<P> According to tradition and early church fathers, first attested by Papias of Hierapolis, 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, 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 broadness of the 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 . </P> <P> Early Christian tradition, first attested by Papias of Hierapolis, held that the Gospel of Matthew was written in "Hebrew" (Aramaic, the language of Judea) by the apostle Matthew, the tax - collector and disciple of Jesus, but according to the majority of modern scholars it is unlikely that this Gospel was written by an eyewitness . Modern scholars interpret the tradition to mean that Papias, writing about 125--150 CE, believed that Matthew had made a collection of the sayings of Jesus . Papias's description does not correspond well with what is known of the gospel: it was most probably written in Greek, not Aramaic or Hebrew, it depends on the Greek Gospel of Mark and on the hypothetical Q document, and it is not a collection of sayings . Although the identity of the author is unknown, the internal evidence of the Gospel suggests that he was an ethnic Jewish male scribe from a Hellenised city, possibly Antioch in Syria, and that he wrote between 70 and 100 CE using a variety of oral traditions and written sources about Jesus . </P> <P> There is general acceptance that the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles originated as a two - volume work by a single author addressed to an otherwise unknown individual named Theophilus . This author was an "amateur Hellenistic historian" versed in Greek rhetoric, that being the standard training for historians in the ancient world . </P> <P> According to tradition, first attested by Irenaeus, the author was Luke the Evangelist, the companion of the Apostle Paul, but many modern scholars have expressed doubt and opinion on the subject is evenly divided . Instead, they believe Luke - Acts was written by an anonymous Christian author who may not have been an eyewitness to any of the events recorded within the text . Some of the evidence cited comes from the text of Luke - Acts itself . In the preface to Luke, the author refers to having eyewitness testimony "handed down to us" and to having undertaken a "careful investigation", but the author does not mention his own name or explicitly claim to be an eyewitness to any of the events, except for the we passages . And in the we passages, the narrative is written in the first person plural--the author never refers to himself as "I" or "me". To those who are skeptical of an eyewitness author, the we passages are usually regarded as fragments of a second document, part of some earlier account, which was later incorporated into Acts by the later author of Luke - Acts, or simply a Greek rhetorical device used for sea voyages . </P>

Which books of the bible were written by disciples