Maybe beside the point of this thread, but all of the Tales of the Jedi stuff is still implied to be true of the Jedi at one point in the galaxy’s history.
Hell, Master Odan-Urr from those comics is basically who writes the modern Jedi Code in new canon, (his discovered annotations, at least). The mural in Palpatine’s office (ROTS) depicts The Great Hyperspace War. Even pre-1999, the TOTJ comics themselves begin to hint at the direction of things when Nomi, Sylvar, and Tott basically become bureaucrats after The Sith War.
You get the feeling that the ancient Jedi, and the galaxy in general, are a lot more exotic and weird, if only because when you’re doing comics you have an unlimited “effects budget” compared to film and you can create any visual designs you want. The aliens, ships, planets, and force powers are definitely bigger and crazier than the movies.
However the structural stuff of the Jedi, as far as masters with multiple apprentices, decentralization, Jedi with lovers, families, and children, a lack of a standard uniform, etc. are all consistent with how the Jedi were portrayed in everything else (mainly post-ROTJ material because that was what we had) up until the prequels came out. After that, KOTOR retconned the 4000 BBY time period as way more pared down and similar to the movies in terms of portrayal and visual design.
I’m not saying you CAN’T reduce it to just one time period of history, I’m saying you SHOULDN’T because it’s very limiting in terms of stories you can tell. I know you know this already, but it’s an out of universe change which is why we emphasize pre-1999 (real life) not pre-4000 BBY or pre-1000 BBY or something.
I don’t know what you’re talking about with the bureaucrat thing.