Npnf-201 iii.vii.xvi Pg 5
John Mark, son of Mary (Acts xii. 12), a sister of Barnabas (Col. iv. 10), was a companion of Paul and Barnabas in their missionary journeys, and afterward a companion of Barnabas alone (Acts xv. 39), and still later was with Paul again in Rome (Col. iv. 10 and Philemon 24), and with Peter when he wrote his first epistle (1 Pet. v. 13). For the later traditions concerning Mark, see the next chapter, note 1.
a follower of Peter, and the one whose Gospel is extant, that he would leave them a written monument of the doctrine which had been orally communicated to them. Nor did they cease until they had prevailed with the man, and had thus become the occasion of the written Gospel which bears the name of Mark.390 390 That Mark wrote the second Gospel under the influence of Peter, or as a record of what he had heard from him, is the universal tradition of antiquity. Papias, in the famous and much-disputed passage (quoted by Eusebius, III. 39, below), is the first to record the tradition. Justin Martyr refers to Mark’s Gospel under the name “Memoirs (ἀπομνημονεύματα) of Peter” (Dial. c. Tryph. 106; the translation in the Ante-Nicene Fathers, Am. Ed. Vol. I. p. 252, which refers the αὐτοῦ to Christ, is incorrect; compare Weiss, N. T. Einleitung, p. 44, note 4). Irenæus (Adv. Hær. III. 11. 1, quoted below, V. 8. 2), Tertullian (Adv. Marcionem, IV. 5), and Origen (quoted below, VI. 25) confirm the tradition, which is repeated over and over again by the Fathers.