a young man: a male past boyhood, in the strength and promise of early adulthood
At its center the word is simple: a male who has left boyhood behind and stands in the strength and promise of early adulthood. Every major reference work leads with "young man," and most of the time that is the whole story: the rich questioner in Matthew, the widow's grown son at Nain, and Paul's teenage nephew in Acts are all just young men.
What makes the word worth a second look is how far its edges stretch. Greek writers had a whole ladder of age words, and this one overlaps its neighbors on both sides, shading down toward boyhood and up toward the grown ἀνήρ, sitting right beside its near-twin νεανίας. The Greek Old Testament stretched it further still, using it to translate both a Hebrew word for a chosen young warrior (בָּחוּר) and a broad Hebrew word covering everything from a boy to a servant to a royal retainer (נַעַר). That inheritance left the New Testament a word that could carry, alongside plain youth, a hint of a fighter's vigor or of a servant's role.
Those extra shades show up in a few memorable places:
- In 1 John the "young men" are not a birthday bracket but the strong, tested believers who have overcome the evil one.
- In Acts the younger men who bury Sapphira are the ones on hand to do the physical work.
- At Mark's empty tomb the figure who greets the women is described as a young man, though nearly everyone understands him to be an angel.
And it is in Mark that the word becomes a puzzle. It appears only twice in that gospel, both times pivotal: the young man who flees naked when Jesus is arrested, and the young man in white at the tomb. The shared clothing language and the rare word tie the two scenes together for many readers, though what the link means is one of the most argued questions in the study of Mark.
Nuances
Who the young man who runs away naked (Mark 14:51-52) is, and why Mark records the incident.
- majorityA wordless picture of the disciples' collapse: like them he had been following Jesus, and like them he abandons him and runs, his nakedness dramatizing their total failure.; Harry Fleddermann, "The Flight of a Naked Young Man (Mark 14:51-52)," CBQ 41 (1979): 412-18; Adela Yarbro Collins, Mark, Hermeneia (Fortress, 2007), 688-93
- minorityA deliberate link forward to the young man in white at the empty tomb (16:5), so that the flight quietly foreshadows Jesus escaping the grave.; Albert Vanhoye, "La fuite du jeune homme nu (Mc 14,51-52)," Biblica 52 (1971): 401-5; Abraham Kuruvilla, "The Naked Runaway and the Enrobed Reporter of Mark 14 and 16," JETS 54.3 (2011): 527-45
- minorityAn image of baptism: the linen sheet is a pre-baptism robe, the naked flight is dying with Christ, and the white robe of 16:5 is rising with him.; Robin Scroggs and Kent I. Groff, "Baptism in Mark: Dying and Rising with Christ," JBL 92 (1973): 531-48
- minorityThe incident carries no hidden meaning; it is a stray eyewitness memory, sometimes taken to be the author (John Mark) recalling his own presence.; Vincent Taylor, The Gospel According to St. Mark, 2nd ed. (Macmillan, 1966), 561-62; Morna Hooker, The Gospel According to St. Mark, BNTC (A&C Black, 1991), 352
Whether Mark's young man at the tomb (16:5) is an angel and why Mark avoided the ordinary word for angel.
- majorityHe is an angel; Mark chose "young man" instead of "angel" on purpose, to echo the young man who fled naked in 14:51-52.; Adela Yarbro Collins, Mark, Hermeneia (Fortress, 2007), 795; Joel Marcus, Mark 8-16, AYB (Yale, 2009), 1000
- minorityHe is a human being, and the later gospels rewrote him as an angel because a mere man did not suit their resurrection accounts.; Rob James, "The Species and Purpose of the 'Young Man' in Mark 14 and 16," ExpTim (2023)