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
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