In its early years, Christianity was a small, fledgling, widely persecuted cult. It had no formal center or official documents, only “gospels”[*6]—individual recountings of Jesus’s teachings and experiences—recorded long after his crucifixion. Preached and proselytized, the gospels were passed on by mouth and ear, and then written down and copied by scribes for generations, with varying and unknown accuracy. Original versions—if there even were any—did not survive.
