A religious tradition whose roots reach deeply into the Judaic traditions current in the first century BCE. There are several descendants of the original Christian faiths that use unique variants of the biblical texts. There are the Amharic, or Ethiopians. There are the Greek Orthodox. There are Gnostics. There are also the descendants of the church of James. It is clear that it is much easier to define Christianity in terms of its current Catholic Canon, and its protestant variants, complex as that may be, than in terms of historical roots which are clouded by the effects of time, mishap and generations of intervening redactors.