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I find most interesting the first 400 years of Christianity with Gnostics, Ebionites, and Orthodox Christians all over the place debating over Christology (Christs's identity: man or God?), Trinity, and ethics. I find quite fascinating that so many people nowadays take the established belief system for granted. Most of them don't even realize that the only reason why we have the Orthodox/Catholic version of Christianity today is because the Orthodox Byzantines at the time simply declared home rule and announced the Gnostics and Ebionites heretics! So the only reason why protestants and Catholics today believe that Christ was a man AND a God is because the Orthodox Byzantines got sick of debating and fused two opinuons in one and built the whole belief system on that. The most fascinating part, however, is that most Christians today strongly believe that this belief sysetm has evolved straight from the teachings of Christ! But Peter, one of Christ's apostle who was practically the closest one to Christ, therefore someone you would expect to have the most legitimate view on Christianity as such, was later claimed a heretic by Paul, a transformed Christian who supposedly had a vision of Christ, but who didn't even know Christ!!! Peter's view on Christianity simply vanished throughout time, leaving us with suspicious interpretations from people who barely knew Christ.
Of course, one could say that such was the will of God, and that what we have today, Orthodox/Catholic Christianity, was according to Divine plan of God, but that would be hagiography (your own interpretation). So if it weren't for the undeniable power of Orthodox Byzantines, we could've evolved a completely different belief system of Gnostics or Ebionites for example.
Gnostics, by the way, believed that Christ wasn't a man at all. They believed that the world was possessed by an Evil Prince and Christ appeared to only a few chosen ones to save them from the Evil One. They were essentially Platonists, and believed that matter cannot be perfect, therefore Christ was not a man, because men are subject to change and change is imperfect. Historians speculate that the fourth Gospel of John is heavily Gnostic and wonder why it was canonized - it is from the Gospel of John that we have the notion that the path that leads to Heaven is narrow, and few will find it. A very Gnostic notion: they believed that Christ appeared to only a few chosen ones and gave secret teachings. The religion was sometimes called esoteric (secret) Christianity.
So, my verdict is: if only a few centuries after Christ's death there were so many different interpretations and writings circulating, how do we know that what we base our modern Christianity on is even related to the teachings of Christ at all?
Another thing I find really peculiar is that there were lots of Gospels, letters, and books circulating that were kicked out of the New Testament, as well as the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible, since to them, it's never been old in the first place). There's a whole gathering of books that were kicked out of the Old Testament - the Apocrypha, and Pseudopygrapha. Apocrypha, is a collection of books the rabbies kicked out of OT altogether, for various reasons. Among them are: Tobit, Judith, Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon, Daniel and Sazanna (what the?), Bel and the Snake, Ecclesiasticus, Barukh, Ezrdas... interesting, huh? What's really interesting, is that Jesus himself has probably read these books in his time, since he had the Septuagint version of the Bible! Among the Pseudopygrapha (books that were written under a pseudonymn, since Ezra banned prophetic literature, having grown sick of the numerous "prophets" here and there) we find Jubilees, The Secret Book of Adam and Eve (pretty cool huh?), Enok, Apocalypse of Ezra. Most of these writings are very apocalyptic.
There's also New Testament Apocrypha - the Gospel of James (Jesus's brother supposedly), numerous letters from Apostles. Most of these got kicked out and only few wwere canonized. What's really cool is that historians believe that only 7 of 10 Paul's letters in the New Testament are authentic. Here's the books of the Bible they believe are not written by Paul, but somebody else writing in the name of Paul: Ephesians, Colossians, and II Thessalonians, so-called, the Deutero-Pauline writings, which were written about 10 to 20 years after Paul's death, around 70-80-CE.
Originally Posted by nomas 
