They also stray far afield of what would have been typical of Judaism at the time and in the place where Jesus was practicing (Jesus also was a bit far afield b

They also stray far afield of what would have been typical of Judaism at the time and in the place where Jesus was practicing (Jesus also was a bit far afield but was more or less reasonably within the tradition of messianism at the time, especially since the Roman conquest. Within Judaism of that time the whole Jesus story or similar isn't all that crazy). Now clearly Jesus was controversial in many ways and maybe not super Orthodox, maybe it has some more Gnostic explanation...but I just find that highly implausible compared to the much more historically plausible story told in the non Gnostic gospels. It's fair to question whether the Gnostic gospels are being faithful to a historical movement or whether they are a form of hellenistic fanfiction for lack of a better way to describe a lot of that content. I think they are interesting...but looking at Judaism of the time and the religion in that area and then landing on "Gnostic Jesus" really seems like a stretch. If anything, I would suspect that somebody like Paul probably played up Jesus' acceptance of some Greco-Roman cultural stuff during his ministry to try and lessen the culture shock. If gnosticism was accepted and taken seriously I really doubt Paul's writing would be what they are. Strategically, putting myself in the shoes of somebody trying to spread the religion of some Jewish guy who maybe got a little liberal with things but was definitely an actual practicing Jew from the Middle East and living in a Jewish culture, the writings we've actually got that are attributed to Paul (as well as the regular gospels) make a lot of sense in the context of the ordinary gospels and new testament canon, and the Gnostic stuff doesn't really make all that much sense. Sure, much could have been suppressed or destroyed. But it would have had to have been a pretty thorough destruction for a hypothetical Gnostic canon to have been coherent enough to be remotely competitive with what wound up winning out. In other words, while the Gnostic texts are indeed very interesting and can be fun reads, and there is some debate to be had over canon (but I think a more productive debate would probably be over something like Enoch), the early church and councils and whatnot probably made the right final decision w.r.t most of the Gnostic texts. That's just my opinion of course. It's always more fun to believe there is a big conspiracy out there trying to supress the true story. But I think a simpler and more realistic explanation is just that the Gnostic texts kinda suck, read a bit like fan fiction by somebody that is culturally disconnected with what they are commenting on, and don't really fit together very coherently and introduce a lot of unnecessary or irrelevant questions. I don't think it's a big mystery why the early church wound up dumping them.