I'm glad we agree on this point.

I don't believe anything essential was lost either, though some of it may not be readily available to us. The New Testement books (and the Old Testement books, for the most part) were written so that nothing is written down just once. The concept of having three witnesses to divine events is talked about many times in the Bible and it also holds true for the Bible itself. The biggest problem I have with the current Bible is how the books that are in it were selected. This was a task done solely by man and the chance of them leaving out a book that should have been in there or putting in a false book is not out of the question. Plus, we don't have everything holy writing available to us, so some of the conclusions we draw, especially the controversial ones, cannot truely be confirmed or denied by the Bible we have today.