Development of the New Testament canon a heretic and in the early 4th century Bishop Theodoretus of Cyrrhus and Bishop Rabbula of Edessa (both in Syria) rooted out all copies they could find of the Diatessaron and replaced them with the four canonical Gospels (M 215). As a result, no early copies of the Diatessaron survive—although a very early fragment suggests it would have been crucial evidence for the true state of the early Gospels (see IX). By the 5th century, the Syriac Bible, called the Peshitta, was formalized, accepting Philemon, along with James, 1 Peter and 1 John, but excluding 2 John, 3 John, 2
Oxyrhynchus Gospels and Luke 9:50, but the differences in phrasing show they are textually independent of the Gospels. A precise date for composition is unknown; 50 is possible, though a date of around 150 AD. is more widely accepted by scholars. John Dominic Crossan notes the mutilated condition in his introduction to the fragmentary text in "The Complete Gospels" resulting in highly conjectural reconstructions of the text, which, however, "does not seem to be dependent on the New Testament gospels... As an independent gospel, it belongs, insofar as its fragmentary state allows us to see, not with discourse gospels involving the risen