Lost Christianities: The 80 versions of Christianity & 159 apocryphal books that disappeared

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[I was chatting to a friend of mine who knows his history well. I was discussing with him some things I’d come across regarding the early Christians that struck me as strange. e.g. Christians used to circumcise themselves.

He went on to tell me about his own researches into Christianity years ago. He said that at one time there were 80 Christian sects. They varied a great deal in their outlook. Some were for men only. Others had a sexual aspect to them and so forth.

Then the Roman Emperor Constantine ran into a problem because his Christian soldiers did not want to fight in a civil war against other Christian soldiers of the same sect. (Though, centuries later in Europe, when the Jews got involved, especially with the formation of Protestantism, then the Christians slaughtered each other with the Jews backing the Protestants!). There is also the largely forgotten time when Christians attacked and forced other white Pagans to convert to Christianity against their will. The intolerance of the Christians to non-Christian whites is something people have forgotten about.

My friend was telling me that during his research into Christianity, that he compiled a list of about 159 apocryphal books that should have been in the Bible but which were burned, destroyed or ignored.

Apparently Constantine decided to turn Christianity into a single faith and to get rid of all the many variants that existed. Some had died out by themselves by that time too.

My friend sent me this interesting quote from the book: Lost Christianities:

We have evidence of yet another Gospel authority used by some or all groups
of Ebionite Christians. The evidence comes to us from the fourth-century writings
of a vitriolic opponent of all things heretical, Epiphanius, orthodox bishop
on the island of Cyprus. In a lengthy book that details and then fervently attacks
eighty different heretical groups, Epiphanius devotes a chapter to the
Ebionites and quotes a Gospel that they are said to have used.8 He gives seven
brief quotations—not nearly as many as we would like, but enough to get a
general sense of this now lost Gospel.9 For one thing, this particular Gospel of
the Ebionites appears to have been a “harmonization” of the New Testament
Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.