A basic idea of historical reconstruction is that if you figure that idea is a twig upon a branch upon a stump, then you can tell what the branch is like by finding the items of similarity shared by it’s twigs; then you can tell what the stump was like by finding the items of similarity between the branches. Every split introduces small changes from what it is grown off of, retaining some characteristics, losing others, but given enough of these splits you can compare and contrast to find the history.
So now, there are lots of accounts of the early beginnings of the Christian church, but those that were chosen to comprise the New Testament were chosen on, essentially, two standards:
- Being older works that appeared to have come from sources close to Jesus in the 1st century CE.
- Containing the accepted religious doctrine.
Most of the apocryphal works are from the 2nd century (at least that I considered) and also do not contain the accepted doctrine.
However, some may actually be older than that or reworkings of older material. And more importantly is that they are going to be descended from some sort of proto-Christian tradition, so though they are more removed, they do provide something of a view of how things might have been during the actual time of Christ via the technique explained above.
Before proceeding, though, let me note that I am just a guy who knows how to click links on the Wikipedia. I can’t read Aramaic, ancient Greek, or any of these. Nor have I made much effort to parse through the documents referenced by the Wikipedia articles. I accepted the summaries provided in the Wikipedia articles as given. And finally I’m an atheist, so when looking through stuff, I will assume human causes to effects, rather than divine intervention.
So first, four items that seem to come up often enough in various apocrypha that they seem likely to be true:
- John the Baptist probably founded Gnosticism.
- The Gospel of Matthew appears to be a rewrite of an earlier work commonly known as the Gospel of the Hebrews. Most likely it was expanded and removed references to the need to maintain Jewish law as a Christian (for instance, circumcision), added the virgin birth, and presented Mary as something of an embodiment of the Holy Spirit as well.
- Paul was not the leader of the church. The leader was James the Just, after Jesus died. And while Paul was probably rather opinionated and self-promoting, he really didn’t preach much that was probably outside the scope of what was accepted doctrine during his time. Simply, the need to preach to non-Gentiles ended with the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, so that wing of the church disappeared and it was best to carry on with the gentile-focused wing which was being spearheaded by Paul. it’s possible that he shifted himself into a higher position than he deserved and ascribed to himself a greater link to Jesus than is merited (i.e. direct revelation), but this might have been added later by others.
- James the Just believed that he had seen Jesus resurrected, and died because he wouldn’t say otherwise.
But so while items 2 and 3 are interesting, they pretty much come down to that the New Testament seems likely to pretty closely conform to what the earliest founders of the church intended for the gentiles.
The interesting item is item 1.
One never hears much about Gnosticism and in general it’s simply something presented as a heresy in the Bible. And yet, Christianity is obviously tied to Gnosticism. You can’t just say that they are two separate things. Gnostic groups followed Jesus as the savior. Others followed John the Baptist and felt that Jesus had been an usurper. Yet other groups seem to have little to no relation to Christianity and are rather just an odd offshoot of Platonism. But in general, the more platonistic groups seem to be later (3rd and 4th century.)
The link with Platonism, then, makes one suspect that there had been a link there to begin with.
The “gentiles” or “non-circumcised” people most generally meant the Greeks when the church was starting, as this was the largest group of non-Jews about. Plato was of course Greek and, living in the 4th and 3rd centuries BCE, had certainly had plenty of time to spread his ideas among the Greek people by the time of John the Baptist.
So it isn’t hard to figure out where Gnosticism came from–a combining of Judaism and Platonism. And it’s easy to proceed on to say that the link between Christianity and Gnosticism must be that they are the same thing; Christianity is simply a less-Platonistic version of Gnosticism that triumphed over alternatives.
Now to some extent this is certainly so. The Christian idea of Satan certainly comes from the Gnostic Demiurge and presumably other smaller items.
But overall it doesn’t seem to hold up as an idea.
The problem is that Gnosticism generally presented itself in a similar manner as a mystery cult. The idea was that there were certain secrets (gnosis) that could only be revealed to you by someone higher up the food chain of the organization. Christianity doesn’t have this part.
Now while John the Baptist seems to be at the root of things which became Gnostic, the first big, heretical Gnostic teachings were supposedly started by his two disciples, Simon (AKA Simon Magus) and Dositheus.
It seems reasonable to say that perhaps John the Baptist brought in the idea of the demiurge, but it was his two disciples who brought in the gnosis.
Now so far, I’d say that I haven’t said anything which is likely to be wrong. I’m not a bible scholar, I’m just a guy who can click through links, but still this seems to be pretty easy a path to follow.
The thing that interested me was Simon Magus. This is a guy who’s a blatant charlatan, going around performing small tricks that fall entirely in the range of sleight of hand (assuming they’ve been exaggerated a bit) :
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And he says that he is himself the embodiment of God on Earth and people should worship him.
Now this is a guy who is included in the Bible.
If you’re writing a religion based on the idea that there was this one guy who performed magic tricks was actually the embodiment of God on Earth, would you include a secondary character who is exactly the same, except a charlatan?
