of manually copied religious texts -- each of which aspires to canonic status -- is that some editorial pruning inevitably must be executed or one ends up with pockets of dogmatic diversity.  Enter the Council of Nicea, in 325 CE, which sought to restrict the more or less organic growth of the christian gospels.  By establishing an editorial datum, and then granting access to the holy manuscripts only to their priesthood stewards, the early church was able to emend in an unsupervised and self-serving fashion -- which it did with relish (particularly under the direction of Eusebius, whose unashamed guidance of "Any lie in the service of God is a good lie" marks the unabashed chicanery of the church priesthood during this period).  Add in the odd burning or alteration of contravening secular literature and, voila, you have unassailable faux history -- at least in those primitive times.

 

  Of course, when latter-day archaeologists discover scrolls or codices which escaped the literary pogrom -- or additional secular or sectarian histories emerge which by all rights should have incorporated some acknowledgement of the incredible era beginning in 0 CE -- but do not -- then you have what folks might refer to as an embarrassing disconnect.  Time to crank up the apologies.