Vorkosigan

For my website I am building a set of Excursi, essays at the end of each chapter. Here is the one from Chapter 14 on the Naked Young Man.


Excursus: Who is the Naked Young Man of Mark 14:51-52?

14:51 And a young man followed him, with nothing but a linen cloth about his body; 52: and they seized him, but he left the linen cloth and ran away naked.

Few verses in Mark have inspired more speculation than the identity of the naked young man who flees when Jesus is arrested. In conservative and apologetic circles, where the writer of Mark is often interpreted as little more than a stenographer of Peter, the naked young man is sometimes seen as someone the author knows, but does not name because the young man, now old, is still alive when the Gospel was written, and the author fears reprisals. Dibelius (1949) is a good example of this common and naive argument for historicity: "This inglorious episode would not have been told (Mark 14:51, 52) if the young man had not been known to the earliest narrator."

Among mainstream exegetes the young man is often seen as OT creation on Amos 2:16

and he that is courageous among the mighty shall flee away naked in that day, says Yahweh

along with perhaps Micah 2:8

Lately my people have risen up like an enemy. You strip off the rich robe from those who pass by without a care, like men returning from battle.

Genesis 39:12 has also been tagged, beginning with the Church Fathers (Brown 1994, p301):

11 One day he went into the house to attend to his duties, and none of the household servants was inside. 12 She caught him by his cloak and said, "Come to bed with me!" But he left his cloak in her hand and ran out of the house. (NIV)

Note that while each of these proposals accounts for the Young Man's scandalous state of undress, none accounts either for the linen or the presence of the Young Man himself.

Exegetes have often proposed that the young man here is connected to the young man in Mk 16:5, who announces that Jesus is gone. Others have argued that he is Mark himself. Koester views the young man in the context of Secret Mark and believes him to be an insertion by later redactor (2000, p173). However, as Brown (2003, p108) noted, the use of "a certain young man" rather than a definite article ("the" young man) indicates that Mark has not introduced the character. Some interpret the young man's disappearance as an allegory representing the flight of the apostles, and his reappearance at the tomb as representing their restitution and eventual success (Brown 2003, p108-9). Haren (1998, p526), arguing that the young man is actually the raised Lazarus from John, sums up the problems with this passage:

"The difficulty here is that Mark 14,51, if read literally, strongly implies a close association between the young man and Jesus. As Vanhoye pointed out, the verb used is not the akolouqein by which Mark usually describes even the disciples' following of Jesus but the intensified sunakolouqein, of which there is only one other occurrence in Mark and, outside of Mark, one more in the New Testament (Luke 23,49)"

Fowler (1998) also makes the same identification, based, like Koester, on an analysis of Secret Mark.

Any analysis of the presence of the young man must begin where the writer of Mark began, with 2 Sam 15-17. The basis of the solution offered here is that the young man of Mark 14:51-2 relates to the young man of 2 Sam 17:18, who betrays David, just as the young man betrays Jesus running away when Jesus is threatened.

17 Jonathan and Ahimaaz were staying at En Rogel. A servant girl was to go and inform them, and they were to go and tell King David, for they could not risk being seen entering the city. 18 But a young man saw them and told Absalom. So the two of them left quickly and went to the house of a man in Bahurim. He had a well in his courtyard, and they climbed down into it. 19 His wife took a covering and spread it out over the opening of the well and scattered grain over it. No one knew anything about it. (NIV)

Note that this passage not only contains a young man who betrays David, but also a well into which those hunted are placed, a motif that echoes the Tomb story of Mk 16:1-8. This yields the following parallel:

A young man betrays Jesus by running away
A young man betrays David by informing on his followers.

However, the linen must still be accounted for. One possibility is 2 Sam 6:14-15, which offers:

David, wearing a linen ephod, danced before the LORD with all his might, while he and the entire house of Israel brought up the ark of the LORD with shouts and the sound of trumpets.(NIV)

In that passage David is rebuked by Michal for disrobing in public. Note how well the figure of David fits the quotation from Amos, since David is of course a person that is "courageous among the mighty." Could the young man be an allusion to David? This possibility is further suggested by the fact that the Gethsemane scene implicitly links Jesus to David by paralleling 2 Sam 15-17, where David is betrayed. Moreover, in the underlying parallel to the Gethsemane scenes of Mk 14:32-42, the Ark of the Covenant is alluded to, for in 2 Sam 15-17 Abiathar is charged by David with taking the Ark back to Jerusalem, while in 2 Sam 6:14-15 it is David himself who is bringing the Ark back to Jerusalem. Finally, recall that in the Mk 14:24 during the Last Supper Jesus has specifically described himself as the "covenant" using Moses' words from Exodus. This swirl of allusions accounts for the appearance of the young man in Mk 14:51-2 quite neatly, yielding a complete set of parallels:

Mark 14
2 Samuel 15-17

Jesus is about to be rejected and executed
David has been rejected by the people in favor Absalom

Jesus heads for the Mount of Olives, accompanied by disciples
David makes for the Mount of Olives, accompanied by retainers

Jesus leaves 8 disciples behind and takes two with him a little way, and then leaves them.
David leaves his retainers behind and sends three of his men back to Jerusalem.

Jesus is sorrowful unto death
David is weeping for his horrible fate

Someone cuts off the servant of the High Priest's ear. (in other gospels the parallel is completed, and the would-be killer is told to put away his sword)
Abishai asks David's permission to behead Shimei, who has mocked David, but David refuses.

