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The Comic Frame of Mark’s Passion

In: Horizons in Biblical Theology
Author:
Stephen B. Hatton Independent scholar Delaware, OH USA

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Online Publication Date:
16 Apr 2021
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Abstract

This article uses narrative criticism and a study of the word neaniskos in Greek culture to argue that the Gethsemanic young man and the young man in Jesus’ open tomb are linked by comedy. It demonstrates that the naked young man pericope utilizes comic imitation and the word neaniskos to connote comic behavior. With the naked young man as a model, the article proceeds to show that the speech of the messenger in the open tomb is comedy vis-à-vis the narrative of the context. This interpretation has the advantages of explaining the ill-fitting interruption of the naked young man scene in Gethsemane, of making sense of the abrupt ending of the Gospel of Mark, and of fitting the use of the word neaniskos in the Gospel of Mark to a connotation used in classical and Hellenistic Greek culture.

Keywords: comedy; gymnastics; Mark 14:51–52; Mark 16:5; military; neaniskos; young man

1 Introduction

The young man who flees in Gethsemane (Mark 14:51–52) and the young man who speaks to the women in Jesus’ open tomb (16:5) are frequently interpreted together because of their shared vocabulary and narrative elements.1 Both passages use the word νεανίσκος (“young man”) to describe their characters. Both figures are depicted as being dressed, or wrapped (περιβάλλω), in clothing though what they wear is different. Both characters are anonymous. The young man in Gethsemane flees from his would-be captors and the women flee from the messenger in the tomb. Some scholars also note that these narrative events form an inclusio that frames the accounts of the trial and death of Jesus.2

R. T. France disagrees that the two incidents were deliberately linked and he downplays the lexical ties as coincidental uses of common words.3 But these two passages contain the only uses of the word νεανίσκος and the only occurrences of the word περιβάλλω in the Gospel of Mark. It seems quite unlikely that these are unintended coincidences. It will also be seen that some meanings of the word νεανίσκος are not so common and that one of its connotations may help to answer the question of the significance of the connection between the two passages.

Some identify the Gethsemane man as a historical figure (for example, Mark the author or Lazarus).4 Some identify the messenger as an angel or at least angelic.5 These identifications do not delineate the relation between the two accounts.

Various explanations have been offered about the significance of the connection between the two narrative segments. They include that the stories illustrate a transformation from shameful and failed discipleship to hopeful following,6 that the Gethesemanic young man is a figurative anticipation of the resurrection,7 and that he is a baptismal initiate.8 These explanations are unsatisfactory because they do not demonstrate why or how the term νεανίσκος is used to relate the two figures or even how it relates to either figure. It is prudent to learn how the word νεανίσκος was used in Greek writings and only then to think about how the word may help shed light on its use in the Gospel of Mark. This approach may lead to a better understanding of how the two incidents are associated. This article will not discuss issues such as whether the two figures refer to one or two beings, and whether the figure in the tomb is an angel or human.9

The argument of the article is that both passages containing the word νεανίσκος involve comedy. The naked young man in Gethsemane pericope is strategically placed to show comedic mimicry. That interpretation is supported by narrative criticism and an important connotation of νεανίσκος in usage in classical and Hellenistic Greek culture. The young man in Jesus’ open tomb participates in comedy through his words and the ending of the Gospel of Mark.

2 Neaniskos Associated with Comic Behavior

One sense of the word νεανίσκος in the classical and Hellenistic periods relates to comic behavior. In the Republic, Plato associated youthful impudence with the laughable, clowning, and buffoonery.10 Similarly Aristotle wrote of νέοι that φιλογέλωτες, διὸ καὶ φιλευτράπελοι ἡ γὰρ εὐτραπελία πεπαιδευµένη ὕβρις ἐστίν (“they are fond of laughter, and therefore witty; for wit is cultured insolence”).11

As Stephen Halliwell points out, the bird-chorus in Aristophanes’ Birds associated youth and laughter.12 Aristophanes suggested that laughter can shade to irreverence, ribaldry, and buffoonery (βωµολοχία).13 Isocrates jokingly referred to the young being praised for being witty (εὐτράπελοι).14 While most jokes are verbal, laughter may be prompted by non-verbal situations and clowning.

A buffoon (γελωτοποιός, literally laughter-producer) can joke without words by acting, facial expressions, and gestures. Ancient Greek buffoons were known for mimicry, eliciting laughter from an audience without speaking.15 Mimicry done mockingly or partially mockingly is associated with youthfulness in Aristophanes’ Knights (see line 731 where mockery is accompanied by violence as it often is in Aristophanes’ plays [see Birds 970–90]). The buffoon Eudikos imitated boxers and wrestlers.16 Agathocles, a buffoon and mimic, mimicked attendees at assembly meetings in which he was present causing some of those who were there to laugh.17 Isocrates wrote about “men who play the buffoon [βωµολοχευοµένους] and have a talent for mocking [σκώπτειν] and mimicking [µιµεῖσθαι].”18

In Xenophon’s Symposium Philip the buffoon failed to get his fellow banqueters to laugh at his verbal jokes. This caused him to bemoan his ability to succeed at his occupation and he commenced to wipe his nose and (pretend to) cry.19 This caused Critobulus to guffaw.20 The diners resumed eating and then were entertained by a Syracusan flute-girl who danced and performed acrobatic tricks, and by a Syracusan boy who played the cither and danced. Following their presentation Philip mimicked in detail (διῆλθε µιµούµενος; 2.21) the dancing of the boy and girl, making a burlesque of the performance by exaggerating the girl’s acrobatic routine.21 Again the banqueters laughed at his mimetic comedy.22 After Socrates proposed that they drink wine Philip suggested that those pouring wine pretend to drive the wine cups to mimic (µιµεῖσθαι) charioteers.23

Elsewhere Xenophon described Cyrus imitating Sacas pouring wine.24 Part of his play-acting included a grave facial expression. The imitation (µιµέοµαι) made Cyrus’ mother and Astyagis laugh.

Halliwell discusses how laughter can oscillate with shame. Laughter can target someone who is thereby shamed. It can also shame a person who laughs. The shameful (αἰσχρός) and laughable (γέλοιος) may be coupled.25 But because a reader of a text and an audience of a play or performance are outside of the scene/text they may laugh without shame. “The objects of laughter are turned into the material of a performance framed for the collective pleasure of the spectators.”26 Laughter, buffoonery, and comedy can be about serious things. Comic imitation can be an indirect way to criticize others, resist those who have power, or simply be an antidote for taking some things too seriously. Poking fun at politicians and others was normal in Aristophanes’ comedies. Lucian made jokes about the dead and the circumstances of their deaths in Dialogues of the Dead.

