What's a real snort is that within 150 years after the death of Jesus, there were some 82 bishops, all claiming to be actual, or at least spiritual descendants of the original twelve apostles, and each with his own ideas about what it was all about. They were "excommunicating" each other right left and center over some pretty ridiculous stuff. It wasn't until the Emperor Constantine "saw a vision" and became a Christian (or usurped Christianity) that things started to gain a little cohesion—at least temporarily.

Constantine declared, "Dogma is what I say it is!!"

Suddenly, rather than being at odds with Rome, Christianity had the power of the Roman state behind it.

The Closing of the Western Mind : The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason, by Charles Freeman, Alfred A. Knopf, New York (2003)

Don Firth