From Bart Ehrman's neat book "Lost Christianities."
Quote:The wide diversity of early Christianity may be seen above all in the theological
beliefs embraced by people who understood themselves to be followers of
Jesus. In the second and third centuries there were, of course, Christians who
believed in one God. But there were others who insisted that there were two.
Some said there were thirty. Others claimed there were 365.
In the second and third centuries there were Christians who believed that
God had created the world. But others believed that this world had been created
by a subordinate, ignorant divinity. (Why else would the world be filled
with such misery and hardship?) Yet other Christians thought it was worse than
that, that this world was a cosmic mistake created by a malevolent divinity as a
place of imprisonment, to trap humans and subject them to pain and suffering.
In the second and third centuries there were Christians who believed that
the Jewish Scripture (the Christian “Old Testament”) was inspired by the one
true God. Others believed it was inspired by the God of the Jews, who was not
the one true God. Others believed it was inspired by an evil deity. Others believed
it was not inspired.
In the second and third centuries there were Christians who believed that
Jesus was both divine and human, God and man. There were other Christians
who argued that he was completely divine and not human at all. (For them,
divinity and humanity were incommensurate entities: God can no more be a
man than a man can be a rock.) There were others who insisted that Jesus was
a full flesh-and-blood human, adopted by God to be his son but not himself
divine. There were yet other Christians who claimed that Jesus Christ was two
things: a full flesh-and-blood human, Jesus, and a fully divine being, Christ,
who had temporarily inhabited Jesus’ body during his ministry and left him
prior to his death, inspiring his teachings and miracles but avoiding the suffering
in its aftermath.
In the second and third centuries there were Christians who believed that
Jesus’ death brought about the salvation of the world. There were other Christians
who thought that Jesus’ death had nothing to do with the salvation of the
world. There were yet other Christians who said that Jesus never died.
