You only know the version of Christianity that won. These are the ones that got erased.
Fundamentalists want us to believe — right alongside them — that Christianity has always been one clear, united faith. One Bible, one truth, one church.
But as we’ve already discussed, early Christianity was anything but unified. It was a battlefield packed with rival groups, each pushing its own version of Jesus and what his message really meant. Some said he was fully human; others swore he was divine. Some clung tightly to Jewish law; others threw it aside. Some followed Paul; others called him a fraud and a traitor.
What we call “Christianity” today is simply the version that won — often by force, politics, or sheer luck of survival. The losers were erased from history: their books destroyed, their teachings condemned, their names dragged through the mud.
I believe each of these lost Christianities deserves its own full story. But for now, let’s start with the big picture — their summaries.
1. Ebionites — Jesus Was a Prophet, Not a God
The Ebionites were some of the first people to walk in Jesus’ footsteps — but they didn’t kneel at his feet. To them, Jesus was the Jewish Messiah, a man on a mission, not a god on a throne.
They stuck closely to Jewish law, insisting on circumcision, strict dietary rules, and Sabbath observance. And when Paul came along preaching freedom from the Law, they saw him as the smooth-talking outsider who crashed the party and rewrote the guest list — twisting a Jewish reform movement into something they barely recognized.
Fourth-century church historian Eusebius called them “poor” and stubborn — but it’s clear he despised them. Why? Because they stubbornly clung to Jewish traditions just as the fast-growing Gentile church was eager to break free from its Jewish roots.
By the second and third centuries, the Ebionites were branded heretics. Their writings were wiped out, their followers scattered, and they slowly disappeared from Christian history. Modern scholars like Bart Ehrman argue that if the Ebionites had survived, Christianity today might look far more Jewish than it does.
We only know fragments of their teachings because their enemies, like Irenaeus and Epiphanius, preserved bits of their views — just to mock them, calling them “Christ-deniers.”
Yet this brand of Christianity wasn’t completely lost. In the seventh century, Muhammad drew on ideas that echoed Ebionite beliefs when shaping Islam, recognizing Jesus as a human prophet — though with key differences. For example, in Islam, Jesus is born without a father, human or divine, and it’s Jesus (not Muhammad) who will return before the end of time.
2. Marcionites — Dump the Old Testament, Follow a Loving God
We recently covered this in detail in The Heretic Who Could’ve Rewritten Christianity and Set It Free. If you’ve already read the long version, feel free to skip to the next brand of lost Christianity. But for the sake of this piece, here’s a quick rundown.
Marcion looked at the God of the Old Testament, saw the lightning bolts, floods, and bloodshed, and said, “This can’t be the same God who tells us to love our enemies.” And honestly, it’s hard to blame him. We’re talking about a God who went from commanding people to kill disobedient children to preaching forgiveness and love — that’s a massive shift.
He taught that the God of Jesus was completely different — a God of love and mercy — while the Old Testament God was an inferior creator, obsessed with law and punishment. Marcion tossed out the Hebrew scriptures and built his own Christian canon, using only a shortened version of Luke’s Gospel and ten of Paul’s letters.
Marcion’s church spread across the Roman Empire, and for a while, it looked like his ideas might dominate. But the mainstream church fought back hard. They excommunicated Marcion, banned his books, and attacked his followers.
Ironically, we know much of what we do about Marcion today because of his critics. Early Christian writer Tertullian was so determined to destroy Marcion’s teachings that he wrote a five-book attack, famously calling him “the firstborn of Satan.” Without those hostile sources, most of Marcion’s radical vision would have been wiped away completely.
3. Gnostics — Salvation Through Secret Knowledge
To the Gnostics, the world was like a poorly made prison — slapped together by a second-rate builder — and inside each of us was a lost piece of light trying to break free.
They believed Jesus came not to die for sins, but to reveal secret knowledge (gnosis) that would free the soul from the prison of the body.
Their writings, like the Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Mary, and Gospel of Judas, gave a completely different view of Jesus — one focused on inner enlightenment, not public salvation.
For a while, Gnostic groups were everywhere. But after Emperor Constantine legalized and backed Christianity, the church launched an all-out attack on heresies. Gnostic texts were destroyed, their teachers were condemned, and by the sixth century, they were gone.
We only know about many Gnostic texts today because a secret library was buried in the Egyptian desert — the Nag Hammadi codices — and accidentally dug up in 1945.
4. Montanists — New Prophecies and Apocalypse Warnings
Montanus was the kind of preacher who could split a crowd with his voice — a man convinced the Holy Spirit was speaking through him and through two women, Priscilla and Maximilla.
They believed in fresh, direct revelations from God, strict moral discipline, and the urgent belief that the end of the world was near. They rejected the growing church bureaucracy, saying the Spirit was still active and didn’t need bishops and councils.
But the mainstream church hated uncontrolled prophecy — especially prophecies coming from women. They labeled Montanism a dangerous heresy, banned its leaders, and warned Christians to stay away.
Some scholars today argue that cracking down on Montanism helped the church become more hierarchical, male-dominated, and rigid — less open to spontaneous spiritual experiences.
Church fathers like Eusebius and Epiphanius preserved details about Montanist teachings only to attack them, describing them as “raving madmen” and “possessed by demons.”
5. Arians — Jesus Was Divine, But Not Eternal or Equal
Arius was the kind of priest who could split a room with a single sermon — a man whose questions about Jesus’ place shook the whole empire and turned faith into a battlefield.
He taught that Jesus was divine but not eternal — that he was created by God the Father and was therefore subordinate, not equal.
This debate rocked the empire. Whole regions and bishops leaned toward Arianism, and even Emperor Constantine tried to smooth things over. But at the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, church leaders declared Arius a heretic and produced the Nicene Creed, which declared Jesus “of the same substance” as God the Father.
Even after Nicaea, Arianism kept popping back up for decades. It took political pressure, theological battles, and time to finally crush it.
Surviving letters and council records show how fiercely the Arian controversy divided Christian communities. Some Gothic and Germanic tribes, interestingly, held onto Arian beliefs for centuries even after Rome abandoned them.
You can read more about this in The Christianity That Could Have Been, Had Arianism Won.
Today, many Christians in the West assume the version of Christianity they grew up with is the only one that’s ever existed. They recite the creeds, hear the sermons, and think Jesus has always been seen as God — eternal, divine, equal to the Father.
Yet plenty of them don’t even believe it.
According to a 2021 Survey of American Religious Views by Lifeway Research, many Christians today — especially in the West — quietly believe Jesus was not God. To them, he was just a great teacher, a prophet, or a moral guide, even though the denominations they belong to officially preach the Trinity and Jesus’ full divinity.
Unless you’re a fundamentalist (who traditionally avoids doing much thinking for themselves), there’s a massive gap between what churches say on paper and what many people in the pews actually believe. And this isn’t just about the Trinity. Honestly, it’s nothing new.
Early Christianity was a continuous fight over who and what Jesus really was. Some said human, some said divine, some said both, and others offered completely different views — views the modern church worked hard to bury.
The Jesus most people hear about today — the one declared “God from God, Light from Light” — is just the version that won the war. It didn’t survive because it was the purest or most authentic; it survived because it crushed the rivals, banned the alternative voices, and rewrote the story.
I’ll leave you with this: If you’re a believer in the winner’s version of Christianity — without ever looking deeper — doesn’t that mean you’re not really interested in who Jesus actually was, what he actually said, and what he actually did? Aren’t you just hoping that the most powerful clergy throughout history were always right?
