In Christian tradition, the Four Evangelists are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the authors attributed with the creation of the four canonical Gospel accounts. In the New Testament, they bear the following titles: the Gospel of Matthew; the Gospel of Mark; the Gospel of Luke; and the Gospel of John. These names were assigned to the works by the early church fathers in the 2nd century AD; none of the writers signed their work. Gospels The gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are known as the Synoptic Gospels, because they include many of the same stories, often in the same sequence. While the periods to which the gospels are usually dated suggest otherwise, convention traditionally holds that the authors were two of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus, John and Matthew, as well as two "apostolic men," Mark and Luke, whom Orthodox Tradition records as members of the 70 Apostles (Luke 10): Matthew – a former tax collector (Levi) who was called by Jesus to be one of the Twelve Apostles, Mark – a follower of Peter and so an "apostolic man," Luke – a doctor who wrote what is now the book of Luke to Theophilus. Also known to have written the book of Acts (or Acts of the Apostles) and to have been a close friend of Paul of Tarsus, John – a disciple of Jesus and the youngest of his Twelve Apostles. They are called evangelists, a word meaning "people who proclaim good news," because their books aim to tell the "good news" ("gospel") of Jesus. Symbols In iconography, the evangelists often appear in Evangelist portraits derived from classical tradition, and are also frequently represented by the symbols which originate from the four "living creatures" that draw the throne-chariot of God, the Merkabah, in the vision in the Book of Ezekiel (Chapter 1) reflected in the Book of Revelation (ff), referred to as the four 'Seraphims', though neither source links the creatures to the Evangelists (of course the depiction of the Seraphims predates in chronology the writing of the new testaments books which portrays the writers John, Luke, Mark, Matthew as symbolically emodied by the four Seraphims ). Images normally, but not invariably, appear with wings like angels. When the symbols of the Four Evangelists appear together, it is called a Tetramorph, and is common in the Romanesque art of Europe, in church frescoes or mural paintings, for