The Young Man in the Linen Cloth

"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." ~ Mark 14:51-52

This quarter in Sunday School, we are working our way through the gospel of Mark, and this Sunday's lesson covered chapter 14. That chapter covers a few different events from the last week of Jesus' life and ends with His arrest, His trial, and Peter's betrayal. However, between the verses about Jesus' arrest and the ones about His trial, we find the two verses quoted above about a young man who followed Jesus that night, was grabbed, ran away naked, and was never mentioned again. For years I wondered, who was he?

A sermon I heard years ago theorized that the young man was none other than the author of the gospel himself, he was the son of the man whose house held the upper room, and that the linen cloth was actually a bedsheet. The more I think about it, the more I think that this makes a lot of sense. In writing his gospel, Mark was very succinct. There are not nearly as many details about the events of Jesus' life as the other gospels have. Including this detail means that it was particularly significant to Mark, as it would be if he were the young man. It also seems rather unlikely that he would even know about it if it weren't him. I'm sure the disciples wouldn't have noticed the young man, and not many people would blab about running through the streets of town naked after having snuck out of the house in a bedsheet.

At evening Bible study on Sunday, we talked about this passage for a bit before we started our study. One person there thought that maybe the young man was one of the disciples. I disagree with this mainly because it doesn't make much sense. Why would one of the disciples flee from the scene fully clothed and come back practically naked soon enough that there were still people there to attempt to grab him? The person who had this theory referenced the time Peter was fishing naked after the Ressurection and had to throw on clothes to swim to shore, However, Peter being naked, or nearly so, while he was fishing makes a lot more sense than one of the disciples being practically naked at the last supper. It makes a lot more sense that the young man was someone else.

One person disagreed with my theory because there is no biblical evidence that Mark was an eyewitness to anything. While this is true, that doesn't mean that I can't have this theory. In the gospel of John, he refers to someone as the beloved disciple, and the widely held theory is that he is referring to himself in these verses, but there is no more Biblical evidence of this than of my theory. There's no reason I can't have my theory about the young man being Mark. I know I may be wrong, but this theory has unlocked my creativity enough that I wrote a short story based on it.

So who do you think the young man is? Do you agree with me that it's Mark, do you agree with the person who thought it was one of the disciples, or do you think it was someone else entirely? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Just a Girl

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Godly Insights for the 21st Century Life

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