TheGospel ofBarnabas 119The 'official' confirmation of the 'victory' over the true followers
of Jesus by Paulinian Christianity was enshrined, as we have al
ready seen, in the outcome of the famous Council of Nicea which
was held in 325 AD -when the Roman Emperor Constantine, who
at the time claimed to be 'neutral' on the grounds that he was not a
Christian, decided that the Paulinian version of Christianity repre
sented the true teachings of Jesus, and that the gospels of Mat
thew, Mark, Luke and John should become the officially accepted
gospels, and that all other gospels, including the Gospel of Barna
bas, were to be destroyed - along with whoever was found to have
them in their possession - a decision which resulted in many of the
early gospels being lost for good, and millions of Unitarian Chris
tians being martyred in the years that followed.
It was also at the Council of Nicea, after over two centuries of
debate, that Jesus was officially granted divine status, and, with
the official instatement at the Council of Constantinople in 381 AD
of 'the Holy Ghost' as the 'third person', the doctrine of Trinity
which had begun to emerge during the intervening period finally
came of age, sornethree and a half centuries after the disappearance
of Jesus.
Shortly after the Council of Constantinople, the Roman Emperor
Theodosius made it a capital offence to reject the doctrine of Trin
ity, thereby laying the foundations for the Mediaeval and Spanish
Inquisitions which were to flourish centuries later - by which time
the doctrines of the New Covenant, and of Original Sin, and of the
Atonement and Forgiveness of Sins, and of theTrinity, had become
so deeply embedded in the Christian psyche that no amount of
reformations, ancient or modem, and however well-intentioned,
could dislodge them.
Thus it is a matter of historical fact that it took several centuries
for the doctrine ofTrinity to be developed - as part of a long drawn
out cultural and philosophical process, characterised by fierce con
fliet and at times often confused debate -which explains why the
doctrine is never actually described in detail within any of the texts
of even the official Paulinian version of the NewTestament as being
central to [esus's teaching. This can only be because the contents of
the early Christian writings - both of the Judeo-Christians and of
the Paulinian Christians -had already been finalised prior to the
formulation of the doctrine, and were already too well-known to
be tampered with too extensively, by the time that the doctrine
had reached the stage where it was formally expressed in writing.