What if we have been missing a whole stage of how the canonical gospels came to be? What if there were a whole raft of prior Jesus narratives, the fragmentary vestiges of which now appear in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? This would explain why these gospels seem over-crowded with incompatible understandings of Jesus ("Christologies")? In
The Gospels Behind the Gospels
, innovative biblical scholar Robert M. Price attempts to reassemble the puzzle pieces, disclosing several earlier gospels of communities who imagined Jesus as the predicted return of the prophet Elijah, the Samaritan Taheb (a second Moses), a resurrected John the Baptist, a theophany of Yahweh, a Gnostic Revealer, a Zealot revolutionary, etc. As these various sects shrank and collapsed, their remaining followers would have come together, just as modern churches and denominations seek to survive by merging and consolidating. Our canonical gospels might be the result. Similarly, Price explores the possibility that Paul, Apollos, Cephas, and Christ were originally figureheads of rival sects who eventually merged in much the same way. You will never read the gospels the same way again!