________________
First Interlude
35
The passage of time alone affects the way the original ideas and events were told, - radical interventions like the eradication of the entire expansive, free, ecstatic fraction the orthodox organizers annihilated from 180 AD onwards caused major parts of the initial message to vanish into nothingness.
Add the attempts of those frustrated and offended because they were unable or unwilling to experience the inner expansion their peers or even simple people deemed beneath their status enthusiastically described, - and who then tried everything to suppress, control or rationalize away such messages.
And then there are the inevitable mistakes in copying, the misunderstandings, differing versions of the same event, intentional alterations of the original tale to promote personal agendas, - to force unwanted people out of positions, - to endorse particular ideas, - to requisition money etc.
And then the fact that - until Gutenberg's invention of the printing press in mid 15th century - reading and writing was limited to a very thin strata of society, who up to this time monopolized the interpretation of ideas and selected and controlled their propagation with a hard hand.
All things considered, a substantial number of influences had many chances to distort the original message.
Had not the scriptures of Nag Hammadi been found, we would know only the official, highly deformed versions.
