What were Jesus and early Christians like?

[watchamadoodle]

You don't. That's why absence of evidence is not evidence of anything.

I think this is similar to statistics, sampling, etc. So absence of evidence is useful information IMO.

Nester, I want to correct what I said above, because it depends on the meaning of "absence of evidence". Like if I claimed that Bigfoot usually visits my house twice a year, and the History Channel installed surveillance cameras for 5 years with no sign of Bigfoot, then that is useful information IMO.
I suspect that isn't what you meant by "absence of evidence".