The Naked Guy Mystery

I know who he is

Photo by Dom Fou on Unsplash

There’s a mystery of biblical proportions that’s been around for a couple hundred years.

There’s a naked guy in the Bible, and no one knows who he is. But I do.

Most people don’t realize how rated-R the Bible really is. There is so much in there that you can’t read to kids in Sunday school. I don’t just mean the genocide, fratricide, regicide, suicide, rape, incest, and the run-of-the-mill Game of Thrones material.

I mean there are things so bad that King James intentionally left them out, like Ezekiel 23:20. He literally wouldn’t even include part of the Bible in the Bible. That’s a kind of censorship that would even impress modern editors.

But this is one that even your grandma has read and wondered about.

It’s hard to get away from, because it’s right there in the gospels, the story of Jesus contained in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Well, this guy is just in Mark, but he’s there.

It’s still too racy for anyone to preach on it. I have. But it may just be me. Because I know who the naked guy is.

The passage in question

The moment happens in the dramatic scene where Jesus is arrested. He is in a private garden and has to be revealed to the Roman guards by Judas Iscariot. He is not in a widely public place, and he is surrounded only by his most intimate circle. As the Romans appear and close in on Jesus, Mark tells us:

Then everyone deserted him and fled. A young man, wearing nothing but a linen garment, was following Jesus. When they seized him, he fled naked, leaving his garment behind. (Mark 14:50-52, NIV)

Mark never tells us who this is or why he includes it. It’s a strange mysterious moment. Surely, in this small circle, everyone knew who it was. I think Mark did too.

Is it Mark?

Some have postulated that this is Mark himself, and that in his humility, he has left his name off the work. I think this is wrong on two important counts.

First, Mark was not one of the initial twelve disciples. The names of the twelve are included in the gospels, and Mark is not one of them. There is a John Mark mentioned in the book of Acts who traveled with the Apostle Peter, and the traditional view is that he is the Mark who wrote the gospel. Thus the Gospel of Mark is the second-hand account given to Mark by Peter.

There’s a fairly wild level of speculation going on here.

The gospel manuscripts are anonymous, and the traditions given to us don’t have a clear origin. John seems to tip his hat to his own identity in his gospel. Luke is clearly someone who was not one of the twelve but who presents himself as an early historian.

We don’t know for sure about Mark. But, on the traditional view, it’s very unlikely that the John Mark of Acts was present in the Garden of Gethsemane at Jesus’ arrest.

Second, the idea that a gospel writer would secretly allude to himself without naming himself as an act of humility is far-flung. It’s even worse speculation.

Paul names himself in his letters. Peter and Jude give their own names.

It might be reasonable that if the gospel writers believe themselves to be continuing the historical narratives of the Hebrew Scriptures, they simply followed suit and didn’t include their names, as the Hebrew histories don’t contain names.

But then wanting to put yourself in the story without naming yourself in the hopes that people guess seems silly.

I know who it is

There’s a clue in the text that tells us who the naked guy is. It’s actually very clear.

You’ll notice Mark includes an interesting and, at first, apparently irrelevant detail. The man was wearing a linen cloth. Mark actually mentions this twice.

The Greek word used here is “sindona.”

Mark uses the word in only one other place. Mark 15:46. It was the kind of cloth in which Joseph of Arimathia wrapped Jesus’ deceased body after he took him down from the cross. Matthew and Luke use the same word in the context of the crucifixion.

A sindona is a burial cloth.

Herodotus uses the same word in his histories, 2:86. It’s the section describing how the Egyptians embalm and mummify their dead, wrapping them in a sindona.

And that is all you need to know to figure out who it is. Want to pause for a minute before I tell you?

The guy who owned a sindona

There was only one person in Jesus’ intimate circle who would have owned a sindona and worn it around. What a strange behavior! Unless it served some greater purpose.

That would be Lazarus.

Intimately close to Jesus. It was at Lazarus’ funeral that we see Jesus weep. Lazarus’ sisters talked about how much Jesus loved Lazarus.

Jesus brought Lazarus back from the dead. What’s the first thing Jesus says after Lazarus rises?

“Take the grave clothes off and let him go” (John 11:44, NIV).

There it is. Lazarus has it in hand now.

Why wouldn’t Mark tell us who it is?

There was a plot to kill Lazarus after that. First, the Pharisees plot to kill Jesus, describes also in John 11, immediately after Lazarus’ resurrection. The fear is that with Jesus’ now public ability to raise the dead, his movement was going to spread out of control. It even says Jesus started to avoid public places at this moment. They then planned to kill Lazarus too (John 12:10).

So it would have been important for Lazarus to stay hidden. The last thing he needed was more publicity.

And it is widely believed that Mark was the first gospel to be written. Professor James Crossley of Cambridge puts Mark at perhaps the late 30s to mid 40s. Maurice Casey, professor at the University of Nottingham, also put it around 40. Bishop John A.T. Robinson, lecturer at Cambridge, put it slightly later, at 45-60.

All that to say, there’s a good chance that Mark knew Lazarus was still alive and kicking at the time of his gospel writing. Alive, kicking, and avoiding being murdered.

So I’m fairly confident that Lazarus is the mysterious naked guy in Mark. We’ve got the smoking gun and the motive, and no better explanation. I’ve never heard anyone make this case before, so I may be alone in this. But this sounds right to me.