Page "Gospel of Mark" Paragraph 2

According to tradition and some early church writers, the author is Mark the Evangelist, the companion of the apostle Peter.

The gospel, however, appears to rely on several underlying sources, varying in form and in theology, and which tells against the tradition that the gospel was based on Peter's preaching.

Various elements within the gospel, including the importance of the authority of Peter and the breadth of its basic theology, suggest that the author wrote in Syria or Palestine for a non-Jewish Christian community which had earlier absorbed the influence of pre-Pauline beliefs and then developed them further independent of Paul.