I know it sounds counter-intuitive in an agnostic/atheist site, but it's not at all. Far from it actually.

"Back in the day" people were in small communities with no mechanical means of transportation. So beliefs that were present in the community generally evolved apart from influences of other communities. This meant a set of beliefs that started off identical on day 1 between 2 communities could/would end up radically different within a few years due to different cultural aspects or different social orders or different crops/animals available. Beliefs tended to reflect the local cutlure vice any area or regional one. To that end when those communities recorded stories and texts of their beliefs those writings were very different.

Such was the new testament. A sage named Mattias in the early 300's realized that the god of the old testament wasnt the same as the new one they believed in after the life of Jesus. So he set about trying to develop a NEW testament. Turns out there were literally hundreds of biblical christian texts describing the life of Jesus and his teaching in existence within the many communities of the east. Mattias tried to evaluate a good many of the more popular ones and incorporate them into a comprehensive compilation (the word "bible" means compilation in latin I believe). His efforts were not widely accepted. yet.

After Constantine defeated the Roman empire he decided that a single religion was needed to bind the various people together as one. This was actually done in tribute to a dream he had before tha last battle in which Jesus told him to prevail in his (Jesus' name. Constantine charged his arch-bishop Athanasius (??) with developing a single set of beliefs from the fragmented religion that was christianity at this time. Athanasis sent out messages calling over 500 religious leaders from all over the eastern empire to come together and agree on a central christian philosophy and text. This was the first Council at Nicea.

Just under 400 community religious leaders showed up for the first council. They came from the east, near east, middle east, south (africa) and north. At the time there were hundreds of christian texts circulating with a variety of differnt tales and rules. It turned out the main debate at this conference became how the concept of Jesus would be approached. The east considered Jesus to be a man, albeit a prophet, while the western portion considered him to be god. Since Anathasius was in charge he declared his views (jesus as a god) to be the new norm and rejected the views of the others including all texts that supported or even made reference to the other views. Religious leaders were made to take an oath affirming their devotion to this new orthodox view or face banishment and even death. Those other texts were banned and ordered destroyed. Among them were a number of very popular writings including the book of Enoch. These first meeting results were recorded as the Nicean creed.

Those alienated christian leaders whose views were denied slinked back home and brought many of those books that were banished. The Book of Enoch was actually included in the Ethiopian Bible (which refused to follow all that Anathasius said) and it was also used in the Koran some 300 years later. Many of those deposed leaders banded together and kept those texts in a separate community that was later raided and the books lost ... until they were discovered in pots and graves and caves etc... centuries later in the middle east.

I write out this off-hand narrative because most churchies have no clue about the true history of their buy-bull. Their only answer will be that it was "inspired" by their god. They won't be able to address the obvious fact that man controlled what their religious message would believe - not some god. And if it was some god then he surely wouldnt make all the contradictions between the books Anathasius did chose to include in his new testament at the second council of nicea. To me one of the most glaring of those is the reference to Solomon's powers in Corinthians when no such powers are even listed. That book was written acknowledging the Book of Solomon that Anathasius left out. That book described Solomon's necromancer powers and how he used the dead to build his temple. But there are many others - especially dealing with the orthodoxy's treatment of Mary. They want to put out that HER birth was immaculate also. So most anything dealing with Mary's family was likewise discarded.

It's a fascinating subject because it shows how christianity and islam had common roots ... and if you track the history you also find that the vedas had similar tales despite bgin written thousands of years before. Thus Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, and Islam all came from about the same place and same stories. Only man's influence and varied interp has changed and made them all separate.

Thoughts?