What were Jesus and early Christians like?

[Pizza]

The likelihood of what, exactly?

This issue.

The nature of ancient history is that our sources make certainty difficult to impossible. We can still assess likelihood. Though with greater or lesser degrees of difficulty, depending on the sources.

No precise degree of likelihoods and reliability can be had on issues of ancient history. That is not a controversial claim. That's why I claimed hair splitting is all this. So all the chest beating you and others are doing is silly. So many bloated claims about high degrees reliability and probability of ancient sources are being made that it is like a bad parody of what historians do. These are ancient sources we are talking about low passion of belief is the way to go. You're being emotional.

What does "all this" mean in that sentence? If we're asking about the likelihood that Jesus was God in human form who walked on water and rose from the dead I'd say the likelihood was low to zero. If we're asking about the likelihood that the stories of this magic Jesus have their origin with a first century Jewish apocalyptic preacher from Galilee who got crucified by Pilate I would say that is by far the most likely explanation of those stories and the other evidence we have.

Which would lower the degree of reliability of the texts a bit.