I see no need to repeat here what I spent considerable time developing there. Since I have no doubt that you, Marcus, read that chapter, I can assume that you already know the answer to the question you put to me. I am confident as well that you have observed that my set of observations fall considerably short of proposing an overall historical construal based simply on those historically verifiable elements. In my reading of the Gospels, as you surely know from your knowledge of my next chapter, I find just such a construal, in the portrayal of Jesus as a Jewish man who in radical obedience to God gives his life in service to others, giving thereby an example to those whom he calls as followers in the same path of obedience and love. But I remain in a state of eager anticipation for an affirmation or rejection of my strong reading of the resurrection as defining Christian identity, on the one side, and of my strong reading of the Gospel narratives as providing a specific and concrete image of the human Jesus on the other.
Models are useful as heuristic devices.
Too often, however, they become rigid grids dictating or even distorting the shape of the data. As you know quite well, Marcus, the legitimacy of using diverse anthropological models cross-culturally is by no means universally agreed upon by historians. You bring up Leski. There is the first the issue as to the adequacy of his analysis as such. There is second the degree to which that analysis can apply to ancient situations as complex as that of the first century imperium.