Chili

Christ never gets arrested. Jesus did and he died and rose again to be with Christ . . . as in Christ Jesus and later Jesus Christ.

Mark removes Judaism but reports the Material cause without knowing about the Efficient cause and least of all the Formal cause that actually gave him something to write about.

Of course Mark knows and knows his stuff very well but to isolate 'the Jew' from 'the man' Mark uses the fig-leave scene to undo the wrong that was comitted there. So here 'the man' is free again and Jesus the fig-leave-hero gets hauled to trial and will die to the sin nature that he represents.

I disagree with your passover analogy because Passover is when so called infants are killed and here Christ was already a young man. Passover is typically our Christmas scene wherein Christ is born and loved to life as if a child.

You must also remember that the loin cloth must come off and thus "loosely cast linen cloth" is a good sign and a necessary condition at this time (the cocoon must be left behind = think comedy instead of tragedy).

J-D

According to Luke 22:36, Jesus told his disciples to sell their clothes to buy swords, and according to Luke 22:38, they subsequently showed him two swords. If the young man in Mark 14:51 was a disciple who sold his garment, as Jesus apparently instructed, to buy one of those swords, that could explain why he was naked apart from a linen cloth. Further, there would be an explanation for the attempt to seize him and his flight if he was the person who used a sword to cut off the high priest's servant's ear in an attempt to resist Jesus's arrest, as described in Mark 14:47, Luke 22:50, Matthew 26:51, and John 18:10, in the last of which he is specifically identified as Simon Peter.

Cege

Seems to me like a reasonable interpretation.

But a man walking around 'town' in just an undergarment...wouldn't that be a social scandal?

According to the gospels, all the disciples that were there at the time fled, apparently fearing they too would be arrested if they didn't. As the story is told, the ear that was cut off was restored/healed by Jesus, though, so there wouldn't be sufficient evidence to arrest anyone for cutting off an ear that was no longer cut off.

Seems like the Romans weren't too interested in pursuing a fleeing naked man, or he'd have been pretty easy to recover.

From what I've been able to find in the way of commentary, the naked man fleeing in the dark has suggested a lot of theory but no definite or convincing explanation has been presented.

It's a detail in Mark in that I'd completely missed prior to this thread. Never heard this verse included in any sermon or Sunday School lesson!

J-D

Maybe ... but so what?They all are described as having fled, but this is the only reference to an attempt to arrest one of them, as opposed to the fear of it. Waving a sword around would be sufficient grounds to try to arrest him, even if he hadn't touched anybody. Only one of the four accounts (Luke) says that the ear was healed--and, realistically, how could it be?It's not recorded that he was arrested, but then it's also not recorded that he got clean away. So maybe he was picked up later on. Also, maybe an associate, such as one of the other disciples, got him some clothes--again, there's no record of this, but it seems an obvious move in the circumstances.I'm not sure of the explanation for any of the verses we're talking about. I'm just pointing to a possible way that some of them could be fitted together.

(It's not an original idea with me, by the way, but I don't see that that makes any difference one way or the other to its merits.)

Solo

IOW, the metaphor of Christ as passover lamb would be alien to the early Christians. Is that what you are saying ?

Not sure what you are driving at: in any case, in my reading of the Gethsemane scene, the subtraction of the clothing was not meant as slapstick. The dominant emotions are gloom, disenchantment, distress and panic.

Jiri

Loomis

Great posts.

I think we have a winner! :notworthy:

Malachi151

I'd really like to hear more on this, because I think that this type of stuff is very important, and is not even address in the academic journals. I'm working on a paper on the Gospel of Mark now that I would like to actually submit to some journals for review that will include this specific example of literary dependency in Mark.

Ben C Smith

You think that the connection between Mark 14.51-52 and Amos 2.16 is not addressed in the academic journals?

Let me quote from Howard M. Jackson, Why the Youth Shed His Cloak and Fled Naked, JBL 116/2 (1997), page 285:

Nor again did [Mark] require the endlessly debated help -- though it cannot have hurt -- of Amos' doomsday prophecy against Israel (2:16), where the same motif of naked flight is employed by the prophet, again to the same effect....

You say that the issue is not addressed in the journals, and here is an author addressing it in one of the journals and, moreover, claiming that it has been endlessly debated.

Whom could Jackson have in mind? Well, Thomas E. Boomershine lists Amos 2.16 amongst the OT nakedness passages that might connect with Mark 14.51-52 in Mark 16:8 and the Apostolic Commission, JBL 100/2 (1981), page 236. Robin Scroggs and Kent I. Groff list derivation of the incident from Amos 2.16 among several scholarly interpretations of Mark 14.51-52 in Baptism in Mark, JBL 92/4 (1973), page 531, and, get this, they attribute this position to C. G. Montefiore (1927!) and F. C. Grant (1951), neither of whom I have checked for myself.

Those are only JBL references. I do not know how many other references in other journals one might be able to scare up.

At any rate, I politely invite you to retract your claim that this issue has not been discussed in the academic journals.

Ben.

Malachi151

I said "this stuff", not this passage, and of course I can easily be wrong as well.

I've been looking for information on the scriptural basis of Mark and haven't found it to the extent that I envision it. My view is that the scriptures are the basis of Mark, nearly every passage and line.

The things that I have seen written about Mark 14 and Amos 2 tend to either dismiss it or to fail to address the importance of it.

Most of what I have read about the naked man in Mark 14 is still stuff talking about if this is Mark or not, or if this was a some character elsewhere in the Gospel, etc., etc., even if they mention the Amos 2 connections, implying that this story elements still reflects history.

But, certainly, I was not aware of the many references that you put forward on this passage so I am grateful for that, thanks.

Ben C Smith

When the exact instance on the table is Mark 14.51-52 and your assertion is that this type of stuff is not discussed in the journals, does it not damage your assertion a bit if the very instance in question, Mark 14.51-52, has in fact been debated frequently?

And let me ask you this. How complete has your research into the academic journals (or, for that matter, monographs and other studies) been? Which scholarly tomes in the belly of some research library have you skimmed or scanned to find this type of stuff?

To dismiss it is to address it.

None of which means that the connection has failed to be addressed.

No problem.

Ben.