How was St Mark encouraged to write one of the Gospels?

Answer 1

A:We know very little about the authorship of Mark's Gospel, but we can look at what we do know, to find what encouraged its author to write the first of the gospels. Tradition says that this Gospel was written by Mark, who learnt the gospel story from Peter, who would no doubt have encouraged him to put it down in writing. However, Mark's Gospel was originally anonymous and was only attributed by the early Church Fathers to Mark, later in the second century. There is nothing in the gospel to suggest that it was based on the experiences of an eyewitness to the events it portrays. In fact, Raymond E. Brown (An Introduction to the New Testament) says that Mark seems to depend on traditions (and perhaps already shaped sources) received in Greek. He did not copy his work from Matthew's Gospel, as was once thought, because scholars have demonstrated that it was Matthew's Gospel that was copied from Mark.

Biblical scholars say that this Gospel was written approximately 70 CE, just as the First Roman-Jewish War was coming to an end, so it is very likely that 'Mark' was encouraged to write his Gospel by that traumatic event.