New Testament the Anchor Bible Dictionary), may be the earliest known New Testament canon attributed to mainstream Christianity. It is similar, but not identical, to the modern New Testament canon. The oldest clear endorsement of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John being the only legitimate gospels was written "circa" 180 AD. A four gospel canon (the "Tetramorph") was asserted by Irenaeus, who refers to it directly in his polemic "Against the Heresies", "It is not possible that the gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are. For, since there are four zones of the world in which we live,
God Is Not Great conceive, and bear a son" (see ), pointing out where the stories converge, Old Testament to New. Comparing the Testaments, he considers the New Testament "also a work of crude carpentry, hammered together long after its purported events, and full of improvised attempts to make things come out right". He points out that, while H. L. Mencken considered some of the New Testament events to be historically verifiable, Mencken maintained that "most of them ... show unmistakable signs of having been tampered with". Hitchens also outlines the inaccuracy in Luke's attempt to triangulate three world events of the time with