How Christianity was divided from the start!

Plenty of Catholics love to mention a part of the Bible that seems to be an open and shut case for why Catholicism should be the only 'true' religion of God. For those who do not know, Catholicism is based on the belief that Saint Peter and his church represent the one true church of God and that the Pope is the one true speaker for God - anyone else is simply a pretender with no true claim to Christ. This verse in the Bible, among others, is how Catholics try to justify this monopoly on faith:

"If the very order of episcopal succession is to be considered, how much more surely, truly, and safely do we number them from Peter himself, to whom, as to one representing the whole Church, the Lord said, 'Upon this rock I will build my Church'...." - Matthew 16:18

However, while Peter was the first apostle to start a Church, there is a version of the story of the resurrection of Jesus in the book of Mark known as the 'long ending'. In this version, during the resurrection of Jesus, he tells the other apostles to go their own ways to potentially start churches and spread the word. If you are wondering why early Christians did not just all become Catholic or follow Peter despite what is said in Matthew, that is kind of why! In the shorter version that was canonized in the New Revised Standard Version and people in Catholicism, the apostles just reported to Peter and told others what they had been told, conveniently leaving out the rest.

There are other tales from the long version that are left out in the abridged telling, like how someone Jesus heals gets possessed by seven demons in Mark 16:9-11 in the long version and how Jesus appears "in a different form" to two other disciples in Mark 16:12-13 in the long version (though this is in some of the short versions), which are honestly interesting tales in their own rights! However, my main point is that this original 'long ending' to the resurrection of Jesus explains why other versions of Christianity came to be and why everyone didn't just go become Catholic.

This divide is interesting because some versions have only the long ending like the Family K1 manuscript - a version of the Bible written in ancient Byzantine text - and the Codex Washingtonianus (which also contains more text not found in other versions of the Bible). Meanwhile, the previously mentioned versions & the Codex Bobbiensis only have the 'short version'.

If we take the long version as the correct version of this tale - or at least the closest to what may have actually happened historically - this is the reason why the apostles later separated and started their own churches. This is how some separate early Christian groups formed such as the Adamites (a group in Northern Africa who formed as an early Christian group as an offshoot of the teachings of the church of John the Baptist) or Jewish Christianity - an early version of Christianity in ancient Jerusalem started by James, the brother of Jesus (yes, Jesus had a brother who followed him and went to start a church separate from Catholicism. He met Peter according to the Bible and historians, but they stay separate after Peter leaves Jerusalem).

Citations:

- Aland, Kurt; Aland, Barbara (1995). The Text of the New Testament: An Introduction to the Critical Editions and to the Theory and Practice of Modern Textual Criticism. Erroll F. Rhodes (trans.). Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans

- Cross, F.L., ed. (2005). The Oxford dictionary of the Christian Church (3rd rev. ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 862. ISBN 9780192802903.

- Freedman, David Noel; Myers, Allen C., eds. (2000). Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans. p. 709. ISBN 978-9053565032.

- McGrath, Alister E., Christianity: An Introduction. Blackwell Publishing (2006). ISBN 140510899-1.

- Metzger, Bruce, The Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd edition (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994) pp.101-102.

- Smith, V.S. (2008). Clean: A History of Personal Hygiene and Purity. Oxford University Press.

- Wisse, Frederik (1982). The Profile Method for the Classification and Evaluation of Manuscript Evidence, as Applied to the Continuous Greek Text of the Gospel of Luke. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. pp. 41, 50. ISBN 0-8028-1918-4.