My understanding from Biblical Criticism is that the boy was Mark which explains why the writer of the 2nd Gospel knew about the boy and it explains how the Gospel of Mark knew what Jesus prayed when Jesus was said to be alone – because Mark was that boy who lost his cloak and ran off naked.
It seems to me a bit fanciful to think Mark was personally there and is here relating his own actual experiences from that night. But the idea that the character was Mark inserting himself into his art does make sense to me if we understand it by analogy with the way painters sometimes add themselves as a minor figure in a humble and self-deprecating position in their own paintings.
And carrying that a step further: if the naked boy in the garden is also the one at the tomb, then it comes full circle, since Mark really is the one who, by his gospel, is announcing the resurrection.
At any rate, my inclination is to take both figures as pure literary inventions. My own question is what they were meant to symbolize.
At any rate, my inclination is to take both figures as pure literary inventions. My own question is what they were meant to symbolize.
I asked Prof Ehrman once just this question and he didn’t seem (then) to take any association seriously. Mark is weird. He gives you glimpses sometimes that seem to be either authorial/editorial clumsiness or hints that maybe something else is going on. The original context is what we don’t have. Imagine an afterlife where the author of Mark, the inventor of the “gospel”, tells his interpreters throughout church history that they got it all wrong. There’ll be a lot of that sort of thing in a Christian Heaven.
Perhaps the two young men were one and the same, and perhaps his experience was intended to symbolize the process of baptism.
My understanding is early Christians often would disrobe to be baptized naked and then be cloaked in a robe after emerging from the water.
This might make better sense if Secret Mark is genuine, and the young man there was also the same individual.
Secret Mark is a gospel according to Morton Smith. Morton showed how to become an original evangelist in the 20th century by cheating the methodology of biblical research. He almost succeeded, but eventually a forgotten 1940 spy novel called “The Mystery of Mar Saba” was found. Taking into account the cyclical appearance and disappearance of the manuscript of Clement’s letter, the matter seems clear.
Mark creates tension using dramatic means in many places in his gospel. This naked guy means something, but it’s a secret… And that’s it
Mark opens with a theme of baptism. Mark 1:7-8: And this was his message: “After me comes the one more powerful than I, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
When seen in this light, along with the ancient tradition of nude baptisms, the naked youth and the robed youth can be seen as fulfilling that prediction from the Baptist.
As to Secret Mark, readers can Wiki it. Many respected scholars accept its authenticity. Ehrman, last time I checked, is skeptical but doesn’t reject it outright.
Mark is replete with lacunae, and Secret Mark may have filled a couple of those gaps. And, if so, it would help make sense of the naked youth and the tomb youth.
The biblical scholarship community commented on the authenticity of the Mar Saba letter before the discovery of James Hunter’s novel published in 1940, a few years after Morton Smith’s death. If the chronology were reversed, I doubt that anyone would confirm the authenticity of this document, considering the fact that no one has been able to examine it in the physical layer.
This whole story showed me a gap in the methodology of biblical research. This gap is the assumption that the author conveys a true historical account in the narrative layer. An assumption that cannot be verified.
Wiki does a good job of identifying the various scholarly takes. At any rate, my post was aimed primarily at identifying a possible purpose behind the tomb youth and naked youth — symbolic baptism. SM is a tangent. I’m not really interested in debating SM’s legitimacy. People have been doing that for half a century.
Wiki does a good job of identifying the various scholarly takes.
And the wikipedia article makes abundant use of the distinction I drew attention to: accepting the authenticity of the letter does not at all imply accepting the authenticity of the gospel described in the letter.
I’m not really interested in debating SM’s legitimacy.
Me neither. But since the topic was broached, it is important to note that the fact that a scholar accepts the authenticy of the letter doesn’t mean that scholar also believes that the gospel that the letter records can be used as a hermenuetical key to unlock the obscurities in canonical Mark.
That is exactly why I pointed to Wiki: It identifies the various scholarly positions well. And the question of SM’s legitimacy is why I couched my comment with, “This might make better sense if Secret Mark is genuine…”. Personally, I believe it is, and I side with Marvin Meyer’s position in that regard. Others reject it outright. But with or without SM, to me, baptism is likely intended to be symbolized in the two passages at hand.
I think you are correct. Most scholars who accept Clement’s letter consider SM to be a second century variant. Personally, I think it explains things in canonical Mark that are otherwise hard to explain, including the two young men we have been discussing. It also may explain why the author was so hard on the Twelve: the author was presenting us with an alternative model for discipleship. That was Meyer’s point of view.
But I really don’t want to pursue this further. The more important point for me was the baptism theme I mentioned. Maybe a SM thread would make sense for members who do want to pursue it further.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert