Examples of the growth of urban legends as â??oral tradition.â?? Paul both engages in â??boastingâ?? and warns against it. A contradiction? Do you think the city of Nazareth existed before the time of Jesus, and why?  Why is it easier to trace a family tree of â??hereticsâ?? and Gnostics than to reconstruct a succession of orthodox teachers and thinker? What do we know about the origins of the tradition that Polycarp was a student of the Apostle John? Is John the Baptist said in chapter 54 of Book 1 of the Clementine Recognitions to have been claimed "the Christ" by his followers and accused by others as the founder of heresies and schisms within the spectrum of diverse early Christianity? If so, doesn't this really sound much like to how early Church Fathers described Simon Magus as the founder of Gnosticism and subsequent heresies, or similarly Paul the apostle of the Marcionites and Gnostics?