I wonder as I read the gospels of Mary a ?
Why was Mary’s gospel and the other gospels, left out under Constantine. Was he threatened trying to unite the Roman Empire to unite. The Bible as we know is missing books. As I understand reading Christ was teaching a Gnostic way to Mary and us as believers.
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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"
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" .
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.
