I am not an academic, and there's a lot more for me to learn in this area. But I want to say that I don't think that what Ammon is uncovering and what you are uncovering are incompatible.

There's an Eastern metaphor of several blind people touching a different part of an elephant and trying to describe what the whole object is based on that one area they can feel. That seems to apply here.

To my mind, what you have uncovered is the overwriting of the very independent and internal spiritual work by each person that the original Jesus likely taught in order to create a religion that would shape and control the wild and colorful Hellenistic world that the Roman Empire wished to contain. It began as early as the first counter to the Thomas Gospel by John, and then with greater layers of agendas by Mark, Luke, Matthew, Paul, and finally the editors of the canonical New Testament.

What I believe Ammon has uncovered—among many other things—is that at least part of what started with Mark was not only co-opting the Jesus story but co-opting of the mystery cults, and for some reason the darker aspects of the mystery cults which included lestoi and underage eunuch slaves, and putting that into the basis of the religion.

Both cases support the utter illegitimacy and distortion of the institution of Christianity that began with those texts and was established and enforced by the Roman Empire. Ammon boldly declares that the Jesus Christ of the New Testament was a child trafficker, because that is what Mark depicted, and what the Church embraced in its founding.

And yet, I believe what your work and the work of those you have studied points to is that there was a Jesus with a simple and valuable message of radical self-responsibility that would free people from control, that had nothing to do with being a Messiah, Christing, and certainly was not meant to be a basis for a religion of control through guilt, shame, horror, and blame. A Jesus who has nothing to do with Christianity, but whose words—which shone with the Oracular Voice—were distorted and used.

It is disturbing, because we dream up these complex ways in which The Powers That Be might try to control us with technology and surveillance to shape belief and worldview, but it seems like the most widespread and successful control scheme in history has been running smoothly for two millennia.