Yeah, I'm of the belief that what was taken as "canonical" was selected through the Romans finally giving in and creating a hollowed-out state religion version of Christianity after they couldn't ignore the popularity of Christianity. The Nicene council was convened and after we got what we consider as the Bible today. The early Christian writing were much more radical and esoteric than what came later (and most likely had fuck all to do with what Jesus actually taught). The early Christians weren't a monolith either, there were literally hundreds of sects, with a lot of crossover with pagan "mystery cults" and neo-platonism. The early Christians didn't all agree on who Jesus was or what exactly was the "true" teaching of Jesus. If you take a look at the Gnostic writings Jesus comes across as more an eastern-style sage figure ala Lao-Tzu or the Buddha, hell there's a few passages in the Gospel of Thomas where he straight up is speaking some esoteric, sage-like stuff:
(3) Jesus says: (1) “If those who lead you say to you: ‘Look, the kingdom is in the sky!’ then the birds of the sky will precede you. (2) If they say to you: ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fishes will precede you. (3) Rather, the kingdom is inside of you and outside of you.” (4) “When you come to know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will realize that you are the children of the living Father. (5) But if you do not come to know yourselves, then you exist in poverty, and you are poverty.”
(22) (1) Jesus saw infants being suckled. (2) He said to his disciples: “These little ones being suckled are like those who enter the kingdom.” (3) They said to him: “Then will we enter the kingdom as little ones?” (4) Jesus said to them: “When you make the two into one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside and the above like the below — (5) that is, to make the male and the female into a single one, so that the male will not be male and the female will not be female — (6) and when you make eyes instead of an eye and a hand instead of a hand and a foot instead of a foot, an image instead of an image, (7) then you will enter [the kingdom].”
In the late 80's a group of scholars actually made a committee and voted on what they considered to be the authentic sayings of Jesus by comparing the four gospels, and using the earliest gospel (Mark, I believe) as a frame of reference. There's also this idea of the "Q" gospel, which was the main document that all the other gospels took their content from, but has been lost to time, but believed to have existed from speculating on various allusions to a central text. The findings of the committee were released in the form of a book "The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus.
Thomas Jefferson (yes, that Jefferson) even wrote his own Bible, referred to as the "Jefferson Bible", because he believed many of the sayings and doings attributed to Jesus in the New Testament to be forgeries, obscuring the true sayings of Jesus.
I'm not a Christian myself, more of a armchair philosopher/spiritual seeker, but it's my view that Jesus was a very real person, that's name was used in an opportunistic way by powerful people to create a system of social/political control. If you look at what is considered to be his original words, he doesn't claim to be "the" son of god, but claims that *we are all sons and daughters of god". There are many times where Jesus actually rebukes those people for holding him up as some type of godly figure.
I think Jesus was an enlightened figure (possibly with far east spiritual training, which has been speculated by some, perhaps venturing to India in his youth) that preached a very, very different spirituality than the one that co-opted his name and popularity. Of course, one can only speculate, but from the available evidence I assume it to be a pretty good chance that was the case. Which, if you are to believe that idea, makes it pretty tragic that such a teacher could have their name and ideas used and twisted into something far different, and worse, than what they were actually teaching.
Haha, possibly. The early conception of Thomas, throughout the Gnostic writings, Thomas was seen as Jesus' favorite disciple, even drawing the ire of the other disciples because of Jesus' supposed favoritism of Thomas. And interestingly, Thomas was seen as Jesus' "twin", in the Gospel of Thomas he is referred to as such, and John even mentions it in the Gospel of John:
So, Thomas was definitely seen as a special figure in the early Christian writings, which is interesting as he is now commonly remembered as "doubting Thomas", the disciple who doubted the resurrection initially. Seems like there was some in the early church that disliked Thomas' original prominence (perhaps due to the association with being an important figure to the gnostic sects) and basically character assassinated him in retribution.
Yeah, the early Christian development is quite fascinating. I was first exposed to it by Elaine Pagel's book "The Gnostic Gospels", which led to me doing a deeper investigation. It was interesting, since I was also heavily into reading Taoist philosophy at the time, and I could immediately draw the parallels between the Gnostic and some Taoist ideas. The Gnostic version of Christianity seemed to have far more in common with eastern spiritual traditions than other western religious thought. I very much see Gnosticism as a western spiritual kin to eastern systems of thought. It makes a lot of sense too, as I have no doubt that there was a lot of cross-pollination of ideas between the east and west at that time, leading to a synthesis of western thought with the ideas it encountered from the east.