The Eastern and Western approaches are different, but they are both saturated with the ego. It is difficult to tell exactly what the teachings of Jesus were because they are so tainted with religious nonsense.

To obey God means that the idea of God (which I personally have no use for) has been fragmented away from the individual. In other words, the ego, or sense o self, is not existing as a holistic movement of consciousness for a great number of reasons that I have elucidated in books and articles so I won't go into it here. But this belief in in a self that is fragmented away from the rest of consciousness has created the perpetual suffering of human kind. Both Western and Eastern religions speak of eradicating this suffering, but they cannot do it because they have not first tackled the problem of separation, fragmentation, that places God or gods, other people, nature, animals, etc., apart from we human beings.

Next, on altruism... Altruism is not really altruism as long as fragmentation (the egoic self) exists that creates "the other." Altruism must come from the absence of the egoic self, and this is difficult to find in religion, because religion is thought; thought is always of the past, and the egoic self has been from thought. Thus, so-called altruism is actually an artifact of the ego when a purpose or emotion is attached to it, such as doing a good deed to please God or get into heaven or whatever else they can come up with.

Lastly, yes, references made by Josephus are at best dubious. Jesus is not mentioned by name and there were handsful of prophets, messiahs, and seers running around saying the same thing, so Josephus could have been referring to any one of these other characters of the day..