Like the rabbis, the Christians used midrashic techniques to enable Jews to move forward.28 The authors of the four gospels later attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were Jewish Christians who wrote in Greek, read the Bible in its Greek translation, and lived in the Hellenistic cities of the Near East.29 Mark was written in about 70; Matthew and Luke in the 80s; and John in the late 90s. The gospels were not biographies in our sense but should, rather, be seen as commentaries on the Hebrew Bible.
