You are actually conceding points I am not arguing. I am willing to accept that Paul always told the truth as far as he knew it to be. Because it really doesn’t matter to my argument. He knew nothing, had a dream of a celestial being, and told people. He doesn’t have to be a liar. I agree he probably did have NPD.

You are also conceding that the Gospel of Thomas has Greek thought in it. Again it could or could not and my argument isn’t impacted.

You are also not allowing Mark to be smart but demanding Jesus be smart. We know Mark was a Greek and an educated one. For him to sit down and study the OT wouldn’t have been all that hard. It would have been a lot easier than for an Aramaic illiterate in a society that punished studying Greek thought to have pulled it off. Which is easier an educated man in a free society to read a book in his native language or a non-educated person to learn how to read in a language he doesnt speak in a back water of the empire surrounded by people who would want to kill him for attempting it?

Jesus never existed that is why everyone builds him in their own image. You just did it. You want him to be a powerful mind who can synthesis multiple different thoughts of different cultures and come up with stuff against the grain. I have seen your work on the Gospel of Thomas and well…look in the mirror. Everyone is looking at this Rorschach image declaring something else and a small group of people are pointing out that there is nothing there except a mess of ink.

Isn’t it amazing that James who needed authority just happened to have a brother who granted it? Isn’t it amazing that James surrounded by Jews and Rabbis was told by Jesus that they had to follow Jewish law? Isn’t it amazing that Paul just happened to have the same injuries that Jesus suffered? Isn’t it amazing that Paul surrounded by non-jewish was told that Jesus is ok with pork and non-circumcision? Every single person in the first century had a Jesus who just happened to agree with them on every single thing and whose history was as malleable as needed.

The simplest explaination is that James and Cephus were running a grift, Paul took it seriously and literally, at some point they recruited a talented writer, other writers thought they could outdo what Mark had done, and the rest is history. William Tell, Moses, John Frumm, Ned Lud, and of course Jesus of Nazareth.