3 Mimesis and Comedy

To understand the argument of the article’s thesis it will help to summarize the two interrelated concepts of mimesis and comedy. In book ten of the Republic, Plato writes a well-known dialogue between Socrates and Glaucon in which painting is discussed as an imitation of reality, and poetry is portrayed as an imitation of an image (598b). Mimetic art is inferior (603b) in relation to what it imitates, and imitation is said to be play, not serious (602b). Thus mimesis is a feature of art that represents the real in an inferior manner.27

Less well-known is Plato’s contrasting interchange of mimesis in book three of the Republic. There mimesis is exemplified as a poet’s speech delivered as if he were someone else (393c). Imitation is spoken of favorably in the precept to imitate good behavior (395c).28 Thus in book three, mimesis is a feature of literary discourse in which a poet speaks with a fictional voice. Mimesis is what relates a dramatist to a dramatic character, or author to a fictional persona.29 Mimesis is acting, or playing a part. This perspective of the relation between mimesis and comedy fits with the examples just elicited of Aristophanes, Aristoxenus, Diodorus, and Xenophon.

Aristotle expands Plato’s scope of mimesis in book three of the Poetics to include narration (1448a20–22) whether the narrator becomes someone else or not. An imitator represents a story dramatically as though performing the depicted actions (1448a23–24). In a play the dramatist does not act to portray character. Rather the dramatist includes characters for the sake of actions (1450a20–21). Thus, the imitator imitates a speaker who speaks about a reality that is of a fictional speaker in a fictional world. For Aristotle drama does not describe but represents fictional reality. Drama is mimetic action.30 This is what Aryeh Kosman calls the “doubleness of mimesis” – “dramas (or more properly dramatic authors and actors) imitate praxis-acting persons by imitating dramatic-acting characters.”31 As Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe puts it in Heideggerian terms, in the Republic book three mimesis is the Darstellung (presentation or poiesis) of what is, while in book ten it is das Nachmachen (imitation as counterfeit).32

Gérard Genette presents a two-by-two grid of Aristotle’s view in which one dimension is action (high and low) and the other is literary type (narrative and dramatic). Narrative high action is epic, dramatic high action is tragedy, narrative low action is parody, and dramatic low action is comedy.33

Elizabeth Castelli argues that how Paul wrote about imitation is similar to how Plato represented it in book ten of the Republic. Imitation is asymmetrical in that an inferior person is exhorted to imitate Paul who is a superior person.34 Castelli argues that for Paul mimesis sustained a power relation,35 modelling her argument on Michel Foucault’s view that power relations require a system of differentiation that enables hierarchical relationships.36

Plato and Aristotle connect mimesis with comedy. Soon after discussing imitative art as inferior in book ten of the Republic, Socrates decries buffoonery as inferior (606c) and says that a lack of restraint is related to youthful impudence. Before launching into a discussion of imitation in positive terms in book three he declares that one should not love laughter (388e).

Aristophanes often poked fun at people, sometimes at those who thought too highly of themselves and other times at those who were thought of too highly by others (for example, Euripides in Thesmophoriazusae, Cleon in Knights and Acharnians, and Socrates in Clouds). He used mimesis in his comedies to deflate pretentious authorities and to degrade through caricature. Sigmund Freud also related jokes and mimicry with caricature and degradation.37

G. W. F. Hegel conceived of comedy as an actual individual negating the universal.38 But in the universal–individual dialectic the individual preserves itself in the nothingness that effects the disappearance of the gods/universal, and so the self “abides with itself and is the sole actuality.”39 This self-certainty “is not to be found anywhere outside of this Comedy.”40

Hegel also wrote: “the pretensions of universal essentiality are uncovered in the self; it shows itself to be entangled in an actual existence, and drops the mask.”41 Slavoj Žižek explains that comedy is the “immediate coincidence of universality with the character’s/author’s singularity.”42 The individual is the negative force that undermines the universal features of dignity that are mocked and subverted in comedy.

Thus, comedy is tightly connected with mimesis. Following Hegel’s direction, Alenka Zupančič argues that comedy is the imitation of the inimitable by a singularity.43 Comedy enacts mimesis.44 Comedy exposes that the real as universal dignity is not genuinely real. Imitation is used in service of comedy.

What follows argues that mimesis and comedy are tightly coupled in the Gethsemanic naked young man scene and in the empty tomb young man setting. However, rather than presenting the imitator as inferior to the imitated as in Republic book ten and in Paul’s writings as argued by Castelli, it will be shown that in the Gospel of Mark the imitator is superior to the imitated in the manner that Aristophanes, Hegel, and Zupančič use or present comic imitation. It is herein argued that mimesis in the Gospel of Mark is imitation of action (miming) or repetitive textual structure. Through dramatic actions written by the author of the Gospel of Mark, the imitator shows the flaws and contradictions of the imitated in a comic manner.

4 Young Man in Gethsemane (14:51–52)

The article has presented evidence that a νεανίσκος was associated with comic behavior in classical and Hellenistic Greek usage. The previous section, “Mimesis and Comedy,” further links mimesis and comedy in classical Greek usage and modern and contemporary philosophical thinking about comedy. Examination of the narrative involving the Gethesemanic young man demonstrates that the term νεανίσκος and the concepts of mimesis and comedy are closely linked in the naked young man scene.

If the Gethesemanic young man is examined from the perspective of the writing of the author (Seymour Chatman’s “discourse” and Robert Belknap’s “siuzhet” – writing in the world of the author)45 rather than just the behavior of a character in the story (Chatman’s “story” and Belknap’s “fabula” – events happening in the world of the characters), one may interpret the pericope from the perspective of its narrative context. This enables viewing the incident as comedic imitation – a reasonable expectation in view of its usage in extant literature of the period.

At 14:50 all (presumably the disciples) desert Jesus and flee. Throughout much of the prior narrative the disciples were lexically and semiotically tied to following. Jesus had stated that they all would desert him (14:27). Out of nowhere the young man incident appears. In nineteen words the young man follows and flees just as the disciples follow and flee. The succinctness of the passage and silence of the character are evidence that Mark writes the young man as mimicking the disciples.46 This immediately calls to mind mimicry as comedy. This exaggerated mimicking is comedy in the same vein as Philip the buffoon mimicking the acrobatic girl in Xenophon’s Symposium, and this explains the choice of the word νεανίσκος in the Gethsemane setting. The double use of γυµνός strengthens this suggestion. While nudity in public was shameful, it is conjoined with the laughable in this setting notwithstanding its nod to Greek gymnastics. Howard Jackson pointedly compares the young man’s loss of clothes with the incident in which Demosthenes, wanting to avoid the appearance of accepting a bribe, lost his clothes when Blepaios grabbed those (Orations 21.215–17).47 Jackson discusses how that account mixes embarrassment and humor.

