Published May 26, 2021 Updated May 26, 2021, 6:46 pm CDT
In the earliest days of Christianity, disciples of the teachings of Jesus spent as much time arguing with each other as they did preaching. Those first few centuries are full of recorded and theorized squabbles over the very basics of doctrine and canon, what was a “real” book of the Bible as opposed to an apocryphal one, and what the tenets of their growing religion should look like. As one scholar put it to PBS’
Frontline “from the very beginning, it seems Christianity has different ways of construing what it’s all about, which will lead to divisions and lead to conflict.”