2. As Dr Bruce Metzger has neatly expressed "For somebody now to say that the canon emerged only after councils and synods made these pronouncements would be like saying, 'Lets get several academies of musicians to make a pronouncement that the music of Bach and Beethoven is wonderful.'I would say, 'Thank you for nothing! We knew that before the pronouncement was made.'We know it because of sensitivity to what is good music and what is not. The same with the canon." Generally the councils just pronounced the consensus of opinion among Christians to resolve a dispute. They didn't change anything just made it official.

As for things like the Gospels of Nicodemus, Barnabas, Bartholomew, Andrew, the Epistle of Paul to the Laodicieans, the Apocalypse of Stephen no orthodox early Christian, canon, or council considered them authoritative and early church historian Eusebius considered them "Totally absurd and impious".

All indications are that councils weren't tweaking things by excluding pieces of a puzzle. They were exercising discernment by rejecting things which conflicted with documents widely recognised as authoritative.

mjpb,

Constantine was trying to holt the slide of the failing Roman Empire. Religion is a stong unifying agent, e.g, as utilized by Moses and Mohammed. [Militarily, Constatine had recaptured lands lost by Aurelian, however, Rome's fate was written.]

The gospels were written, dispersed in time and place, after a period of perhaps eighty years of verbal lore, post Christ's death. Herein, the Gospel of Thomas is very early and worthy of consideration as historical. Its absence suggests, it was (a) not known to Nicaea or (b) was not cogent with the "selected" works. I suspect the latter.

The true issue is, if one goes back to first century, is not whether or not Jesus Chirst existed, but whether he was divine in-fact or regarded divine by direct contemporaries, or held some other role.

Under Augustus, there would have been little need to deify Christ; Rome was strong and Augustus himself was deified, after his death. Howver, when Rom grew weak, there would have been strong motives to instititionalise Jesus' teachings, transmute events, and, then, create new dogma; even where said dogma is not historically true.

One bit of evidence might make me believe having seen the posts from the God botherers. If the God botherers would start to post with correct spelling, good grammar and evidence of logical thought I could question my unbelief.