THE SECRET LIVES OF JESUS CHRIST

Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever." That verse from the Epistle to the Hebrews has always been a little wistful, never a guarantee of theological peace even in the generations immediately following Jesus' ministry. The very division of the biblical canon into Old and New Testaments was the result of a ferocious debate over the nature of Jesus around the year A.D. 140. And as Christians multiplied, they would produce competing visions of Jesus, ranging from the Christ worshipped today to a tripartite Jesus who lived on the moon to a Jesus in Central Asia who merged with a Buddha and eventually inspired the naming of a Chinese dynasty.

THE SON OF WHICH GOD?

Marcion, probably born around A.D. 85, was a formidable scholar of Scripture and a devotee of the teachings of St. Paul. A wealthy shipowner from what is now the Black Sea coast of Turkey, he made a large contribution to the struggling Christian community in Rome and then proceeded to enunciate his vision of Christ. The kind and good Jesus, he declared, could not possibly be the Son of the implacably just, harshly rational God of the Jewish Prophets. No, that was the wrong God, merely the creator of this world. Jesus was the Son of an unknown and greater God, who out of completely unreasonable kindness and love sent his Son to deliver humankind from the legalistic master of creation. To buttress his beliefs, Marcion purged the miasma of texts Christians used as Scripture to form a "new" testament. In his eyes, it would be composed of the Gospel of Luke--the only account he trusted--and parts of 10 Epistles of Paul. No Prophets, no Genesis, no Job.

That scandalized Marcion's fellow Christians, who believed in a continuity of inspiration from Adam through Moses to Jesus. Not so, said Marcion, who deleted even Luke's accounts of the child Jesus. Jesus, Marcion believed, appeared fully grown in Capernaum to the fishermen who would become the first Disciples. The Christians of Rome promptly started to form their own canon, which included an "old" testament. They expelled Marcion from the church, handing him back his charity.

JESUS AND THE GNOSTICS

Marcion started his own church, and his ideas inspired Christians delving into the theologies of gnosis, the Greek word for knowledge, which, as opposed to faith, they argued, was the true source of salvation. For many Gnostic Christians, Jesus only appeared to be man, for the God of this world is the master of matter, and Jesus could not defile himself by actually materializing. Indeed, he was spirit and only seemed to die. Gnostic texts have Christ appearing to Peter as the Crucifixion is taking place, joyfully transcending all this world could hurl at him. The Resurrection becomes moot.

Gnostic cosmologies would overturn biblical traditions. The God of the Old Testament became evil incarnate. For if Satan could tempt Jesus with earthly power and riches, did that not mean that the world was Satan's to give? In time, Jesus would be the spirit of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, giving Adam and Eve a chance to escape from their dastardly creator with a taste of the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

THE MANICHAEAN CHRIST