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 Mary Gospels reports an anointing. Matthew and Mark are generally agreed to describe the same event. Authorities differ as to the others, and only in John is Mary named. In , Jesus visits Mary and Martha in an unnamed village, and Lazarus is not mentioned. It is generally agreed that these are the same Mary and Martha as in John 11-12, but whether this Mary is also the unnamed woman in Matthew 26, Mark 14 and Luke 7 (or even whether the unnamed woman in Luke is the same one as in Matthew and Mark) is not generally agreed. The Lutheran