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gmark - Re: Flight of the naked Youth ; gmark digest: March 13, 2001

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Subject: Kata Markon

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  • From: JFAlward AT aol.com
  • To: gmark AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Re: Flight of the naked Youth ; gmark digest: March 13, 2001
  • Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 02:08:30 EST


In a message dated 3/14/01 10:50:12 PM Pacific Standard Time,
larry.swain AT wmich.edu writes:

<< Not everything in the gospels must be found
to have Hebrew scripture antecedents, and in the context, a soldier
grabbing a young man's white tunic so that the young man runs away
naked---I just don't see the internal clues of the scene pointing to the
Jerusalem establishment, there isn't anything narratively to hang my hat
on for this one either.

Larry Swain >>
===========
I don't believe everything has to have a scriptural antecedent, but if one
exists and it provides a simpler explanation than others offered, it should
be paramount.

Now, as for the young man: How else could Mark have symbolically shamed
Jerusalem, if that was his intent? Isaiah and Lamentations provide a
perfectly simple way to do it: Create a naked person. How could that be
plausibly done? No one would believe a person stripping naked of his own
accord would symbolize the shame, so Mark had to have someone else rip his
clothes from him. But, why would they do that? By grabbing at him to arrest
him, catching his cloak instead, and he twists out of it. The person has to
be cowardly, as Jerusalem was, and shamed, and Mark gets two for one by
having the man try to flee, then lose his clothes. The narrative logic seems
to be there to me.

Joe Alward




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