Let’s look at the beliefs of Simon’s religion (which did indeed have lots of followers.)
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Free sex! Magic! Depravement isn’t bad! Sounds like good times!
But to take a break from distant history, let’s consider modern history. What do you call a group where:
- It is lead by a single, charismatic leader who ascribes to himself special divinity.
- It professes to have secret knowledge that will save you, and you’ll receive more of it the more you suck up to people above you.
- It has questionable morality. For instance, the charismatic leader can bed any woman in the group and be alright by the moral teachings of the group.
- It has a dash of magic/aliens/etc. thrown in.
Why yes, it’s called a cult!
Back to our history lesson, but now let’s look at a particular Gnostic sect called Valentinianism.
The interesting things about this particular group of Gnostics is that it was nestled atop Christianity. You still went to church and read the New Testament and whatnot. But after that was done, there was another, secret level of Christianity for you to learn. And according to Valentinus he had learned these secrets (gnosis) from one of St. Paul’s students. So we’re talking something that’s very close to the core of the earliest church.
So is there any evidence that the Jews or the Romans or anyone viewed the early Christian church, for instance while Jesus was alive, as anything other than a cult? And what are cults like?
But while lots of the early guys were martyred, like James the Just, they also lived and worked to spread the religion for significant periods of time, traveling all around. It’s pretty much just when they started saying things publicly that didn’t fit basically within the rules of Judaism that the police showed up and stoned them to death.
James the Just taught that you needed to follow all of the rules of the Torah, and called himself essentially Jewish. He had some other stuff that was sort of “talking points” in the form of parables and whatnot, but there’s no reason to think that he was spouting off that the Torah was wrong or flawed all that loudly or publicly. It’s not until he gets surrounded and asked point blank whether or not he believed in heretical teachings that he was executed. Before that, he could always slip under the radar.
So now if you’re a cult leader and you’re living someplace where if you claim yourself to be God that you’re going to get executed, it’s a decent bet that you’re going to have two sets of books. Publicly you’re going to say something pretty near to Judaism. Privately it can be more sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll.
Let’s get back to Simon Magus.
As said before, it seems odd to include a charlatan parallel to Jesus in the Bible. So that bothered me. But the other thing that bothered me was how much of everything about his life seemed made up. No two stories match in their account of him.
Any record of any event by multiple is going to have differences, so it’s not impressive that the accounts of Jesus’ and Paul’s and everyone’s lives don’t mesh up exactly in the New Testament. But overall they do seem to try and present something like a historic accuracy, putting in the names of the places and people involved and any major events that happened around the same time so that a history can be built from it.
Just in the New Testament, Simon doesn’t match with anything that makes sense no matter how you fudge it, and especially not if you add in extra-biblical notes on him.
Not only is he a character who shouldn’t be in the book, everything about him seems to be made up.
So the options are that either a) he is a fictional character who was added for story purposes (e.g. to contrast with the real thing), or b) there was a cover up.
Again, up until this point, I still haven’t said anything which is terribly debatable. While not necessarily accurate, I have presented a plausible account of how this all ties together. But now it’s time to consider The Big Conspiracy Theory.
John the Baptist is Jesus’ teacher.
John the Baptist is also the teacher of Simon Magus and Dositheus, the possible founders of a sex cult that’s tied in to Christianity.
A guy who is in Jesus’ vicinity is known as Didymus Judas Thomas. Both “Didymus” and “Thomas” mean “twin”. One theory of why Twin Judas Twin is called that is because perhaps he was literally the twin brother of Jesus.
Simon Magus likely knows sleight of hand and other stage magic. In stage magic, having an identical twin is a very handy thing to have. It lets you flash from one end of the room to another instantaneously. You can be in two places at the same time.
Jesus, after dying, was seen wandering about by several people. One of the people who saw him “resurrected” was so certain that there had been a resurrection that he was willing to get stoned death his faith in that reality was so strong.
Simon and Dositheus battled internally for the upper hand in being the primary leader among their group of Gnostics.
A guy named Judas turned in Jesus to the authorities.
Twin Judas Twin (St. Thomas) is the apostle who went furthest away from the center of things after the death of Jesus. There is a Gnostic text titled the Acts of Thomas in existence. There is also a book called the Gospel of Thomas which begins by saying that the contents are secret teachings (gnosis?) personally passed on to Thomas, the twin brother of Jesus.
So, did Jesus and Judas have alter egos that they went by? It’s likely that if Jesus taught Gnostic, free-sex cult sort of stuff that he would indeed have just such a secondary name that he would go by. And if he was squirreling away a secret brother, it’s likely that his brother would have an alter ego as well, possibly always wearing a hood when he went out in public.
Indeed, if there was such an arrangement, you would only expect to see the most subtle of hints of it. 
Where do you see that? All of the apocrypha were documents known and referred to by early Christian writers. They disappeared from the planet because they were designated as heretical and the groups who would have kept making new copies through the ages were suppressed if they were in Europe. Groups who weren’t in Europe did continue on with their versions of events and so you get things like the modern day