It looks like we agree on most of the topics you hit on, Don.

However, I do disagree with this statement:

"That Jesus was literate is almost impossible. Jesus lived in a small village where there would be no school or teacher nor even a synagogue or temple. He would have been taught a trade, such as carpentry, nothing scholarly would have been available. Reading was retained exclusively by the wealthy and nobility, being a scribe was a protected profession of high skill. "

We really don't know where Jesus was raised. It makes little sense that BOTH Jesus and his brother James would have an uncle as High Priest and not be educated in the finest schools Jerusalem had to offer. The office of High Priest, which James held on more than one occasion, was expensive to buy into. Ergo, the story of Jesus being a carpenter is at best an exaggeration and an outright lie at worst.

NO ONE taught in the Temple being a nobody without some form of royal pedigree, so to speak.