Mark’s young man – the key to the ending?

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.

The present cultural climate of alienation and suspicion creates a new moment for biblical scholarship. Reclaiming and redefining intertextuality in biblical interpretation with an appreciation for a hermeneutics of “other” can be helpful, especially an explicit and systematic “intertextual” conversation with the voices of the cultural “other” and the biblical text. Mark's resurrection narrative (Mk 16:1—8) and particularly the young man's words to the women at the tomb are studied, employing Julia Kristeva's appreciation of the inner and outer play of a text. A hearing of the Markan text from the perspective of the hermeneutics of “other” reveals startling insights into the gospel's meaning of the resurrection and its implications for a world that suspects the other.