Moreover, the Gethesemanic young man also mimics Jesus because both are seized.48 At 14:46 people from the chief priests, scribes, and elders seize (κρατέω) Jesus. At 14:51 they seize the young man. Mark thus writes a second mimicry, this one sudden and more pronounced. Two instances of mimicry written by the author of Mark through a νεανίσκος (associated with comic mimicry), and two occurrences of γυµνός all in nineteen words produce a forceful narrative statement that argues for interpreting the appearance of νεανίσκος here as comic behavior. At the level of the fabula, or story, the Gethsemane setting depicts agony, suffering, foreboding, and tragedy. But the νεανίσκος, his wordless behavior, his double mimicry – of the disciples and Jesus – and the timing of his mimicry – immediately after the actions that he mimics – all combine and compound the hints and allusions to comedy in the technical word the Gospel writer uses to describe him (νεανίσκος). In other words, the writing of the siuzhet, or discourse, level conveys buffoonery, mimicry, and comedy. These dual scripts interplay, and this is further evidence that comedy is at play here.49

4.1 General Theory of Verbal Humor

From the perspective of the young man the humor is not verbal but from Mark’s perspective it may be. This fits with the General Theory of Verbal Humor proposed by Victor Raskin and Salvatore Attardo.50 They write that humor exhibits two overlapping scripts. In the Gospel of Mark, the first script may be taken as the disciples’ flight showing failure to understand and/or faithfully sustain action as disciples, coupled with the naked young man pericope considered as inexplicable or explained while ignoring use of the word νεανίσκος. The second script may be read as the naked young man pericope using the word νεανίσκος with a connotation of comic behavior to comment on the disciples’ flight. This causes a reader to perceive the disciples’ flight and the young man’s flight as humorous. The pericope (14:51–52) is the narrative. The butts of the joke are the disciples. The situation is fleeing. The logical mechanism is the contiguity of the two narrative segments. The pointers are: (1) the connotation of comic behavior contained in the word νεανίσκος and the mimicry; and (2) the nakedness which makes light of shame and simultaneously nods to the connotation of gymnastics in the word νεανίσκος. The second layer of comedy may pertain to seizing.

5 Seizing and Comedy

The Gospel of Mark has seemed up to this point to have a plot driven toward seizing. Those who plan to seize or try to seize Jesus include his family (3:21), the chief priests, scribes, and elders (12:32), the chief priests and scribes (14:3), and Judas who conspires with the chief priests, scribes, and elders (14:10–11, 44). There are other incidents in which various religious officials try orally to trap Jesus into making an error to justify seizing him. Thus, seizing is the aim, or plot driver, of the narrative. The reader or audience is prepared by the text or performance to expect a culminating seizing accompanied by tension relief. Seizing is anticipated as a major literary goal and turning point in the narrative.

To encounter a seizing almost immediately after Jesus’ seizing is anticlimactic.51 It upsets the literary fulfillment of the long-expected seizing of Jesus. Viewing the young man’s seizure as comic mimicry helps to explain the appearance of this strange and seemingly awkwardly-placed pericope. To suggest that the young man’s seizure was the true aim of the Markan plot would not only reduce the meaningfulness of Jesus’ seizure but also make the young man’s seizure comic fulfillment of the literary tension built up by the plot. The existence of the Passion narrative makes that suggestion implausible. It is not that the young man is a φιλογέλωτες. Rather it is argued that Mark included the pericope as comic mimicry. Of course, Mark could not safely state that directly.52 He hid it in this puzzling incident. But he wrote clues for the audience and reader to decipher. An important clue to this interpretation is the word νεανίσκος used to connote comedy, in this case comic mimicry.

Elizabeth Shively argues that sense-making is based on previous experience.53 This could be a first hearing and viewing of an oral performance or a first reading of a written text. A person builds a mental model of a character when one first encounters the character.54 Subsequent narrative events involving that character may modify the image that is initially formed but they fit into a temporal structure.55 In the case of νεανίσκος in the Gospel of Mark the model is established and formed based on the incident narrated in 14:51–52 and then that model is used to attempt to make sense of 16:5.

6 The Young Man at 16:5–7

How might this relate to the young man at 16:5? Using this interpretative reading, the mental model of a νεανίσκος in this text has been formed by the reader based on the comic role the naked young man plays when he dresses, follows, is seized, leaves behind, and flees. Encountering another νεανίσκος in Jesus’ tomb recalls the Gethesemanic young man and prepares the reader to expect more comedy in the aftermath of Jesus’ burial. His comic behavior will be verbal or performed or both. But the young man toward the end of the Gospel does not act in the story and so his actions cannot mimic. The non-verbal clues are limited to posture (sitting in the right-hand part of the tomb) and clothing (a white robe). Sitting to the right is not unique so cannot positively be connected to any one of its other occurrences in Mark (10:37, 40; 12:36; 14:62, and 15:27). Posture and positioning are insufficient to be taken as mimicry, let alone as comic. There is only one other use of στολή in the Gospel of Mark. There Jesus warns his listeners about the scribes who like to walk about in robes (στολαῖς), desire salutations in public places, seek out front seats in synagogues and the best couches at dinners, and say long prayers for the sake of appearance (12:38–40). By itself wearing the same clothing as the scribes cannot be interpreted as comedy, though it might be viewed as a costume depending on the content of the subsequent speech.

In the Transfiguration scene Jesus wears a cloak (ἱµάτια) that becomes dazzling white (στίλβοντα λευκὰ; 9:3), two striking differences that weaken the comparison with the young man at 16:5. The στολή worn by the young man in 16:5 is not the σινδών that was the burial cloth for Jesus (15:46). So, while there is no mimicry involved at 16:5 there may be a hint in στολή to connect him to the scribes. Any comedy in this passage will be in what the young man says.

The messenger’s speech is neither long nor a prayer but resembles Agathon’s speech in Plato’s Symposium that Socrates described as “youthful eloquence.”56 The νεανίσκος says “Do not be thus amazed. You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen, he is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go and tell his disciples, and Peter: He goes before you into Galilee. There you will see him, as he told you” (16:6–7).57 How might this be viewed as comedy?

It is a serious speech in a serious setting just as the actions of the Gethesemanic young man are serious in a serious setting. But the writing about the Gethesemanic young man revealed dual/dueling scripts of fabula and siuzhet so one must be alert to these two writing levels here. The messenger’s speech follows what most scholars understand as Jesus’ resurrection whereas the actions of the naked young man precede Jesus’ death. But just as Mark uses the latter to comically mimic Jesus, he uses the speech and comportment of the messenger to comically reflect on the view of the resurrection as understood by Paul and later the other canonical gospel writers. In the Gospel of Mark, the resurrection is neither portrayed nor evidenced but only alluded to by the young man.

A few details point to the comical in this non-conversational speech. The young man tells the women that they are looking for Jesus. They obviously know that, so it adds no information for them or the reader who has already been informed that they know where he was buried (15:47), that they come to find him to anoint him with spices (16:1), and that they come to his burial tomb (16:2). Telling people what they already know when it is clear in the story and to the reader not only that they know it but that they are in the process of acting on that knowledge is particularly comic. Second, he tells them that Jesus was crucified. Again, Mark narrates that the women observed the crucifixion (15:40–41). This is another instance of the messenger informing them of something they and the reader already know. Third, he tells the women that “he is not here,” another obvious statement and yet another instance of comedy. However, this one may also be taken as a statement by the author informing the reader that Jesus’ body is missing, which is not surprising because a large stone had been moved away from the tomb’s entrance prior to the women’s arrival.

