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
Testament of Ba of Ba" was transmitted in manuscript form over many centuries, and so there are many different recensions of the text, but not one single, canonical printed version. Two early versions of the text have been identified by scholars: The "Testament of Ba" is also widely quoted in later Tibetan historigraphical works, for example the "Scholar's Feast" ("mkhas pa'i dga' ston"). The author of the "Scholar's Feast" calls the "Testament" the "Rba bzhed" (with an 'r' prefix to the Ba clan name), and refers to 'genuine', 'impure', 'large' and 'medium' versions of the text. A later, expanded version of the "Testament