Do you think that back in the times at the beginnings of Christianity, there was an organization or brotherhood similar to the modern day Masons that ran parallel to Judaism, and later to Christianity, that served as an incubator for the kinds of syncretic ideas that seemed prevalent in the unorthodox sects of that era?

Why is it assumed Matthew and Luke each used some third source (M or L) as opposed to just writing that unique material? :

Might the famous devotional poem "Footprints" based on Acts of John 93?

When and why did critical scholars begin dating gnosticism as a post-Christian constellation of beliefs?
The judgment passage in Revelation 20 says “books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. Doesn’t the book of life actually make the whole ‘judgement’ aspect of the story completely redundant?
The 5th century BCE Elephantine Papyri strongly suggest a Jewish community with little if any knowledge of the Torah and who shockingly violated several aspects of Deuteronomi law (such as polytheism) yet seek and seemingly get permission from priests in Jerusalem to build their own temple! Had any of these people ever read the Pentateuch?

Why do scholars say, e.g., Mark was the first Gospel, 1 Thess was Paul’s first epistle? Why are they passing off scholarly guesswork as known fact?

Please recommend a book explaining the meanings of “the Son of Man.”

Who or what is Azazel?
2 Esdras 6 says God created Enoch and Leviathan together on the Fifth Day,
then goes on to say that Adam was finally created on the sixth Day.
Enoch was created BEFORE Adam? What is going on there?

When do you think Christians first considered themselves as having a different religion than Jews? And perhaps leadingly (in terms of what I wonder), do you think that we may not be looking at a splinter, but rather a merger of Jewish sects and gentile sects that found enough compatibility to join disparate groups?
How do you understand or explain the lack of first-century Christian texts? Is the war enough to explain it, or is the lack of a prominent Palestinian Christianity possible?

Gerd Theissen describes the messianic secret in Mark as "a literary form given to the 'monotheistic' reservations about a life of Jesus bathed in the divine splendor." (p.96) The way I understood him--using Wrede, apparently--is that somehow presenting Jesus literarily as not claiming he was.