Three other key statements are directed to the heart of the message as previously promulgated by Paul and later reinterpreted by the other Gospel writers: (1) He has risen; (2) he goes before you into Galilee; and (3) there you will see him. To the third part he adds “as he told you” (16:7). None of these statements can be interpreted as comedy at the moment they are declared in the fabula/story. They contain no internal humor and do not comically conflict with or interpret (or misinterpret) past declarations or actions. The comedy in them becomes evident in the actions or absence of actions of what little remains in the rest of the Gospel of Mark.

Most scholars agree that the Gospel of Mark ends with 16:8.58 One must not argue from silence (argumentum a silentio). Just because something is not written does not imply that its negation is believed. But the Gospel of Mark has numerous proleptic statements fulfilled in its text, so if a prediction or prophecy of central importance is not fulfilled in the text one must consider the possibility that it is not accidentally omitted. No one is narrated as seeing Jesus alive after his burial. Even the messenger does not claim to have seen him. Thus, statement three (there you will see him) is not fulfilled in the narrative. Nor does the narrative give any indication that it was fulfilled. Authoritatively stating that something will soon happen and then either having the opposite happen or having that thing not happen very soon thereafter can be taken as a comic dismantling of the aura of authority of the person who declares that it will happen. It diminishes the authority of the messenger character. Building on the model of the Gethesemanic young man as comic, the reader takes the νεανίσκος in 16:5 as comic and so the pretension of authority of his narrated character is taken comically. The Gospel of Mark does not narrate Jesus going to Galilee after his burial and so statement two (he goes before you into Galilee) is not fulfilled in the text. The first statement that he was raised is also not narrated or evidenced but only spoken of by the messenger. Whether one believes that these predictions were fulfilled outside the text or entertains this as comedy depends on whether one approaches the text from the perspective of history (events happening extratextually – outside of and independent of the text of the Gospel of Mark in the real world) or of narrative (intratextually – that everything that textually “happens” is contained in the text).

According to Neill Hamilton, Mark replaced a conviction of a resurrected Lord with a translated and returning Son of Man.59 Hamilton thinks the messenger’s instructions are directed not to the women or disciples but to Mark’s readers. This is one way to understand the messenger’s speech, the silent ending, and why the Gospel of Mark ends prior to any post-resurrection appearances.

On the basis of a reading of Greek literature, Richard Miller argues that the ending of the Gospel of Mark is the story of a missing body, not of a resurrected Jesus.60 The empty tomb is a cenotaph for an absent body. Neither of these readings is inconsistent with a comic reading of νεανίσκος. A comic reading helps to alleviate what has been viewed as “the gravest textual problem in the NT,” a scandal, and an otherwise “intolerable discontinuity” of Mark’s ending.61

6.1 More on Comedy

The experience of humor depends on cultural and linguistic factors, on personal preferences and experiences, and on the setting, mood, and frame of mind of a person in the audience or of a reader. Not everyone laughs at every joke and not everyone appreciates poking fun at certain things. Some of these and other factors are well-recognized by biblical scholars,62 those who have studied Greek and Roman humor,63 and modern humor theorists.64

Considered philosophically, comedy presents an initial non-comic state of being or meaning (action, situation, statement, etc.) as stable and/or unique. It then creates or highlights a second reality that contrasts with or imitates the first reality. If it mimics it, the mimicry doubles the initial reality thereby showing it to be non-unique. If it contrasts with it, it does so in a humorous manner. Comedy plays in the interval between the initial non-comic reality and the comically constructed reality.65 Playing in the gap destabilizes the original reality, exposes it as non-serious or ambiguous, or at least disturbs its stability. On the one hand, comedy may close the gap between the two realities by humorously pretending that the two are one, as in puns. On the other hand, it may magnify the difference by dismantling the seriousness of the first reality, as when a comedian exaggerates the unique gestures of a pretentious politician. A comic object emerges in the split between the two realities.

The disciples’ flight is a non-comic initial reality. It is serious and consistent with previous serious incidents involving the disciples. The young man fleeing after following is a second reality comically constructed by Mark and it mimics the original reality. Jesus is seized and this is a non-comic reality. The young man is then seized and that is a comically constructed reality.

The messenger stating that Jesus has risen, that he will go to Galilee, and that some will see him are three non-comic initial realities. They are serious and consistent with earlier passages in the text. That the Gospel of Mark ends without any of those things being narrated reflects comedy back to the original three statements. That the women say nothing to anyone emphasizes that.66 Recognizing comedy in those three statements is prepared by the earlier comedy involved with the messenger stating to the women that they are looking for Jesus, that Jesus was crucified, and that Jesus is not in the tomb. In turn, the ability to recognize comedy in those statements is based on the νεανίσκος in 16:5 fitting into the model created by the comic role of the νεανίσκος in 14:51–52.

7 Irony in Mark

Numerous examples of irony appear in the Gospel of Mark.67 However, the passages in which the young men appear do not contain irony. Jerry Camery-Hoggatt does not include a discussion of either passage in his study of irony. It is not that Mark here writes one thing and means another. There is no spoken or acted irony in the story, and no dramatic irony in the text. But the contrasting comic scripts present a humorous tension between the surface action in the fabula and comedic meaning in the siuzhet. The pairs of scripts that reflect comic opposition oscillate, reflect comic obviousness, and show comic play in their intervals. Nakedness is shameful and also humorous. Fleeing is both shameful and humorous.

8 Other Connotations of Neaniskos Do Not Fit

To help make the case that neaniskos is used in the Gospel of Mark in comic contexts it is prudent to briefly assess other connotations of the term in Classical and Hellenistic Greek usage to show that they do not fit the Markan text. Not used by Homer or other writers such as Hesiod and Pindar of the Archaic period,68 the word νεανίσκος was used in the Classical period in a general non-institutional sense by writers such as Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, and Aristophanes. It loosely applied to a young man from the late teens to about thirty, and it became associated with behavioral characteristics of that age group. It was also used in a more technical manner in the context of institutional activities.69

8.1 Age

In its most general denotation, neaniskos referred to the age of a young man. It is this usage that most Markan commentators settle on when discussing the two passages under discussion. The debate among classical scholars concerning to what age range the word νεανίσκος applied remains unsettled for several reasons. First, the term was used in both general and technical senses in the same places and eras, and the contexts do not always make clear which usage was meant. Second, over time its usage evolved. In some places and times it took on a more precise institutional sense. Third, there was variation even in its technical application depending on the geographic location in which it was used.

Some scholars equate it to ἔφηβος, a term that is generally thought to have become applicable when a male turned 18.70 Some discuss evidence that its use spanned ἔφηβος and νέος.71 As a result the possible pertinent ages range from about 16 years old to about 30 years old or more. However, many think that when the term was used more precisely it usually referred to a young man post-ἔφηβος and thus to a man in his twenties.72 They persuasively argue that in some contexts its use was synonymous with νέος and so designated a man 20–29 years old.73 Plato ascribes the term to Agathon who at the time was between 25 and 30.74 It is clear from written usage that νεανίσκοι had obtained the age of majority. They participated in political life.75 They also handled their own finances.76

As noted, biblical scholars have assumed that νεανίσκος is used in both Markan passages simply to designate an age range. If that assumption were correct, then it would serve only to loosely connect the two incidents and its connotation would not help to explain the significance of the connection. As argued earlier, the lexical ties including the only two uses of the word νεανίσκος in the Gospel of Mark cannot reasonably be considered coincidental or based on a common word.

