...just when you start wanting to embrace the Gnostic texts as the "hidden" and "true" alternatives to the rather prudish Roman/Council of Nicea influenced Bible, you start realizing that they are...weird.

I read "Stranger in a Strange Land" and was around the many annoying Jesus Freaks while in college, I still have a hard time believing Jesus was a hard-core hippie, hopefully more like the William Dafoe of "Last Temptation of Christ".

I wonder if early Christianity was like early TV/Radio/Internet, a kind of Life of Brian-esque free-for-all until the "networks" standardized, for better or worse.