Okay so Jesus...

Okay so Jesus was born during the Roman Empire and was subjected to persecution because He said God was mightier than the ruling Emperor - then, considered the ultimate blasphemy - and, therefore, punishable by death. 

 And so shit happened. But 300 years later with the decline of the Roman Empire, the most recent emperor Constantine saw the strategic importance of resurrecting Jesus to Divine status; so he reported he had seen a flaming sign on a cross (fraudulently?) proclaiming victory as he headed into battle, and thus he declared Christianity to be the sole legal religion in the newly-named Holy Roman Empire because he was "ordained by a vision". Too good to be true? 

 A couple of years later he hung his second wife and son from his first marriage when he found they were screwing behind his back. Not very Christian of him to kill his family, eh. Any hoot, over the next several centuries there followed a series of 'Ecumenical Councils', a fancy Christian term for 'changing the rules and moving the goalposts'. 

Generally, Christianity had moved underground by necessity through persecution (hence the symbolic fish painted over doors due to covert worshipping places) and had dissolved into a multitude of teachings.

 Bits of The Bible were chucked out and others brought in. There is even speculation/evidence of an early form of Christianity that accepts reincarnation as a valid doctrine! Even King James got in on the act and had an altered bible named after him (KJV, the official King James Version, for the Church of England). The height of the entire farce was when the Vatican approved the questionable practice of "Indulgences" whereby "sinners" could "atone" by paying (seriously!) a sum of money to the Holy Fucking Church thereby settling the moral debt. FFS! 

 Okay so then came the Age of Enlightenment, or the Renaissance, or the end of the Dark Ages, or whatever. Martin Luther (not the negro activist) got involved with the Gutenberg Press and organised a new printing of the Bible to be distributed everywhere. This is arguably the most important and first technological revolution that changed the modern world as we know it! 

 This really pissed off the clergy because prior to this, the only way laity (the common people) had access to scripture was through ordained Priests reading it aloud at congregation (bibles were hand-written and therefore scarce). This meant 'no need to congregate' which really pissed off the Church. 

 Power To The People!

 The protests that arose (and the book burning?) gave rise to the Protestant Movement. Derr. And Lutherans. And later Methodists. And yeah, you know the rest. Gone was Constantine and the Vatican's monopoly of Christianity. Next was evangelicals, pentecostals, mormons, adventists, born-again, you name it. Roman Catholics no longer had a monopoly on Christianity. Sure enough, just like Hinduism with its endless string of "avatars of Vishnu", along comes a bunch of "Second Coming Of Jesus" wannabes. Except their dates for end of the world Armageddon never materialise on schedule. Whoops. Another prediction, then another failure. Starting to wear thin now. 

 No, I will not digress into fake Bart Simpson Version or Ron L. Hubbard nonsense. Although i DO believe that there are authorised versions out there, I have no idea which is which. That is entirely outside the area of my expertise as I am not a cleric.