I have a bunch of the gnostic texts, including Robinsons “the Nag Hammadi Library” (HarperCollins, 1990) and agree most of it does not deserve serious scholarship.
But I am constantly wondering how much editing actually happened early on when the Council of Nicea occurred.
I should say, though, that one of my books is Murdocks Syriac Testament, translated about 1850 from the known Peshito versions (known at that time), and it pretty much agrees with the translations from the Greek. The language can be described as more “earthy”, more like the way a common man would speak.
Perhaps we will never know. On a personal level for me, it makes little difference whether he was married or not, no doubt there were a couple female followers he was close to, it says something in my mind that some of the other apostles seemed to complain about how close he was to Mary.
And as an aside, one of the things he preached about was marriage itself, his hatred of divorce.
Since Jesus treated women with respect, and actually talked with them...(unlike the rabbis and respected teachers of the day (and Muslim Imams today)) it wouldn’t surprise me if some of the Apostles grumbled about that... However, the New Testament texts—again, THE very earliest accounts (by far) we have of Jesus, don’t tell us anything about that.
I think it’s hard to imagine what a superstar Jesus was...even 100 or 200 years after he was gone. SUCH a very popular figure that the Gnostic cults picked him up as their own (even while bitterly disparaging the original Apostles).
It really is a fanciful conspiracy theory though that essential facts of his life (like the idea that he was married) were edited out post-Nicea (AD 325)...as we have the canon (list of the books) intact as early as the Muratorian fragment (ca. AD 170) and, it’s been said that THE ENTIRE New Testament could be reconstructed from the works of the early Church Fathers (AD 125-450) since they quoted the NT books at length.
Ockham’s razor would suggest—rather than a dark conspiracy of powerful (though at the time persecuted and often executed) bishops editing out things in Jesus’ life—things like Jesus as a boy turning clay pigeons into real ones...or...his having a wife... really were exactly what they appear to be: Writings by groups OPPOSED TO CHRISTIANITY who were spuriously claiming Jesus as their own.
The New Testament is an authentic eye-witness testimony, other texts—from hundreds of years later, are not.
End of story.