8.2 Gymnastics

One of the narrower connotations of a neaniskos involved gymnastics. Νεανίσκοι were associated with gymnasiums.77 Clarence Forbes wrote that gymnastics was an important interest and activity of νεανίσκοι.78 They were led by a gymnasiarch.79 Eva Cantarella states that νεανίσκοι gathered in associations linked to gymnasiums.80 The gymnasium was the realm of νέοι, synonymous with νεανίσκοι.81 James Davidson writes that they were elite youths who frequented gymnasiums.82 A Berea gymnastics law referred to νεανίσκοι and in that context appears to include ἔφηβοι and νέοι.83 Both the general and technical senses of the term were associated with gymnastics.84

The young man in Gethsemane is temporarily seized by more than one person (κρατοῦσιν; 14:51), and then leaves his garment behind and flees. He is saved by his loss.85 These actions do not positively identify him as a gymnast though he may have used gymnastic moves to escape capture. Running was among the kinds of exercise practiced by gymnasts. However, it might sensibly be argued that he is a gymnast because γυµνός is used two times in this narrative segment. Before he is seized he is described as wearing a linen cloth (σινδών) around (ἐπί) his nakedness (γυµνός; 14:51). As he leaves his linen cloth behind, he flees naked (γυµνός). If either occurrence of γυµνός had been omitted, it would have been clear that he fled naked. If the narrative had omitted that his linen cloth covered his nakedness in 14:51, 14:52 would make it clear that he fled naked. If 14:52 omitted γυµνός it would have been obvious that he fled naked because 14:51 states that the linen cloth covered his nakedness. The double use of γυµνός stresses nakedness. This is particularly emphatic because the word does not appear anywhere else in the Gospel of Mark. The word γυµνάσιον is derived from γυµνός so the bond between the two terms is tight. Νεανίσκοι practiced gymnastics without clothes.

If this were the connotation of the word here one question to ponder would be how this might apply to the messenger in 16:5. The messenger is clothed in a white robe. The word γυµνός is not used of him. When the women first see him, they are amazed or alarmed (ἐξεθαµβήθησαν). Perhaps they are amazed to see a gymnast in the tomb. The usual place for a gymnast was in a gymnasium where women were not permitted so this might have been embarrassing for them.

Yet the young man at 16:5 is sitting, not exercising. What he says bears no relevance to gymnastics. So, while the possible relation to gymnastics is intriguing, the absence of relevant clues in 16:5 causes one to conclude that the gymnastic meaning of νεανίσκος does not explain the connection of the Gethesemanic young man and the messenger in the open tomb. However, it might be possible that the connection is rather in the contrast between an active gymnast in Gethsemane and an inactive gymnast in the tomb, in which case reflection would be called for to decipher the significance of the contrast between activity and inactivity. Clearly, the very active naked young man is preceded and followed by very much activity in Gethsemane – praying, following, fleeing, dropping clothes, betraying, arresting – all prior to the active Passion events, crucifixion, and burial. In contrast the young man in the tomb is inactive. He describes activity – Jesus being resurrected, going to Galilee, the disciples and women meeting Jesus in Galilee – but very little activity is depicted as occurring in the narrative. No activity occurs after 16:8. Thus, if one considers the connotation of gymnastics, it might serve to call attention to the surge of activity in chapter 14 in contrast to the absence of activity in the latter part of chapter 16. But this line of reasoning does not fit the Markan contexts as well as the association with comic behavior, and so one must conclude that the connotation of gymnastics does not fit the Markan contexts.

8.3 Military

Another technical use of neaniskos relates to the military. In some contexts in the Hellenistic period νεανίσκοι were young soldiers.86 Forbes stated that they were recognized as young military members in Poemanenum, and that they served under a military captain in Egyptian Thebes.87 Boris Dreyer wrote that they were soldiers during wars and belonged to a disciplined military unit.88 Marcel Launey stated that they were a class of young soldiers.89 He also presented evidence that their participation in gymnastics was in preparation for military service.90 Nigel Kennel shows that they were civic troops.91 They suppressed tyranny at Xanthus, garrisoned in Ilium in defense against external threats, and restored order at Bernice in Cyrenarca.92 Whereas Dreyer viewed their purpose as offensive,93 Nigel Kennell gives examples in which they acted as defensive troops.94 Polybius used the term about armed forces in Tarentum.95

The Septuagint has several instances of the military association with νεανίσκοι. In Joshua 2:1 Joshua sent two to spy on Jericho. In II Chronicles 11:1 they were troops assembled by Rehoboam to fight against Israel. In 2 Maccabees 13:15 Judas exhorted the bravest young men to attack King Antiochus V’s pavilion at night.

However, nothing about the young man at 14:51–52 bears resemblance to the military. There is sword play at 14:47 when a person cuts off the ear or earlobe of the slave of the high priest.96 Jesus addresses those who come to arrest him, remarking about their swords at 14:48. But the naked fleer in Gethsemane cannot be identified as a soldier from anything written in the account. He flees without defending himself. It may therefore be concluded that the description of the man in 14:51–52 does not allude to or connote the technical military sense of νεανίσκος. There is also no hint of the military in the narrative segment about the young man in the open tomb.

8.4 Non-Comic Behavior

A constellation of behavioral characteristics was associated with νεανίσκοι. Some behaviors were exhibited verbally and others through actions or attitudes. Relevant adjectives include irreverent, disrespectful, thoughtless, reckless, insulting, unrestrained, and boisterous.97 Two Greek terms came into use to designate behavior characteristic of νεανίσκοι.98 They were νεανικός and νεανικεύεσθαι.99 Although these terms may sometimes be translated as “youthful,” they were often meant more narrowly as headstrong, wanton, and insolent.

Referring to a passage from the Iliad, Plato used a form of νεανίευµα paired with νέοι to assert that “youthful insolence” was not “fit for the young to hear, so far as moderation is concerned.”100 Plato used νεανικός to describe the slang phrase τύπτειν…ἐπὶ κόρρυς (“a box on the ear”).101 Elsewhere Plato wrote of Critias seeing young men (νεανίσκοι) “disputing noisily with one another”102 (λοιδορουνένους ἀλλήλοις). After Agathon concluded his sympotic speech he was applauded for his νεανίσκου εἰρηκότος (“youthful eloquence”).103

Aristotle urged legislators to “not allow youth (νεωτέρους) to be spectators of iambi or of comedy” lest they be harmed.104 Aristotle characterized νέοι as those who have “strong passions, and tend to gratify them indiscriminately.” They are impulsive, have tempers, are eager to display their superiority, are oriented to the future, are courageous and fearless, and do things excessively and vehemently.105

N. R. E. Fisher connects hubris (ὕβρις) to youth, citing Sophocles and Xenophon.106 Cantarella agrees and adds that their behavior was arrogant and impatient.107

For the most part non-comic behavioral characteristics involve speech. It is primarily in speech that νεανίσκοι were impertinent, arrogant, and disrespectful. As such this flavor of the word does not fit the character of the young man in Gethsemane who does not speak. Although it may be inferred that he is reckless in how he dresses and approaches danger in Gethsemane and that he displays lack of restraint by leaving behind his clothes and fleeing naked, he is silent throughout the episode.

