Amen. The story continues to evolve. Did you hear about the discovery last year of THC/cannabis residues on an 8th century Jewish temple? It just about guarantees that the billowing smoke from the Mosaic tabernacle was psychoactive.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03344355.2020.1...
When I get more time, I want to invest in reading the Mandaen literature. They worshipped John the Baptist —and their religion still exists!! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandaeism
I read recently an excellent discussion on the Samaritan penteteuch, a masters thesis from 2008 - the first direct to English translation ever done from Samaritan oral language. There are clearly an evolving set pre-masoretic texts in pre Christian antiquity and we can see some of the not-quite MT types being used in the vulgate and others.
I suspect, like how the dead sea scrolls illuminated some factional rivalries in second temple Judaism- if we can find more texts from this period it'll better flesh out when, how, and to what extent Greek philosophy influenced the various sets. there is an old idea that the synthesis of Logos and Judaism occurred in John's gospel but this seems undermined already...