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,
New Testament apocrypha the Gospel of Thomas is heavily gnostic and likely not written by orthodox Christians. In any case, both of these documents offer insight into what the theoretical Q document might have looked like. A number of gospels are concerned specifically with the "Passion" (from Greek "pathos" (suffering) i.e.: the arrest, execution and resurrection) of Jesus: Although three texts take Bartholomew's name, it may be that one of the "Questions of Bartholomew" or the "Resurrection of Jesus Christ" is in fact the unknown "Gospel of Bartholomew". A number of texts aim to provide a single harmonization of the canonical gospels, that