 While Gnostic Christians honored both genders equally, the double standards of the Jews was soon adopted by the Orthodox Catholic Church, supplanting the gender equality that Yahshua had sought to re-establish. The role of Magdalene as Yahshua's chief apostle was entirely deleted from Christian history and all books that contained references to a feminine divine or omitted, those in which women played prominent ecclesiastical roles were not included, those that urged the authority of personal experience over the authority of priests and bishops were left out. Essentially, the books that supported the Orthodox view and the power of the institution were kept, while those that did not were rejected. But they were not only rejected, they were collected and destroyed. Their ideas vilified and their proponents driven away or persecuted.