Unidentified figure mentioned briefly in the Gospel of Mark
Antonio da Correggio,The Betrayal of Christ, with a soldier in pursuit of Mark the Evangelist, c. 1522
Thenaked fugitive (ornaked runaway ornaked youth) is an unidentified figure mentioned briefly in theGospel of Mark, immediately after thearrest of Jesus in theGarden of Gethsemane and the fleeing of all his disciples:
A certain young man was following him, wearing nothing but a linen cloth. They caught hold of him, but he left the linen cloth and ran off naked.[1]
The parallel accounts in the othercanonical Gospels make no mention of this incident.
The wearing of a single cloth (Greek:σινδόνα,sindona) would not have been indecent or extraordinary, and there are many ancient accounts of how easily such garments would come loose, especially with sudden movements.[2]
A later verse in Mark, "And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe,"[9] is often connected to the passage byallegorical readers of (in the words of Howard M. Jackson) the "symbolism school".[10]
The naked fugitive has been speculated to originate in a possible Passion narrative that pre-dates the gospel of Mark. In such an early document, anonymity of the fugitive may have protected this individual from official persecution.[11]: Note 8 [2]: 184
^Haren, M. J. (1998). "The naked young man: a historian's hypothesis on Mark 14,51-52".Biblica.79 (4):525–531.JSTOR42614166.
^Waetjen, Herman (1965). "The Ending of Mark and the Gospel's Shift in Eschatology".Annual of the Swedish Theological Institute, Volume 4. pp. 114–131.doi:10.1163/9789004665156_008.ISBN978-90-04-00096-4.
^Jackson, Howard M. (1997). "Why the Youth Shed His Cloak and Fled Naked: The Meaning and Purpose of Mark 14:51-52".Journal of Biblical Literature.116 (2):273–289.doi:10.2307/3266224.JSTOR3266224.
