New Testament letter composed under the guise of a presumably lost letter of the Apostle Paul, the Epistle to the Laodiceans. The books of the New Testament were all or nearly all written by Jewish Christians—that is, Jewish disciples of Christ, who lived in the Roman Empire, and under Roman occupation. Luke, who wrote the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts, is frequently thought of as an exception; scholars are divided as to whether Luke was a Gentile or a Hellenistic Jew. A few scholars identify the author of the Gospel of Mark as probably a Gentile, and similarly for
New Testament people named John among Jews of the time. He is usually identified with the Mark mentioned in various epistles, and with Mark the Evangelist. This John is occasionally proposed as author of some of the Johannine works as well. Tarazi even goes so far as to attribute to him the Gospels of both Mark and John and all the other Johannine books. Five canonical books of the New Testament are ascribed to John and thus called collectively the "Johannine literature": Only in Revelation does the text itself name its author as John; the other Johannine works are ascribed to John only through their