quote:
Foo, you admit that political ideas could have been in play. What man decided 100s of years after the event in question, that a gnostic saying THERE IS ONLY THE ONE DIVINE. "ALL THERE IS is GOD" was not divinely inspired but j 3 16 is?

See, questions like this presuppose that no one really knew what was and wasn't considered "scripture" prior to the canonization of the Bible and that some unauthorized body, council, or emperor made a decision based on some political motive. Such a belief is contrary to church history.

By the early 300s, the church accepted as scripture most of what we have today in the Protestant Bible. Only a few books of the New Testament were in question. Various men came along and claimed new revelation from God and wrote new "books" that they claimed were scripture and a response was needed to determine whether or not there was new revelation and whether or not that new revelation would or should be accepted as scripture by the churches who were started to be exposed to these new writings. In the end, there were five questions that representatives from the churches asked to determine if a book or letter was to be considered part of sacred scripture:

1. Was the book written by a prophet or apostle (someone who was with Jesus) of God?

2. Was the writer confirmed by acts (miracles) of God?

3. Does the message tell the truth about God (it can't contradict other recognized scripture)?

4. Did it come with the power of God (was it read with a inner confirmation or "sense" that it was from God as testified by the Holy Spirit) ?

5. Was it accepted by God’s people?

The gnostic gospels and other writings were rejected for their content because they contradicted scripture, weren't already generally accepted by the church, didn't have a sense of being God-breathed, and were new revelation not written by a prophet or apostle. We still have many of these texts available today for study and review, and even a cursory reading of them show that they are not in the same vein as the accepted canon of scripture. They were supported by various heretical sects that arose and the writings were rejected as a response to each individual heresy that was addressed.