New adopted religions have to adapt to the traditions of the country they are taking over. Roman religion was very patriarchal.

What I wonder in reading is as Christ explained to Mary Magdalen in their talks as I read I find interesting friend as in were Gnostic

as the correct Bible. And as you state, many books were left out. The role of Mary His mother and the other female disciples was minimized. Jesus' mother was reduced to a womb, and His female disciples were reduced to accessories.

They could have all sorts of origins, be copied, and go wild.

As a new religion spreads it interacts with established religions. When groups are in isolation, teachers have an easy time changing things to suit their own thinking.

By modern standards, if you went back and said, "Who were Xians?" it's like asking that now--you'd get Mormons and Baptists, Catholics and 7th day adventists and JWs. Except unlike now, you wouldn't have just three add-on sets of writings, you'd have at least a dozen, with no consensus as to what was core.

No currently Xian sect leaves out the canonical 4 gospels. There are differences in interpretation--my old church kept Passover last week and doesn't even acknowledge Easter. A lot of churches call that a "sect" (not in the sense of "group" but in the sense "heretical&quot or even not Xian.

Now, imagine if there was a group--call them Igelians--that omitted the 4 canonical gospels, include the gospels of Thomas and Mary, and insisted on being called Xian? They'd be excluded, and only a few people calling themselves Xians would insist they be included--mostly that would be Igelians. In 250 AD some "Xians" kept Passover, some Easter. They practiced other things and insisted that everybody be like them. Some believed that you shouldn't sin; some taught that the more you sin, the greater God's glory, let the drunken orgy begin. Matching the Saturday Sabbath-keepers were those who declared Sunday to be the One True 'sabbath' and that Saturday should be a day of mourning and fasting. Some worshipped Jesus but also Mithra. "Hare Rama, Hare Christos," I guess. Others claimed that Jesus was human but didn't really die. Or that he wasn't really human, so couldn't die or suffer.

Any claim that "they're missing books" assumes that there was something that was Xianity that included everybody--that self-identification was all that's important. Now apply that to the Democratic Party. Call yourself a Democrat, and whatever you want is added to the platform. No need for consistency. No need to take into account the majority. If a Republican decides he wants to have the entire (R) platform *also* be in the Democratic Party platform, he can. Because otherwise "it's not complete." Seems silly? Groups get to define their own membership. But if you're excluded, well, of course you don't like it. And even if you're in the group--a Democrat--you may not like everything in the platform and resent that what you wanted is left out and continue to agitate. Do that enough at DU and you get excommunicated (we call it "tombstoned&quot .

What's at issue is people want to keep the name but change the content. You get the publicity and any positive connotation, but completely different content. Sort of like opening a can of Pringles and finding dried bonito flakes.

Nicaea went with something akin to majority rules. Those gathered together didn't include all groups. It left out outliers. It didn't include everything--but those which, in their estimation, were oldest and more likely to be original. Or which had no obvious conflicts. (Even some things like James were a problem, John's gospel wasn't a slam dunk, and Revelation took a while longer).

It wasn't "left out"--that flips the script in a way that mischaracterizes what was done. They wanted to say what was approved, what should be included. If you're not included, you're excluded, but many excluded things had some support.

As for "patriarchal," that was pretty much true everywhere. People often take individual traits where women had some rights or there's even just a hint and expand that to matriarchy. Even a lot of societies once billed as "matriarchal" have been revised based on a less tained and more unbiased reading of the materials. Lots of wishful thinking and uncritical, self-reinforcing acceptance of materials.

if I remember correctly, and the council was an attempt to put an end to that by giving the emperor's sanction to one of the factions. It didn't work, by the way, and the murderous dispute lingered on for quite a while.

All of the gospels are of dubious origins, as there is nothing older than around 3-400 ce that has survived intact, and the oldest fragment is from around 150ce. The non-canonical gospels are even more dubious as they generally were not being copied in the large numbers that the standard ones were.

It’s just easier to manage large groups spanning large geographical areas if everyone is begging favor from the same sky daddy. It arguably worked better than what preceded, but it never really settled down. Even people today with the same sky daddy have figured out ways to kill each other.

the eastern roman empire went through a whole loss of confidence shitstorm of 'why does god hate us' after the muslim-arab invasions reduced their empire to a city state. So whatever the original motive was, by then they were it seems all true believers.

They just figured out new ways to kill each other over religion.

...from a recently immigrated Hindu co-worker (pre mass internet/wikipedia days) when one day during lunch I explained to him that the Jews, christians and Muslims all worship the same sky-daddy. He was completely flabbergasted. His expression would have made a perfect background for a meme.

The interesting part is wars between and within those groups were all started out of a dispute with who is allowed to anoint the dictator which will inevitably rule ruthlessly over them.

The Bible is an arbitrary construct of writings. The included books have no more legitimacy than the excluded ones.