Both young men in the Gospel of Mark behave youthfully but neither exhibit the pejorative behaviors cited by Greek writers as characteristic of νεανίσκοι. It may thus be concluded that Mark’s use of νεανικός does not carry this connotation.

9 Conclusion

The military and non-comic behavior explanations do not apply to the Markan passages with νεανίσκος. The connotation of age range does not help to interpret the connection between the two passages. The connotation of gymnastics may fit to an extent with the action and vocabulary of 14:51–52 but does not convincingly fit with 16:5 unless it would do so by contrasting the two men through the themes of activity and inactivity.

The best fit based on contemporary word usage but most particularly with the literary context and narrative analysis of the Markan text is with the connotation of comic behavior. That meaning fits with the narrative placement and context of 14:51–52. Although the young man at 16:5 does not display comic mimicry, his speech involving three very obvious statements is to be understood as verbal comedy. That he comically speaks three obvious statements helps one interpret other parts of his speech. It enables one to interpret his three predictive statements as comically misdirected vis-à-vis the sudden ending of the Gospel of Mark prior to any post-resurrection appearances, arrival in Galilee, and material evidence of a resurrection.

Ignoring the usage of the word νεανίσκος in ancient Greek culture leads to dissatisfactory explanations of its use in the Gospel of Mark and to speculative theological perspectives on these passages. Ignoring the literary context and meaning of the two passages also begins and ends in puzzlement. By studying and analyzing both one reaches the conclusion that the significance of the connection between the two narrative events is one of comedy. The naked young man and the young messenger in Jesus’ open tomb are comic characters in the siuzhet. This makes sense of the sudden and ill-fitting appearance of the young follower in Gethsemane. It also makes sense of why the Gospel of Mark ends so suddenly.

It is difficult based on the available evidence to determine why the Gospel writer used the dual scripts or how they advance the textual purpose. The dueling scripts are the obvious surface narrative of the fabula/story that commentators virtually unanimously discuss exclusively, and the hidden narrative of the siuzhet/discourse written by the author that is above (not part of) the fabula/story. This is an indicator of esoteric writing.

Three possible reasons are suggested. First, it might have been a defensive move. The author might have wished to evade censorship or personal persecution or worse. Second and related to the first, it might have been a protective measure to conceal a dangerous teaching, or truth.108 Third, it may have been a way to subversively laugh at and against the religiously powerful.109

In the naked young man scene, the comedy dramatizes the buffoonish behavior of the disciples’ flight but also dramatically comments on Jesus being seized and on the entire plot that leads to his arrest and binding. Later the character Jesus mimics the naked young man by losing his clothes. These are “teachings” that if stated directly might have led to persecution and worse of the author. Directly stating that the neaniskos in the empty tomb is a comic character would certainly qualify as a dangerous teaching. It would be taken as a too obvious declaration that the statements he makes were purposely designed to be comically contradicted by eliminating any narrative after 16:8.

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1

A. Vanhoye, “La fuite du jeune homme nu (Mc 14: 51–52),” Bib 52 (1971) 404; H. Fleddermann, “The Flight of a Naked Young Man (Mark 14:51–52),” CBQ 41 (1979) 418; S. R. Johnson, “The Identity and Significance of the Neaniskos in Mark,” Forum 8 (1992) 126; R. H. Gundry, Mark: A Commentary on His Apology for the Cross (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1993), 990; J. D. Hester, “Dramatic Inconclusion: Irony and the Narrative Rhetoric of the Ending of Mark,” JSNT 57 (1995) 75; J.-Y. Theriault, “Le ‘jeune homme’ dans le recit de la Passion chez Marc,” Sémiotique et Bible 104 (2001) 33; J. R. Donahue and D. J. Harrington, The Gospel of Mark (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 2002), 415; A. Y. Collins, Mark: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007), 688; P. G. R. De Villiers, “The Powerful Transformation of the Young Man in Mark 14:51–52 and 16:5,” HvTSt 66 (2010) 2; C. A. Miceli, “A Foil for Jesus: The Narratological Role of the Young Man in the Gospel of Mark,” Theoforum 41 (2010) 346; A. Kuruvilla, “The Naked Runaway and the Enrobed Reporter of Mark 14 and 16: What Is the Author Doing with What He Is Saying?” JETS 54 (2011) 541; F. England, “A Shoe, a Garment, and the Frangible Self in the Gospel of Mark: Christian Discipleship in a Postmodern World,” Neot 47 (2013) 284.

2

De Villiers, “Powerful Transformation,” 4; Johnson, “Identity and Significance,” 125; T. Attila, “The Role of the Neaniskos in the Easter Mystery According to Mark,” Sacra Scripta (2005) 5.

3

R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002), 679–80.

4

W. Barclay, The Gospel of Mark, rev. ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1975), 247–48; Johnson, “Identity and Significance,” 126; M. J. Haren, “The Naked Young Man: A Historian’s Hypothesis on Mark 14, 51–52,” Bib 79 (1998) 531; See a summary of historical identifications in F. Kermode, The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 55–63.

5

M. D. Hooker, The Gospel According to Saint Mark (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 1991), 384; Gundry, Mark, 990; F. J. Moloney, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002), 345; J. R. Edwards, The Gospel According to Mark (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002), 493; France, Gospel of Mark, 675–78; M. E. Boring, Mark: A Commentary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), 445; Collins, Mark, 795; J. Marcus, Mark 8–16: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 1080; Kuruvilla, “Naked Runaway,” 541. Those who disagree include P. Oakeshott, “How Unlike an Angel: the Youth in Mark 16,” Theology 111 (2008) 362–69; De Villiers, “Powerful Transformation,” 3; Attila, “Role of the Neaniskos,” 5.

6

Hester, “Dramatic Inconclusion,” 61–86; Kuruvilla, “Naked Runaway,” 527–45; see also Attila, “Role of the Neaniskos,” 5–6.

7

De Villiers, “Powerful Transformation,” 3.

8

R. Scroggs and K. I. Groff, “Baptism in Mark: Dying and Rising with Christ,” JBL 92 (1973) 531–48; A. Stock, The Method and Message of Mark (Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1989), 373–75.

