>Protestantism came about long after the bible, early christian sects didn't have a bible. You argued that the variation between sects was evidence of multiple

>Protestantism came about long after the bible, early christian sects didn't have a bible. You argued that the variation between sects was evidence of multiple versions of the New Testament texts. I offered the number and variation of protestant sects despite using the same text as a counterexample. >There are many books that never got accepted as canon: Yes that is true. There are many non canonical books. That was however, not the original argument. We have no arguments from early church leaders that heretical sects were using an alternate version of various books. We have many arguments that heretical sects were using different books entirely. That being said, the modern canon was decided very early on --probably by the latter half of the 2nd century, and the books there are very good arguments as to why certain books were omitted. >possibly many differing versions of the same books There is little evidence for this. Again we have plenty of evidence for competing books. Not much evidence for differing versions of the books that we have. > And there were many early sects Most of the sects mentioned on the wikipedia page were offshoots of the mainstream church that were quickly declared heretical. You can obviously argue that the winner writes history, but this argument does nothing to support the claim that the books we have today are heavily edited versions. >The further down you go the messier things get but there was more diversity in early christianity than modern christianity. This makes no sense. Obviously as you go back to the source there were fewer followers and thus fewer versions. Thousands of years of schisms produced much more variation, not less.