What were Jesus and early Christians like?

[Mudhammam]

The idea of people rising from the dead, on the other hand, definitely was around at the time and was something of a theological hot topic in Jewish circles. And stories of apotheosis, people being taken up into the heavens leaving an empty tomb and other parallels were also in the air

Interesting. Can you direct me to that material? I've always been under the impression that while some stories contained gods or heroes who were revived and brought up from the underworld, none of them made the slightly bolder claim of a physical, bodily resurrection. Was it Enoch and Elijah who are thought to have ascended into heaven and thereby escaped death, and were there others?

Also, I recently read this compilation of ancient texts edited by James Pritchard called Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament with Supplement. Aside from being very interesting, I found it quite illuminating. Do you know if anyone has published a similar work for Jewish and non-Jewish documents specially related to Christianity?