9

Johnson, “Identity and Significance,” 126; Miceli, “Foil for Jesus,” 348; N. Q. Hamilton, “Resurrection Tradition and the Composition of Mark,” JBL 84 (1965) 417; A. Y. Collins, The Beginning of the Gospel: Probings of Mark in Context (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 135 n. 50; Collins, Mark, 795; Fleddermann, “Flight of a Naked Man,” 418.

10

Plato, Republic 10.606c; trans. A. Bloom, The Republic of Plato (New York: Basic Books, 1968).

11

Aristotle, Rhetoric 2.1389b10–11, trans. J. H. Freese in Aristotle (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1926).

12

S. Halliwell, “The Uses of Laughter in Greek Culture,” CQ 41 (1991) 284; Aristophanes, Birds 732–35, trans. B. B. Rogers (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1924) [line numbers are used in references to Aristophanes’ writings].

13

Aristophanes, Clouds 969, 983, 1073, trans. A. H. Sommerstein (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1982).

14

Isocrates, Aereopagiticus 7.49, trans. G. Norlin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980).

15

P. Maas, “Γελωτοποιοί,” in Paulys Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft (ed. W. Kroll; Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1912), vol. 7.

16

Aristoxenus, fragment 135, p. 41 in F. Wehrli, Die Schule des Aristoteles: Texte und Kommentar, vol. 2 (Basel: Schwabe & Co., 1967); source: Athenaeus I 19f.

17

Diodorus of Sicily, Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes, trans. R. M. Geer (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), vol. 10, 20.63.2.

18

Isocrates, Antidosis 15.284, trans. G. Norlin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980).

19

Xenophon, Symposium 1.15–16, trans. O. J. Todd (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1923).

20

Xenophon, Symposium 1.18–19.

21

Xenophon, Symposium 2.22–23.

22

Xenophon, Symposium 2.23.

23

Xenophon, Symposium 2.27.

24

Xenophon, Cyropaedia 1.3.10; Xenophon in Seven Volumes (ed. W. Miller; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1914).

25

S. Halliwell, Greek Laughter: A Study of Cultural Psychology from Homer to Early Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 216, 244.

26

Halliwell, Greek Laughter, 246.

27

A. Kosman, “Acting: Drama as the Mimēsis of Praxis,” in A. O. Rorty (ed.), Essays on Aristotle’s Poetics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 52.

28

See also W. Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 2, part 2, trans. R. Livingstone (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 720.

29

Kosman, “Acting: Drama as the Mimēsis of Praxis,” 52.

30

Kosman, “Acting: Drama as the Mimēsis of Praxis,” 57.

31

Kosman, “Acting: Drama as the Mimēsis of Praxis,” 58.

32

P. Lacoue-Labarthe, Typography: Mimesis, Philosophy, Politics (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 77.

33

G. Genette, Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree, trans. C. Newman and C. Doubinsky (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), 10.

34

E. A. Castelli, Imitating Paul: A Discourse of Power (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991), 21–22, 63.

35

Castelli, Imitating Paul, 81.

36

Castelli, Imitating Paul, 122.

37

S. Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, Standard edn, vol. 8, trans. J. Strachey (New York: W. W. Norton, 1989), 248, 250, 258.

38

G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 452.

39

Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 452.

40

Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 453.

41

Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 450.

42

S. Žižek, The Parallax View (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2006), 107.

43

A. Zupančič, The Odd One In: On Comedy (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2008), 117.

44

M. Dolar, “The Comic Mimesis,” Critical Inquiry 43 (2017), 588.

45

S. Chatman, Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978); R. L. Belknap, Plots (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2016).

46

Fleddermann, “Flight of a Naked Young Man,” 415–17; Donahue and Harrington, Gospel of Mark, 417; Hester, “Dramatic Inconclusion,” 74. See also M. W. Meyer, “The Youth in the Secret Gospel of Mark,” Semeia 49 (1990) 145.

47

H. M. Jackson, “Why the Youth Shed His Cloak and Fled Naked: The Meaning and Purpose of Mark 14:51–52,” JBL 116 (1997) 284–85.

48

Fleddermann, “Flight of a Naked Young Man,” 415; J. P. Heil, “Mark 14, 1–52: Narrative Structure and Reader-Response,” Bib 71 (1990) 329.

49

G. Hirsch, “Redundancy, Irony, and Humor,” Language Sciences 33 (2011), 320; K. R. Iverson, “Incongruity, Humor and Mark: Performance and the Use of Laughter in the Second Gospel (Mark 8: 14–21),” NTS 59 (2013), 6–7.

50

S. Attardo and V. Raskin, “Script Theory Revis(it)ed: Joke Similarity and Joke Representation Model,” Humor 4 (1991) 293–347; see also W. Ruch, S. Attardo, and V. Raskin, “Toward an Empirical Verification of the General Theory of Verbal Humor,” Humor 6 (1993).

51

France, Gospel of Mark, 595.

52

F. Ahl, “The Art of Safe Criticism in Greece and Rome,” AJP 105 (1984) 174–208; A. Melzer, “On the Pedagogical Motive for Esoteric Writing,” The Journal of Politics 69 (2007) 1015–31; and A. Simmonds, “Mark’s and Matthew’s Sub Rosa Message in the Scene of Pilate and the Crowd,” JBL 131 (2012) 733–54.

53

E. E. Shively, “Becoming a Disciple without Seeing Jesus; Narrative as a Way of Knowing in Mark’s Gospel,” in Let the Reader Understand: Studies in Honor of Elizabeth Struthers Malbon (ed. Edwin K. Broadhead; London: T&T Clark, 2018), 36.

54

Shively, “Becoming,” 37.

55

Shively, “Becoming,” 38.

56

Plato, Symposium 198a; trans. M. Joyce in The Collected Dialogues of Plato (ed. E. Hamilton and H. Cairns; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961) [Stephanus references are used for Plato’s writings].

57

R. Lattimore, trans., The New Testament (New York: North Point Press, 1996).

58

See K. R. Iverson, “A Further Word on Final Γάρ (Mark 16:8),” CBQ 68 (2006) 79–94.

59

Hamilton, “Resurrection Tradition,” 420.

60

R. C. Miller, “Mark’s Empty Tomb and Other Translation Fables in Classical Antiquity,” JBL 129 (2010) 759–76.

61

Edwards, Gospel According to Mark, 497; Kermode, Genesis of Secrecy, 67; N. R. Petersen, “When Is the End Not the End? Literary Reflections on the Ending of Mark’s Narrative,” Int 34 (1980) 154.

62

T. Bednarz, Humor-Neutics: Analyzing Humor and Humor Functions in the Synoptic Gospels, PhD diss. (Brite Divinity School, 2009); K. R. Iverson, “Incongruity,” 2–19.

63

A. Corbeill, Controlling Laughter: Political Humor in the Late Roman Republic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); R. Laurence and J. Paterson, “Power and Laughter: Imperial Dicta,” Papers of the British School at Rome 67 (1999) 183–98; M. Plaza, The Function of Humour in Roman Verse Satire: Laughing and Lying (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

64

V. Raskin, Semantic Mechanisms of Humor (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1985); M. Charney, Comedy High and Low: An Introduction to the Experience of Comedy (New York: Peter Lang, 1993); C. Canestrari, “Meta-communicative Signals and Humorous Verbal Interchanges: A Case Study,” Humor 23 (2010) 327–49.

