I was listening to a talk in “Doug’s Dharma” channel and interestingly he mentioned that initially the Buddha didn’t have the 4 stages. He didn’t elaborate but I thought this is interesting to explore how when and why the Buddha first taught the ‘4 stages’ and what was the context that brought it about?
Might be helpful to tag @dougsmith himself 
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thanks! I didn’t know he was on here 
To be clear, this isn’t so much my thesis as it was Joy Manné’s in a 1995 paper for the Journal of the Pāli Text Society. Her thesis is that the Buddha first taught two stages, that of stream-entry and that of arahant, and the other two were later developments out of a need for more measurable, quantifiable attainments, perhaps out of competition with those from other paths. I wrote a little about this in a recent article for Tricycle magazine, “What Does Stream-Entry Mean?” Needless to say, these are indeed speculative conclusions and one cannot be firm on them. 
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The referenced paper starts from pg. 18.