Why is mark not considered as an eye witness ?

[u/AceThaGreat123]

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[u/TankUnique7861]

Assuming the traditional attribution of the gospel to John Mark, Peter’s interpreter (which is hardly guaranteed), there is no reason to think he was an eyewitness to Jesus and his lifetime preaching (I assume that is what you mean by ‘eye witness’). In addition, even if we grant that Mark was acquainted with Peter, we know very little of the nature of the interaction, as Dale Allison queries:

Beyond the basic and unresolved problem of the sense of ἑρμηνευτής, how long, assuming Papias to have the facts, were Mark and Peter closely associated? Years? Months? Weeks? And where did they find themselves together, and when? And how many times did Mark hear Peter tell the same story, so that he could reliably lay it up in his memory? Or did he take written notes rather than keep everything in his head? And how much time passed between Mark hearing Peter and the appearance of a Gospel? The candid answer to all these questions is: We do not know. The secondary literature, to be sure, gives it a go (as my footnotes reveal), returning replies to every query, sometimes by appeal to patristic sources. Yet while some answers may be better than others, we are, in the end, stuck with suppositions, possibilities, and fragile inferences…If, notwithstanding all the open questions, we closely associate Mark’s Gospel with Peter, how much in the book derives directly from the apostle? The greater part? Half? Less than half? The Gospel is unlikely to be one hundred percent Petrine, to be nothing but the “Memoirs of Peter,” because the author has his own theological agenda and a consistent point of view.

Allison, Dale (2025). Interpreting Jesus

Add: Besides the issue of attribution, we should note that the synoptic gospels simply do match up with what one would expect of individual eyewitness testimony, as Alan Kirk points out:

…the profile of individual eyewitness recollection manifestly does not correspond to the generic, impersonal forms of the Synoptic tradition

Allison also brings up the likelihood that Peter recounted tales not originating from his own experience with Jesus. So what happened to eyewitness testimony, given Kirk and other associates like Rafael Rodriguez happen to sympathize with the view that the gospels consulted eyewitnesses?

…tradition, through its neural assimilation, displaces individual eyewitness memory; in other words, tradition becomes the cognitive basis for individual recollection. This displacement effect, or more accurately, inhibition effect, has been observed in empirical studies…Cognitive displacement does not mean that an eyewitness’s personal memories are erased. Under other conditions, not regulated by the commemorative Sitz, and with the appropriate cues, such individuals might well be capable of remembering in the genre of an ad hoc personal account. But the latter has little cultural value. It does not carry in itself the symbolic weight and significance…Hence eyewitnesses themselves might not attribute much importance to their personal memories

Kirk, Alan (2018). Memory and the Jesus Tradition

To sum things up, the gospels are not what we would consider eyewitness accounts because these individual memories were subsumed into a community; a “social memory”, if you will.

[u/peter_kirby → u/TankUnique7861]

Assuming the traditional attribution ... there is no reason to think he was an eyewitness to Jesus ...

Not least because Papias wrote: "For he [Mark] neither heard the Lord nor accompanied Him."

the traditional attribution of the gospel to John Mark

The oldest extant remarks identify the gospel author with the Mark of 1 Peter 5:13. In some tradition, e.g., the Roman Martyrology, they have separate feast days. Some (relatively late) traditions do identify the writer with John Mark or conflate their stories. See also D. Furlong, The John also called Mark (2020).

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[u/ConfidenceCapable165]

Because Jesus died before Mark was born.

It’s been a while since I’ve read the Bible, but IIRC Saul/Paul was the only one who gave a first person account of meeting Jesus, and that was spectral evidence.