65

M. Dolar, “The Comic Mimesis,” 587; A. Zupančič, Why Psychoanalysis? (Copenhagen: NSU Press, 2013), 68; A. Zupančič, The Odd One In: On Comedy, 58, 65, 115.

66

But see L. W. Hurtado, “The Women, the Tomb, and the Climax of Mark,” in A Wandering Galilean: Essays in Honour of Seàn Freyne (eds. Z. Rodgers, M. Daly-Denton, and A. Fitzpatrick McKinley; Leiden: Brill, 2009).

67

J. Camery-Hoggatt, Irony in Mark’s Gospel: Text and Subtext (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

68

E. Cantarella, Bisexuality in the Ancient World, trans. Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 30.

69

M. Caccamo Caltabiano, L. Campagna, and A. Pinzone, eds., Nuove prospettive della ricerca sulla Sicilia del III sec. a. C.: Archeologia, Numismatica, Storia (Messina: Università degli Studi di Messina, 2004), 203–4; E. Cantarella, “‘Neaniskoi’: Classi di età e passaggi di ‘status’ nel diritto ateniese,” Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome. Antiquité 102 (1990) 37; A. S. Chankowski, L’Éphébie hellénistique (Paris: De Boccard, 2010), 253; C. A. Forbes, Neoi: A Contribution to the Study of Greek Associations (Middletown: American Philological Association, 1933), 61, 65; J. Davidson, “Revolutions in Human Time: Age-class in Athens and the Greekness of Greek Revolutions,” in Rethinking Revolutions through Ancient Greece (eds. S. Goldhill and R. Osborne; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 46; B. Dreyer, “Die Neoi im hellenistischen Gymnasion,” in Das hellenistischen Gymnasion (eds. D. Kah and P. Scholz; Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2004), 214–15; M. Launey, Recherches sur les armées hellénistiques (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1950), 859.

70

Caccamo Caltabiano, Nuove prospettive, 204; Cantarella, “‘Neaniskos’,” 42. Launey, Recherches, 862, disagrees.

71

G. Sacco, “Sui neaniskoi dell’eta Ellenistica,” Rivista di ilología e di istruzione classica 107 (1979), 47–49; Caccamo Caltabiano, Nuove prospettive, 203, who cites Berea gymnastic law and Sicilian inscriptions.

72

Forbes, Neoi, 61; F. Poland “Neoi” in Paulys Real–Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft (ed. W. Kroll; Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1935), 16:2404; L. Moretti, “Una nuova iscrizione da Araxa,” Rivista di filologia e di istruzione classica, 78 (1950) 330–31, who bases his opinion on a study of an inscription in Araxa in Lycia. Plutarch calls Agis a νεανίσκος when he was between 20 and 24 (4.1; 7.4; 10.1; 19.6, 8); P. Girard, “Neoi,” in Dictionnaire des antiquités grecques et romaines (ed. C. Daremberg; Graz: Akademische Druck, 1963), 4:59.

73

J. R. W. Prag, “Auxilia and Gymnasia: A Sicilian Model of Roman Imperialism,” JRS 97 (2007) 90; Forbes, Neoi, 2, 61; Poland “Neoi,” 16:2401–09.

74

Plato, Symposium 198a.

75

Cantarella, “‘Neaniskoi’,” 43.

76

Chankowski, “L’Éphébie,” 260.

77

Poland, “Neoi,” 16:2403–4; Girard, “Neoi,” 4:59.

78

Forbes, Neoi, 45, 64.

79

Forbes, Neoi, 21, 64.

80

Cantarella “Neaniskos,” 37.

81

P. Gauthier and M. B. Chatzopoulos, La Loi gymnasiarchique de Beroia (Athens: Centre de Recherches de l’Antiquité Grecque et Romaine, 1993), 77–78, 177; Prag, “Auxilia and Gymnasia,” 90–91.

82

Davidson, “Revolutions in Human Time,” 46.

83

Caccamo Caltabiano, Nuova prospettive, 203; Prag, “Auxilia and Gymnasia,” 90.

84

Chankowski, “L’Éphébie,” 253, 261.

85

F. Genuyt, “‘Bonnes feuilles’: Devenir disciples selon l’Évangile de Marc,” Sémiotique et Bible 143 (2011) 61.

86

Forbes, Neoi, 65; Dreyer, “Neoi,” 215; Launey, Recherches, 861; N. M. Kennell, “Who Were the Neoi?” in Epigraphical Approaches to the Post-Classical Polis: Fourth Century BC to Second Century AD (eds. P. Martzavou and N. Papazardakas; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 218.

87

Forbes, Neoi, 65.

88

Dreyer, “Neoi,” 215.

89

Launey, Recherches, 861.

90

Launey, Recherches, 815, 818.

91

Kennell, “Who Were the Neoi?” 218.

92

Kennell, “Who Were the Neoi?” 218.

93

Dreyer, “Neoi,” 215.

94

Kennell, “Who Were the Neoi?” 218.

95

Polybius, Histories 8.24.10, trans. E. S. Shuckburgh (London: Macmillan, 1889).

96

B. T. Viviano, “The High Priest’s Servant’s Ear: Mark 14:47,” RB 96 (1989) 73–74.

97

Halliwell, “Uses,” 285 for the last two.

98

N. R. E. Fisher, Hybris: A Study in the Values of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greece (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1992), 97.

99

Poland “Neoi,” 16:2402, points out that νεανικεύεσθαι was also used by comic writers.

100

Plato, Republic 3.390a.

101

Plato, Gorgias 508d, trans. W. R. M. Lamb (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967).

102

Plato, Charmides 154a, trans. W. R. M. Lamb (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955).

103

Plato, Symposium 198a.

104

Aristotle, Politics 7.1336b20–21, trans. B. Jowett, in The Complete Works of Aristotle (ed. J. Barnes; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), vol. 2.

105

Aristotle, Rhetoric 2.1389a1–b9, trans. W. R. Roberts, in The Complete Works of Aristotle.

106

Fisher, Hybris, 97.

107

Cantarella, “Neaniskos,” 46–47.

108

A. M. Melzer, Philosophy between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014); L. Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980), 22–37; Ahl, “The Art of Safe Criticism in Greece and Rome.”

109

R. Lerner, Playing the Fool: Subversive Laughter in Troubled Times (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009).

Title:
The Comic Frame of Mark’s Passion
Article Type:
Research Article
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1163/18712207-12341421
Language:
English
Pages:
23–50
Keywords:
comedy; gymnastics; Mark 14:51–52; Mark 16:5; military; neaniskos; young man
In:
Horizons in Biblical Theology
In:
Volume 43: Issue 1
Publisher:
Brill
E-ISSN:
1871-2207
Print ISSN:
0195-9085
Subjects:
Biblical Theology, Theology and World Christianity, Biblical Interpretations, Biblical Studies

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