You say that an awful lot. I wonder if you realize what you are admitting.
You are essentially admitting that you have no organic connection with the ancient and "original" chrstianity but are, like an archeologist or paleontologist, trying to scientifically reconstruct the long lost one true religion by referring to evidence. What if you have made a mistake? What if you have added a bone from some other animal to the neck of a giant lizard (theoretically, as I reject evolution altogether)?
First of all, any "one true religion" that fell so totally that it has to be reconstructed scientifically centuries later in this manner was never "true" to begin with.
Secondly, the first chrstians had no "acts through revelation" to consult. They had no "new testament," and even if they did they would be too expensive for everyone to own one (Zondervan and Thomas Nelson not having been around back then). Until it was written down and canonized, every single uniquely chrstian doctrine was extra-Biblical, even if only temporarily. This also shows the absurdity of the often-made claim that "the apostles themselves could only teach in accordance with ['old testament'] scripture." If that were true, no "new testament" book would have ever been written! Oh, and the scripture that the Bereans searched was also the "old testament."
Thirdly, as I often point out, you are pretending that Roman Catholicism is the only ancient form of chrstianity to develop into "baptized heathenism," and it was all because of Constantine. The Armenian church became the official established church in Armenia twelve years before Constantine legalized chrstianity. They aren't (and weren't) scripture-only Protestants. What about the Ethiopians? Did Constantine introduce "baptized heathenism" to Ethiopia? Despite its long subservience to the Coptic Church of Egypt, the Ethiopian Church has always been fairly isolated and idiosyncratic. Do you really think that every Ethiopian chrstian was a "born from above, scripture only" chrstian until 313 when Constantine snapped his fingers, magically transforming all those ancient Southern Baptists into monks??? It's a matter of historical record that what we now call monasticism began in Egypt before Constantine came along, though doubtless you will deny this for dogmatic reasons. What about the Syrians, who are ethnoculturally the closest to the Jews of ancient Israel? They were never Protestants (or proto-Protestants).
The most damning refutation of this naive belief in an "original" born again, "scripture only" chrstianity is the chrstians of Kerala on the southwest coast of India. They were supposedly converted by Thomas in the year 52 and for hundreds of years were geographically cut off from other chrstians. When they were first discovered in 1499 or 1599 this "pristine" apostolic chrstianity was not Protestant--it was Nestorian. The Nestorian church was never under the authority of the Roman Empire and had declared itself independent from the other churches at a fairly early date. So Constantine never had anything to do with them. They are similar to Protestants in only three ways: they do not use images, they don't have monks (for historical and not dogmatic reasons as they had monks at first), and they do not call Mary the "mother of g*d" (the only ancient church that doesn't do so). Other than that they have the priesthood, "the holy sacrifice," the sacraments, the set liturgical prayers, the liturgical calendar full of holidays and feast days, etc. Do you honestly believe that Constantine ruled over southeastern India? Or how about Chinese Turkestan, to which the Nestorian church once reached?
When one sees that every single ancient chrstian tradition is part of this and no traces of an "ancient Protestant church" have ever been found. Add to this that the "baptized heathens" Constantine initially made peace with were the same people who had been persecuted and in hiding, and that after Constantine there was another brief period of persecution during which they had to go hiding again, the claim that there is some sort of "trail of blood" tracing born-again Protestantism to the original chrstians is shown to be a total fantasy, cooked up because born-again Protestant theology (about which I'll not go into at this time) insists that insists that it simply must have due to its unique doctrines on sin and in how G-d deals with it.
I do not write all this to defend the ancient churches. Many many points and critiques born-again Protestantism makes against them are spot-on, though the extrapolation that the original chrstians relied only on canonized scripture is an unnecessary exaggeration. Nor do I claim that these ancient churches are identical to the original "first century chrstians." The whole story of chrstianity doesn't hold water in that there is indeed some sort of discontinuity between the original Jewish chrstians (who were probably Torah observant) and the chrstianity that developed historically (my belief is that the new religion declared the original religion heretical, and therefore is not in any sense a continuation of it).
I point this out to show that ultimately chrstianity has no leg to stand on, and there was already a true scriptural religion going all the way back to Mt. Sinai who's written scripture was governed by strict laws to ensure it would be identical to the Original Scroll.
Unfortunately you reject Judaism for the same reason you reject historical chrstianity--namely your beliefs about sin and how G-d deals with it. I know this won't make a dent in your thinking, but perhaps someone else will read it and think about it.
One day I really must explicate this unique soteriology of born-again Protestantism, but I've been at the keyboard a long time. G-d willing, I will do that some time in the future.
Care to elaborate?
Genesis 2: 8 And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.
9 And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food;**** the tree of life**** also in the midst of the garden, and the ***tree of knowledge of good and evil.****
Does the Hebrew elaborate on who these symbolic ‘trees’ literally are???
And What is the Hebrew word for the slithering Serpent, judged to death by the time Isaiah and Ezekiel took to pen.
Genesis 3:
14 And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:
*****15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.****
16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
Some people actually know what the Heavenly Father gave Moses to pen and it sure was NOT in an apple orchard ... course another prophet had some things to say about ‘naughty’ figs ... Wonder why Christ commanded ... ‘Learn the parable of the ‘fig’ tree...