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 of the New Testament. These were all extremely important figures in the early church, writers would have mentioned their deaths if the New Testament had been written later. Furthermore, the Gospels contain numerous attacks on the Sadducees, a sect of Judaism that was wiped out with the destruction of the temple. Why, they ask, would later writers devote so much narrative space to attacking a group that no longer existed? John Robinson also notes that each book of the New Testament had to be written prior to the destruction of The Temple. Robinson notes that most scholars interpret the Olivet