"... Many interpreters have noted similarities between the Markan account of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, and Elijah’s experience in the wilderness as recorded in 1 Kings 19:4–9. The obvious parallels include the time spent by each figure in the wilderness—forty days—and the care given by angels to both figures. While these two details seem to draw the two narratives together quite closely, some have rejected any intentional relationship between them ... However, these arguments against Markan dependence on the Elijah-Elisha narrative are on the whole ignorant of the Greco-Roman practice of imitation, and are therefore unduly restrictive. As we have seen in our examination of Greco-Roman imitation, an author did not need to slavishly copy his source, but rather had the freedom to alter and adapt it to his/her narrative purposes. The examples we saw of this freedom in Virgil’s use of Homer were numerous. Such authorial freedom easily explains the so-called “problematic” differences put forth by Mahnke. While Elijah is traveling through the wilderness to mount Horeb, such traveling does not fit Mark’s narrative, so it is eliminated. Mark’s deletion of “forty nights” from his rewriting could simply be the evangelist’s desire to remove a redundancy from his source. Both of these noted differences are minor, and in light of the imitation practices of Greco-Roman authors, they do little to undermine a case for Markan imitation of the Elijah-Elisha narrative. ..."

Winn, Adam Mark and the Elijah-Elisha Narrative: Considering the Practice of Greco-Roman Imitation in the Search for Markan Source Material (pp. 84-85) Pickwick Publications, 2010