A book by Bishop Spong touched a bit on this possibility. His take was that at first just the passion narrative was a liturgical drama enacted during the festival of booths. It was a simply written book for the general public, like yours truly, so it didn't really focus much on intercalations to make its case.
A detail he pointed to (which may just be reading too much into it - but its plausible), is how Mark has a young man announcing the empty tomb rather than specifically saying an angel. Maybe thats a "fossil" from the drama's script - with a young male making that announcement as its climactic end. Thanx for the link there Pete.
Sorry for the delay Narkissos. I didn't check posts until early this morning, then I had to read some of the info from that link you kindly provided.
Interesting parallels that are hard to deny. A repeated scenario.....just that Jesus is the one resurrected this time instead of the youth. And Mark describing a mortal youth, instead of supernatural figures, reinforces the link for me. That character would make for an interesting subplot in the drama. But then again it would just generate more questions in the audience than providing them answers.
This has been discussed some time ago but I can't find the thread...
Rather intuitively, I would understand the "young man" not as a subplot character but as a sort of alter ego of Jesus -- the former escapes when the latter is caught; he appears where the body of Jesus is looked for and not found, pointing to a further encounter in Galilee (perhaps an earlier version of John 21). All this would suggest an early christology in which the "true Jesus" or "Christ" never actually died (other vestiges of such a christology being the substitution scene -- Jesus the Nazorean or Jesus Barabbas -- or the cry on the cross "why have you forsaken me?").
If one takes Secret Mark into the picture (as Koester does), the young man becomes the figure of the ideal disciple, much like the Johannine beloved disciple who also is originally, as Bultmann has convincingly shown, the "other Paraclete," another Jesus in effect. This is by no means incompatible with the above: the master lives on in the disciple.
Of course it is a fairly esoterical interpretation, but I think it is exactly what is suggested by Mark's allusive writing.
