Development of the New Testament canon a novelty in Irenaeus's time. "Against Heresies" 3.11.7 acknowledges that many heterodox Christians use only one gospel while 3.11.9 acknowledges that some use more than four. The success of Tatian's Diatessaron in about the same time period is "...a powerful indication that the fourfold Gospel contemporaneously sponsored by Irenaeus was not broadly, let alone universally, recognized." Irenaeus apparently quotes from 21 of the New Testament books and names the author he thought wrote the text. He mentions the four gospels, Acts, the Pauline epistles with the exception of Hebrews and Philemon, as well as the first epistle of Peter, and
Antisemitism and the New Testament that the Roman Catholic Church should change its doctrine and the accepted Biblical canon to excise statements he labels as antisemitic,- he counts some 450 such passages in the Synoptic Gospels and Acts of the Apostles alone-to indicate that "The Jews' way to God is as legitimate as the Christian way". Antisemitism and the New Testament The idea that the New Testament is anti-Semitic is a controversy that has emerged in the aftermath of the Holocaust, although the Holocaust is almost exclusively known as a byproduct of the anti-Semitic ideas of racial supremacism and social Darwinism. It is often associated