I'm definitely adding this to my reading list, it sounds fascinating.

Living relics of an ancient creed, the Mandaeans testify to the religious melting pot in which Christianity was formed. As Catherine Nixey notes in this arrestingly vivid book, scholars now talk not of “early Christianity” but “early Christianities”. In some, Pontius Pilate – later seen by Christians as a shifty Roman relativist who washed his hands of Jesus and sent him to his death – was canonised as a saint; he still is venerated as such in the Ethiopian Coptic Church. In others, women were ordained as bishops and God was represented as being female. In a variant practised by the Ophites, a Gnostic Christian sect, Jesus was incarnated as a holy snake. These and many other Christianities were repressed when, in AD 380, a single version became the Roman state religion under Emperor Theodosius I.

#History
#Religion

https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/book-of-the-day/2024/03/personal-jesus-christianity-heresy