Gospel of Thomas in the late 2nd century that "since there are four quarters of the earth ... it is fitting that the church should have four pillars ... the four Gospels" ("Against Heresies", 3.11.8), and then shortly thereafter made the first known quotation from a fourth gospel—the canonical version of the Gospel of John. The late 2nd-century Muratorian fragment also recognizes only the three synoptic gospels and John. Bible scholar Bruce Metzger wrote regarding the formation of the New Testament canon, "Although the fringes of the emerging canon remained unsettled for generations, a high degree of unanimity concerning the greater part of
Aramaic New Testament Testament (particularly the Gospel of Matthew and Gospel of Mark) may have had Aramaic source texts which are no longer extant. The most noteworthy advocate of the "Peshitta-original" hypothesis in the West was George Lamsa of the Aramaic Bible Center. A tiny minority of more recent scholars are backers of the Peshitta-original theory today, whereas the overwhelming majority of scholars consider the Peshitta New Testament to be a translation from a Greek original. For instance the noted Assyriologist Sebastian Brock wrote: Some advocates of the "Peshitta-original" theory also use the term "Aramaic primacy", though this is not used in academic