Who were the Original Christians?
Christianity is supposedly founded on the revelations of Jesus Christ the son of God, and yet we find that the whole thing was plagiarized from earlier religious myths. During the early days of the Orthodox Church the Christian clergy relied on the fact that they and they alone could trace their religion all the way back to Jesus Christ. Therefore, it was they, and they alone, who were the true source of Christian doctrine as opposed to the Gnostics who could not trace their religion back to Jesus. Ah, but there is a catch to this theory. You see the Gnostics really didn't require there to be an actual living person named Jesus Christ. "His disciples said to him, 'Show us the place where you are, since it is necessary for us to seek it.' He said to them, "Whoever has ears, let him hear. There is light within a man of light, and he lights up the whole world. If he does not shine, he is darkness."--Thomas (24). If Jesus were a real physical person, and they were talking to him, they would know where he was.

The Church has always claimed that the four canonical gospels were given a priori acceptance based on their early date of composition. While we know that this is probably true of Matthew and Mark, it most definitely is not true of Luke and John both of which were written during the second century a time when numerous apocryphal texts were written. Based on this reasoning it would seem logical to assume that the authors or those in possession of these manuscripts would represent those closest to the original form of Christianity. Reinach, after quoting Irenaeus and other authorities states the reason for four gospels: "The real reason was to satisfy each of the four principal Churches each of which possessed its Gospel: Matthew at Jerusalem, Mark at Rome, or Alexandria, Luke at Antioch, and John at Ephesus."--(Reinach, Orpheus, p. 217.) This reason for the use of a different Gospel by each of the principal and independent Churches,--for the special uses of each of which the respective Gospels were no doubt worked up by forging Fathers in each Fold,--is confirmed by Bishop Irenaeus himself in this same argument. Each of the four principal sects of heretics, he says, makes use in their Churches of one or the other of these four gospels, for instance: Matthew by the Ebionites; Mark by "those who separate Jesus from Christ"; Luke by the Marcionites; and John by the Valentinians; and this heretical use of the Four, argues the Bishop, confirms their like acceptance and use by the True Churches. In other words the Orthodox Church which claims to be the true Church of Jesus Christ borrowed, or should I say stole their scriptures from the very people they called heretics.

However, there exists a distinct error in the concept that Gnosticism was a second century heresy as noted by no less a Church authority than, Irenaeus who stated "So firm is the ground upon which these Gospels rest, that the very heretics bear witness to them, and starting from these documents, each of them endeavors to establish his own peculiar doctrine." In other words the Bishop avers to the accuracy of the gospels based on their use by the very same Gnostic sects whom he refers to as heretics. Now, it may seem a stretch for me to identify the heretics as Gnostics, but you will have to do a little research on your own to learn that Irenaeus was so obsessed with these heretical Gnostics that he wrote tedious volumes about them under the title 'Against Heresies,' and in many instances those adversarial writings are all we know about these various early sects of Christianity, for you see the Orthodox clan felt so threatened by these sectarian writings that they committed to the flames every last word that they could find pertaining to them.


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