Jesus says Peter will deny him
David says Shimei was sent by God to revile him.

A young man betrays Jesus by running away
A young man betrays David by informing on his followers.

However, as Richard Carrier (2004) pointed out to me in a series of private discussions, the Greek of the LXX uses a different word for "young man" than the writer of Mark does.

If you are among the exegetes who link the young man of 14:51-52 with the young man who appears to the woman at the Tomb in Mk 16:5, then the solution based on 2 Sam 6:14-15 is incomplete, for it does not encompass the young man of Mk 16:5. However, there may be a solution that does. In the Old Testament a messenger of God is of course an angel, few of whom are named, just as the young man of Mk 16:5 goes unnamed. In Daniel 8 an angel named Gabriel appears as the messenger of God who explains to the "Son of Man" the meaning of a vision. In Jewish tradition Gabriel is seen as the messenger in linen of Ezekiel 9-10, who accompanies 6 others to the Temple in Jerusalem where he announces the wrath of God on Israel:

9:3: Now the glory of the God of Israel went up from above the cherubim, where it had been, and moved to the threshold of the temple. Then the LORD called to the man clothed in linen who had the writing kit at his side 4: and said to him, "Go throughout the city of Jerusalem and put a mark on the foreheads of those who grieve and lament over all the detestable things that are done in it." 5: As I listened, he said to the others, "Follow him through the city and kill, without showing pity or compassion.6: Slaughter old men, young men and maidens, women and children, but do not touch anyone who has the mark. Begin at my sanctuary." So they began with the elders who were in front of the temple.

If we see the messenger in Mk 16 as the angel Gabriel then the linen is explained, and the idea of "fleeing naked" is explained by the allusion to Amos. Under this solution it is easy to see a clever reference here to the horrors of the siege and destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem that culminated the Roman-Jewish War of 66-70 CE, which the writer of Mark is almost certain aware of. This would also nicely fall in with the writer's Temple-focused hypertextuality. However, Richard Carrier (2004) pointed out to me that the Greek of the LXX uses the word for "cloth" instead of "linen" in the Septuagint version of Ezekiel 9-10. Richard is not getting invited to any parties at my house.

Having offered my solutions, I, like Poirot, will now have the honor of retiring from the case. Whoever the young man of Mark 14:51-52 was, he has certainly left behind a great deal of dirty linen.

JoeWallack

The Vorkster:
"For my website I am building a set of Excursi, essays at the end of each chapter. Here is the one from Chapter 14 on the Naked Young Man.
Excursus: Who is the Naked Young Man of Mark 14:51-52?
14:51 And a young man followed him, with nothing but a linen cloth about his body; 52: and they seized him, but he left the linen cloth and ran away naked.
Few verses in Mark have inspired more speculation than the identity of the naked young man who flees when Jesus is arrested."


JW:
Here's another guess as to Who.

The weight of "Mark's" gospel indicates that everyone of Jesus' time failed Jesus. His closest disciple, Peter, after being told he would and denying it, still denies Jesus, three times. One of his own disciples betrays him. His own family thinks he's crazy. His hometown doesn't believe him. "The Jews" deny him. The Gospel originally ends with no one even believing that Jesus had been resurrected. Even Jesus indicated that no sign would be given to his generation. Historically, this story is not believable, but with the Ironic Literary Convention that everyone of Jesus' time failed him we can make some sense of the naked young man story. Earlier "Mark's" Jesus had said:

10: (KJV)
21 "Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me."

(With Apologies to Vinnie "loved him" here provides even more support for Secret Mark which uses the same phrase and further strengthens the Ironic Literary convention that someone who was as "close" as you can get to Jesus failed him - Yuri, look out!).

Now compare to the naked young man story:

14: (KJV)
50 "And they all forsook him, and fled.
51 And there followed him a certain young man, having a linen cloth cast about his naked body; and the young men laid hold on him:
52 And he left the linen cloth, and fled from them naked."

My guess is that the significance of the naked young man is that it was intended to reflect people who had followed the advice of "Mark's" Jesus in 10:21 and given up everything in order to follow Jesus. The linen cloth cast about the naked body represents someone who had given up absolutely everything, including their clothes, to follow Jesus. Giving up everything except your clothes to follow religiously was a common idea of the time. This is the very last person to forsake Jesus and the author's intent is to show that even someone who had absolutely nothing in this world except for Jesus abandoned Jesus too.

"Mark's" Gospel is written in the style of a classic Greek tragedy. It's written for the benefit of the audience and not the characters in the play who end up blind to what the audience can see. In this case, that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah.


Joseph

HOMOEOPATHY, n.
A school of medicine midway between Allopathy and Christian Science. To the last both the others are distinctly inferior, for Christian Science will cure imaginary diseases, and they can not.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Errors...yguid=68161660

http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/abdulreis/myhomepage/

inquisitive01

Here's a thread about this subject from a while back.

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=96980

offa

Simon Magus was also arrested. He was the "young man" who was
seized and "fled away naked". Brought before Caiaphas, he was
condemned, expelled from the ministry, and so defrocked. Reduced to
the status of a novice, he became "young man", (the stage before
becoming a "man", a higher initiate).

p.109/110


ISBN 0-06-067782-1

offa

Chili

Did you see my post that got send to the basement? It was a jewel.