthood were puppets installed by the Roman authorities and Jesus, if he really claimed to be king of the jews, wouldn't have gone before them for blasphemy, since he already commited the crime of high treason against Roman authority with this claim.

It's Pilate, who would have run the show from start to finish. And he certainly wouldn't have offered Jesus up for amnesty, if Jesus repeated the king claim before him. He would have been on the fast track to crucifixion. The Romans also weren't picky choosy when it came to insurgents. They would have crushed anyone even remotely connected to this Jesus character. So the apostles would be out of the picture or deep in hiding.

The grave story is also pretty much out the window, since it was Roman habit to leave the executed on the cross to rot and to ultimately toss the remains into some ditch.