Development of the New Testament canon somewhat similar to the twenty-seven-book NT canon, which included four gospels and argued against objections to them. Thus, while there was a good measure of debate in the Early Church over the New Testament canon, the major writings are claimed to have been accepted by almost all Christians by the middle of the 3rd century. In his Easter letter of 367, Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, gave a list of the books that would become the twenty-seven-book NT canon, and he used the word "canonized" ( "kanonizomena") in regard to them. The first council that accepted the present canon of the
New Testament the Gospel of Matthew, though most assert Jewish-Christian authorship. Authorship is an area of longstanding and current research and debate, with different works posing different problems for identification. While the various works have traditional ascriptions of authorship, these ascriptions are in some cases defended by scholars, and in other cases disputed or rejected. According to many (if not most) critical scholars, none of the authors of the Gospels were eyewitnesses or even explicitly claimed to be eyewitnesses. Bart Ehrman of the University of North Carolina has argued for a scholarly consensus that many New Testament books were not written by