Contrary to the Roman Catholic story of unbroken transmission of church doctrine, the real origin of Christianity is far more fascinating and believable. Rather than an unadulterated “pure doctrine” handed on from apostle to apostle, early Christianity was a melting pot of pluralism, as different in ethnicity and temperament as the Mediterranean lands themselves. 

There were Jewish Christians, Greek Christians, Roman Christians, a whole line of Syrian and Aramaic Christians that has largely dropped out of sight, initiates of Mystery schools, keepers of the Torah, millennialists and mystics, misogynists, and matriarchs. Each community struggled within the terms of its own frame of understanding to make sense of the Jesus event, and within each community that vision looked a little different.

Far from bowing to some objective standard of orthodoxy, what gave these early Christian communities their seat-of-the-pants dynamism was that everything had to be worked out from scratch. What did Jesus actually teach? Who was an apostle and who wasn’t? How did one tell? Needless to say, there were many local options, and the texts that circulated among these early outposts of Christians comprised an ongoing conversation rather than an unbroken monologue. 

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The Meaning of Mary Magdalene 
Cynthia Bourgeault