PeacefulPete,
Thanks for all the different leads you gave on the legendary material surrounding JtB. I'll have to take a more in depth look into all of that and the "book of John" by the Mandeans.
What does Duncan say, if anything, about the Gospel of Thomas? There we just have the sayings collected together without any surrounding story, legends, miracles. The Gospel of Thomas has its own bias (gnostic slant) too though, so we're probably really not any farther ahead with knowing what any historical Jesus actually believed.
If I'm not mistaken, aren't there a couple of examples where different NT gospels have the same basic saying but in different settings? Making it possible for the readers to reach different slants on the saying. Makes you wonder whose views we're actually getting.
Too bad some other logia were apparently lost.