He stands on the Mount of Olives, bundled in a robe. Before him a crowd sits in rapt attention. His back is to us as he intones, "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth…". With a wave of his hand he turns and leaves as cries of "Alleluia" and "Lord Jesus" rise from the audience. As he walks past, we observe that he holds a magic wand bearing arcane symbols, tipped with a gargoyle’s head. His hands are marked with henna patterns. He sweeps the cowl back from his head, revealing a face covered with grotesque tattoos, reminiscent of a Maori warrior. Behold Jesus Christ, as described by his pagan contemporaries…

Jesus through the Christian centuries has been a mirror of the spiritual hopes and dreams of each age. He has been depicted as a gentle shepherd, a tough scrapper, as a cosmic force, a man trembling under the burden of divinity, as a penniless monk, a mighty king. All of these images have been justified by reference to the Jesus described in the Gospel texts of the New Testament. For nearly two thousand years, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were literally taken as "gospel" when it came to the story of Jesus of Nazareth. But now we know better…

It is 1945, central Egypt. Two peasants are digging soil and shovelling it into sacks to use as fertilizer. A shovel plunges deep and strikes something. Sweeping away the dirt, they spy the lid of a large jar, obviously ancient. Don’t open it – it might contain an evil genie! Ah, but what if it holds gold? They smash the lid; golden particles of papyrus spill into the sunlight. The jar is full of old books. As it turns out, forbidden books. Later, at home, the scrolls lie in a stack. A half-blind old woman, the men’s mother, is groping around for kindling for a hearth. Her gnarled hand grabs a page covered in Coptic writing and symbols, crumples it, tosses it in the fire… There is a scream…

And so this page met the fate originally intended for it before it was buried almost 1700 years earlier. The texts likely came from the library of the first Christian monastery, that of St. Pachomius, which still stands near the site of discovery. In 367 A.D. the archbishop Athanasius decreed that all volumes in Egypt contradicting his views should be torched. Perhaps it was the night before the scheduled cleansing that a furtive figure left the monastery, a jar and a shovel strapped to his camel… By moonlight he dug, planning to hide the precious works and retrieve them later when the trouble blew over and saner heads prevailed in the church. What happened to him when he returned to the monastery? He never came back to his buried treasure. The other disagreeable books in the monastic library were incinerated, a scene that repeated through the Christian ages whenever someone dared to show Jesus in a different light. To do so was called "heresy". And not just the books ended up in the blazes.

There is a scream… The peasant bursts through the door, pushes his old mother aside and scrabbles frantically in the hearth. Most of his find is saved, and eventually makes its way into the hands of scholars, who are incredulous at the find. It becomes known as the Nag Hammadi Library, after the town nearest the find site. The Library, and other fragments that slipped through the ancient censors’ fingers, give us glimpses of a Christ we were never supposed to know about. A Christ who would be very inconvenient for a church leadership that demanded the unquestioning obedience of its flock.

The tattooed Jesus sits, surrounded by his disciples. One asks, "Lord, we seek your truth. Where can we find it?" Jesus says, smiling cryptically, pointing at the questioner’s chest, "There is a light within a man of light, and it lights the whole world. If you don’t see it, you’re lost in the dark!" Some disciples nod and smile; others look confused, uncomfortable. This scene is described in the Gospel of Thomas, one of the Nag Hammadi books that didn’t make the cut into the New Testament. Many of the excluded texts have Jesus sounding like the Buddha, stating that liberation comes from inside yourself, from your own awareness, not from a church or a priest or a dogma.

"You talk strangely, exorcist! Who are you?" says a voice. Jesus turns: "You see the sky, you see the ground, but you don’t see what’s in front of you, right here, right now." (Gospel of Thomas) Jesus and disciples then assume the lotus position of meditation, and begin to chant what sounds like Eastern mantras. Some of the banned texts contain hints of rituals and chants that may well have been performed by early Christian meditators, aimed not at becoming followers of bishops, but at attaining Christhood themselves. And once you become a Christ – who needs a hierarchy of churchmen telling you about sin and salvation? This is Lost Christianity.

It’s easy to see how such choices were dangerous to people who thought that a disciplined organization, with power in the hands of those at the top, was vital for Christianity's survival in the hostile pagan environment of the first centuries A.D. Originally, the word "heresy" – actually the Greek "hairesis" – simply meant "choice". Indeed, it’s used as such in one New Testament passage, where Christianity itself is called a "heresy", a choice not to be a pagan or a Jew. But clearly, bishops saw, the only "choice" that could be allowed was the choice to serve them, or the fragile young church might simply melt into the spiritual marketplace of the Roman Empire. So "heresy" came to mean not choice, but "error", a false belief about Christ that coincidentally failed to support the need for an authoritarian church.

Any teaching of Christ that encouraged spiritual freelancing, that didn’t gird the monopoly ownership of Truth by the bishops, was condemned. When, during the fourth century, Catholic leaders gained control of the imperial government, this condemnation grew teeth. Image of an angel smiting demons. Not just pagans, but any Christians that tried to preserve alternative views of Jesus and salvation, felt the might of the law. Bonfires of texts. Screams. Gutted temples, tumbled columns, ancient churches. It was the changing of the gods.

Panning around the rim of an ancient dish, showing the words "Jesus Cristus". Expand to show part of the scene painted on the dish: a standing male figure in a robe. Expand again to show the whole dish: Jesus holds a wand, is tapping the head of a corpse, inviting it to rise. Among the non-Christian communities of Judea in the early years, rumours circulated about the man. These stories, traded by those who had no vested interest in presenting Jesus in a divine fashion, shock us today after millennia of laundering his image. The virgin birth of the kid from Nazareth seemed implausible; indeed, the father’s name is on record. It’s not Joseph. Mary, it was said, had an affair with the Roman centurion Pantera. Later the soldier was restationed at the Rhine frontier where he died. Archaeologists have located his tombstone – the resting place of the father of Christ, according to some of his contemporaries. Such a circumstance of birth isn’t appropriate for the Son of God, so this version became a heresy. During his life, Jesus was likely best known, not as a religious teacher, but as an exorcist. Images of demons possessing victims and being driven out, and Jesus’ wand. The best exorcism schools of the time were in Egypt, and it was reported that Jesus had indeed studied there, where he had himself covered with tattooes of spells to amplify his power over evil spirits. This detail, too, didn’t escape the attention of the New Testament editors.

Jesus the Magician. Jesus the Buddha. Jesus the Heretic. These were faces of Jesus that the leaders of the Catholic version of Christianity felt were too dangerous. They had to be deleted from history. And, except for a few oversights such as Nag Hammadi, the leaders managed to cast a veil over this wider view of Christian possibility. But, through the ages, there have been those that sensed these options, these choices, these "heresies". Many paid the price. Maybe, on some level, we all have.

Final scene: Tattooed Jesus walks hand in hand with his wife, Mary Magdalene. A little girl runs toward them; Jesus sweeps her up, kisses his daughter. "Father! I heard one of your disciples talking about the Kingdom of Heaven. It sounds lovely. When will it arrive?" Jesus smiles broadly, with his wand gestures to the landscape. Visions of natural wonders – mountains, woods, galaxies. "Look! Look! It’s already here!"

A papyrus page, covered in Coptic writing. It ignites, vanishes in flame.