In 1934, the influential New Testament scholar Walter Bauer published his book “Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity”, which went on to change the paradigm of how some scholars view the early church. Basically, Bauer's thesis was that there was not one single 'orthodox' version of Christianity at the very start of the movement. Rather, there were many different and equally valid versions of Christianity and what we have come to call Christianity is perhaps not even the most ancient form. According to Bauer, the only thing special about 'Orthodoxy' is that it just happened to be the version that stomped out all the others while rising to power, afterward rewriting both history and the bible in order to bolster their own opinions.
