Comparing 1rst-3rd century fragments leads back to what I said earlier, in some form every early sect had some understanding that God/divinity was on earth. Yet this was potentially blasphemous if the naive thought God actually became a human.
1. The Logos concept as exemplified in the writings of Philo insulated the Most High from his creation by his producing an emanation of himself in a form which was fully divine but yet somehow sufficiently distinct to interact directly with matter. One of God's powers was 'being'. Self-manifestation. The Logos was always within the Father until he/it was manifested. I think of a 'mini me' version of God, a genetic clone made separate. The Holy Spirit was sometimes regarded a separate emanation sometimes equated/conflated with the Logos. This concept was often combined with the following other ideations.
2.Some dealt with the potentially blasphemous implications by separating Jesus the man from the divinity (Logos/Holy spirit) that possessed him from baptism ("today I have begotten you") through what is now called 'adoptionism'. A new person was born. A number of subtle and no-so-subtle alterations were made in the Gospel text to 'refute' this. It is the suspected motivation of adding virgin birth narratives and the childhood miracles of the Infancy Gospel for overt examples.
3.Others understood Jesus was, like the OT stories, a materialized spirit, able to eat and interact but not truly flesh and able to dematerialize at will, this was 'Docetism'. from the Greek word for 'seem'. This prevented God from literally becoming a human. This was often combined with the Logos concept, ie. the Logos was the agent of divinity that materialized. Many proto-orthodox adjustments were made to the texts to refute Docetism, such as the Thomas (holes in hands/eating) scene. Famously the pseudonymous 2 John was written (2:17) labeling such teachers as the 'antichrist'.
4.The so-called Gnostic branches understood Jesus as being exceptional by being in touch (and empowered thereby) with his true divine essence that dwells in all of us. While Gnostics by definition were secretive regarding details, they still identified Christ with divinity. They also used the Logos language and concept in modified way.
5. Marcionism was a hybrid Christology. The agent of creation aka, the God of the Jews was a 'son' of the Most High in the same 'second power' sense. This creator God became vested in the Jewish system he created so the Father sent another new emanation in the figure of Christ. The nature of Christ wasn't a focus, but they seemed to lean towards Docetism.
6. For hundreds of years Adoptionist, Gnostics and Docetist Christians simply ignored additions the proto-orthodoxy made in their forms of the Gospel, (easy to do since they had their own versions and harmonizations that did not include them). The 4th century Roman Church in contrast had to create a philosophy capable of accounting for them The Trinity doctrine developed as a harmonization of all the anti-Docetic, anti-Adoptionist pieces, the virgin birth etc. This in the end left the story sounding blasphemous for Jews.
Fast forward 1200 years and Christian reformers intellectually broke from the Church. Growing aware of older conceptions of God through the new availability of printed material, some arrived at new nontrinitarian Christologies. Bound by tradition, they retained the Catholic texts but simply explained away parts that didn't fit the new formulation.
The WT take fits that description.
I still submit that pre-Gospel 'Christians' did not concern themselves with questions. I suspect that even when the earliest Gospel was written it was understood allegorically as was popular in Hellenized Judaism.
