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
Matthew 3:1 Matthew 3:1 Matthew 3:1 is the first verse of the third chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament. This verse takes up the narrative some thirty years after beginning the description of Jesus' ministry. This verse introduces the figure of John the Baptist. In the King James Version of the Bible the text reads: The World English Bible translates the passage as: For a collection of other versions see here: Unlike the infancy narrative this verse begins a section that is closely paralleled in Mark 1 and Luke 3. According to the theory of Markan Priority both