Christ with a Thousand Faces: A Historical Investigation

Jesus Christ was—but not alone. There were many of them. Probably every early Christian follower could see and know his Christ. In the continuation of the bestseller “Jesus. A Historical Investigation,” writer and journalist Yulia Latynina asks readers new unexpected questions: what exactly did the real Messiah teach, and why did his apostles so quickly start rewriting his teaching?

The book turns the faceless, static figures of the apostles—John, Philip, Paul—into living people with their own extraordinary biographies and fierce, incompatible theologies. Special attention is given to two characters.

The figure of Judas Thomas, who claimed the title of a spiritual twin of Christ and preached beyond the Euphrates, overturns the traditional view of Christianity as a faith that developed within the bounds of the Roman Empire. And the figure of John the Baptist—a religious and political leader of extraordinary authority and power—fundamentally changes our understanding of the time and cause of the emergence of Gnosticism.