100% Absolutely!
What you need to understand is that the term, 'Christian' means something today that couldn't be more diametrically opposed to the Christian circa 100AD.
Once Jesus had been executed his followers continued to preach his word and by about 300AD about 40% of the known world ( Rome ) were Christians. By that stage Christians were massacring Pagans ( and vice-versa ) who also occupied around 40% of the Roman population. Considering the Roman Empire was made up of over 10 major European Countries, all with their own heritages and religions - 40% of the known world to be Christian was terrifying for the Roman Dictator, Constantine.
Rome was being torn apart by the ongoing feud which for individuals ended in death or conversion to either side. Sounds pretty ridiculous but back then, they didn't have the protection of people's rights that we do now and so submission by conversion sometimes sounded slightly more lucrative than death....
Constantine was in trouble to say the least. He erected the Council of Mycae to 'sift' through all the teachings, texts, parables, songs and stories from the Tanakh, the Torah, texts of Prophets and latter writings of Yehoshua ben Yosef or Jesus, son of Joseph.
The general Christian 2000 years ago was not quite as eloquent about their beliefs as the modern Bible-bashing Hillsong Christians - although they had one thing in common and that is following Christ. The 2000 year old Christian was quite ready to maliciously inflict mass violence to kill or convert any and all non-Christians. There are a myriad of historical events where Christians are said to have massacred temples full of worshipping Pagan and Jews ( and of course vice-versa not to be too opinionated ).
Constantine and the Council of Mycae decided to choose which texts best emphasised Jesus' teachings of peace and love - and particular loving and not killing thy neighbour. Constantine later attempted to unite Rome under Christianities values of the fore mentioned peace and love.
It backfired however between 300-500AD when certain writings were miss-interpreted and twisted with miss-interpretation in the pursuit of power and wealth. What many Christians don't realise is that it was phrases sounding something like, 'Women are to learn in silence and remain silent,' that were interpreted by the leaders of the Christian Church to mean 'Any Woman with a voice or opinion is to be silenced.'
Silenced... as in murdered in the most vile, cruel and religiously monotonous ways, believed by many to be Holy cleansing. This lunacy eventually ushered in the dawn of centuries of darkness known as the Melaus Malificarum, or The Witches Hammer.
Another Gospel some of us are familiar with is the Gospel of Phillip which quite obviously was not included as a Canonical Text. The Gospel of Phillips contence refer to Jesus' marriage with Mary Magdelene which the Canonical Gospels have conveniently neglected to touch on, leaving the subject to be debated over zealously most probably for years to come.
In short.... Yes the Texts found in the Bible have most definately been selected to paint a more 'Perfect Picture' of Jesus and Christian values especially, mainly because it wasn't written to guide current day Christians on how to live their lives ( although i'm sure they'd feel pretty happy with themselves if they knew it had such an effect down at Hillsong on a sunday morning... ) it was assembled as a fast and decicive way to stop the pre-Dark Age Christians from killing anyone who did not follow Christianity.
Unfortunately Christians, today, proclaim the Bible as the 'Word of God' and will more than likely choose to believe that all extra-Biblical texts ( books that are not in the Bible ) are most definately NOT to be held anywhere near as credible as the books found in the Bible.
Not even the contraversial Book of Enoch ( 2 greek translations 1 Hebrew ), which is even mentioned by Jesus younger Brother, Judas ( or Jude ) in the Bible as a reference to his own teachings found just prior to Revelations. This is one large reason why the book of Jude is commonly missed by Christians and Biblical Teachers as Revelations is much more far more exiting.....
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