Religion and the veil of time

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[Based off of another post]

When one investigates modern religions (As early as the reformation but most apparent in the 19th Century onwards) beyond the surface levels they quickly appear to be fabrications or human creations no matter how well meaning the creators intent; being very arbitrary and lacking a connection to the divine.

Because of issues like this religions from ancient times seem to be far more pure, consistent and in touch with the divine.
However when I looked into religions like apostolic Christianity and Theravada Buddhism (which I was initially very keen on ) I was eventually put off by the troubles that face ancient historians.

This is because the seemingly objective purity, consistency and divinity of it was illusory. For the idea that the teachings of groups like the Church Fathers for Christians or the Elders for the Th. Buddhists represent the unchanging consensus of the ideas of their times. However what they do represent is simply the ideas that were able to and most importantly allowed to be preserved.

Very very very little documentation remains from these times even liked and uncontroversial works like the biography of Cicero or the actual works of figures from the Helenistic schools. Christian religion becomes more complicated in that whichever group was politically dominant would literally destroy the works they deemed heretical or false and sometimes this would even go back and forth between groups.

So in the end aside from when we find works that were either hidden away and forgotten or dug out of garbage we are only left with the documents that the politically dominant group decided to and at great expense and effort were able to keep.

[P1}