“...with the gnostic Gospels that came about after ,200AD. Here we see a major divergence in thought and Jesus starts to do things like sin, marry, talk and walk at birth, kill a child and raise him from the dead etc.”
I am friends with a guy that was a corporate lawyer and studied to become a minister. He ended up becoming a minister full time.
I wish I could remember exactly how he put it, but he said everyone early on knew what the original texts and teachings were as laid out by the early church writings. Paul’s letters were shortly after the death and resurrection of Christ (the web says 48 to 64AD). The gospels were written later, presumably when the authors realized that Christ’s return wasn’t emminent, and that the authors better write it down before they died.
Anyway, the early believers knew the originals. It wasn’t until later when the gnostic books came out that the church leaders got together to put a stamp of approval of those books that were already known to be the accepted writings of the NT. But - even Paul was having to deal with false teachers at the time.
He gave a good modern day example but I can’t recall what it was now. Perhaps it was something like the Holocaust, where now we have people writing books denying that it ever happened.
I would also mention myths surrounding people like Washington and Lincoln.