 The author may have drawn on a "signs source" (a collection of miracles) for chapters 1-12, a "passion source" for the story of Jesus's arrest and crucifixion, and a "sayings source" for the discourses, but these hypotheses are much debated.He seems to have known some version of Mark and Luke, as he shares with them some items of vocabulary and clusters of incidents arranged in the same order, but key terms from those gospels are absent or nearly so, implying that if he did know them he felt free to write independently.The Hebrew scriptures were an important source, with 14 direct quotations (verses 27 in Mark, 54 in Matthew, 24 in Luke), and their influence is vastly increased when allusions and echoes are included.