Executing John the Baptist

[M. CVRIVS ALEXANDER]

2. Mark feels the need to explain Jewish traditions (as in 7,3-4) to his audience, which suggest a non-Jewish audience. Equally, he translates aramaic words

I certainly agree on that one, the audience was apparently other than Palestinian Jews. But I would not argue any further than that. Since we know that latinisms could occur in literature aimed at a non-Latin audience, the presence of the latinisms does not necessarily suggest an audience who was Latin. Why Matthew and Luke avoid using them could be explained, for instance, by the difference in their style of writing; they also employ less Aramaic then does Mark (3 passages in Mark, one in Matthew, none in Luke?), thus showing tendency to avoid foreign language.

3. It is true that the Gospel is anonymous (and a lot has been debated about its author), but all initial testimonies about it (Papias via Eusebius, Iraeneus, Clemens Alexandrinus and the anti-marcionite Prologue) suggest a Mark closely associated with Peter

The testimonies listed after Papias are thought to be dependent on Papias, and so hardly add any weight. We do not know how credible was the statement of Papias. But what Papias said about the way "Mark" composed the Gospel does not seem to go well with the text of the Gospel itself, which, IMO, somewhat undermines the credibility of the entire statement, including his view who was the author.

The theme of persecutions and endurance is common for the entire New Testament corpus.