Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Beggars' clothes are described, conventionally, as filthy rags and disgusting.61 The imagination of the listeners would supply the image of a man presenting himself to Jesus γυμνός, in nothing

It should be noted that, as Stone 1981: 144–6 has shown, gymnos in Aristophanes can indicate either complete nudity or merely the absence of a himation

In the play's agon, the wearing of himatia represents a different dichotomy this time old versus new, but the generational contrast is strongly colored by the leering prurience of the speaker, Stronger Argument. He contrasts the good old days when boys walked to their music lessons “naked,” that is, without cloaks (γυμνούς, 965), with the way Weaker Argument teaches the boys to wrap up in cloaks from the start (σὺ δὲ τοὺς νῦν εὐθὺς ἐν ἱματίοισι διδάσκεις ἐντετυλίχθαι,987). The lines that immediately follow make it clear that Stronger Argument is not so much concerned with some sartorial principle as he is disappointed at being prevented from ogling boys' bodies. The sexual overtones continue when Stronger Logos admits defeat and abandons his own himation to desert to the other side – namely, the side of the wideassed majority (1102–4).

Many of the occupations in which young men are shown are leisure occupations. Naked youths, or youths in himatia, carry strigils that associate them with the gymnasium; exceptionally a figure may adopt a posture which marks him as engaged in a particular athletic activity, as when Agakles is shown as a naked man with raised arms, apparently engaged in the pankration (3.8).19 Beardless men in himatia with aryballoi hanging from their wrists, and dogs beside them, associate them with both the gymnasium and the hunt

19 Naked with strigil: CAT 1.221, 1.348 (with dog and bird); in himation with strigil, 1.392: CAT 1.081, 1.191, 1.201 (with dog), cf. 1.436 (in himation with aryballos); engaged in pankration: 1.100 (Agakles is, exceptionally, both naked and bearded, a condition which his active engagement in athletic activity serves to justify) Cf. CAT 1.302 where a young man, with himation draped over his shoulders, plays with knuckle-bones. https://books.google.com/books?id=H-YJy ... 22&f=false

Perhaps the naked man running off into the night is the Gerasene demoniac; perhaps he is Bartimaeus, throwing off his cloak to walk with Jesus into Jerusalem (10:50; cf. 6:9; 11:7–8). Or perhaps he is all these characters wrapped up—or should I say, unclothed and reclothed as one, whose status as unclothed marks “him” as a radical challenge to postcolonial mimicry or hybridity. https://books.google.com/books?id=fNDmB ... 22&f=false

may have been naked , since the tendency to strip the person of all clothes is common among madmen ; here however it only says that he wore no himation https://books.google.com/books?id=W648A ... us&f=false

But how is it possible that a man destitute, naked, [p. 2071] without house or home, squalid, unattended, an outcast, can lead a prosperous life?" See; God hath sent us one, to show in practice that it is possible. "Take notice of me, that I am without a country, without a house, without an estate, without a servant; I lie on the ground; have no wife, no children, no coat; but have only earth and heaven and one poor cloak [τριβωνάριον]. And what need I? Am not I without sorrow, without fear? Am not I free?

"Bartimaeus is an ironic figure, who, begging for mercy, hails Jesus, about to enter the city of David, as the son of David. He is told to keep quiet. Summoned by Jesus, he throws off his garment and confronts Jesus naked. Jesus asks, “What do you want me to do for you?”—casting him in the role of James and John in the preceding episode, who aver their readiness to be baptized. Bartimaeus answers, “To see.” Jesus replies that his trust has healed him." Robert Coote The Gospel of Mark: Baptism and Passover Initiation 2015, Worship, Women, and War: Essays in Honor of Susan Niditch, ed. John J. Collins, Tracy Lemos, and Saul Olyan (Brown Judaic Studies, 357; Providence: Brown University Press, 2015), 63-82. https://books.google.com/books?id=xCPNC ... 22&f=false