I quoted the description of Jesus picketing the Courts with a verse from zMark.
Your definition of picketing leaves much to be desired. Jesus did not prevent or dissuade anyone from entering the Temple, which is what picketing means. This is what he did:
Mark 11:15-17
15 And they come to Jerusalem: and Jesus went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves;
16 And would not suffer that any man should carry any vessel through the temple.
17 And he taught, saying unto them, Is it not written, My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer? but ye have made it a den of thieves.
This would have been taking place in the outermost Court of the Gentiles, which was the least holy of the sections of the Temple, and also the roomiest. Jesus is throwing out those who are making exorbitant profits by ripping off the pilgrims. This included the moneychangers who sold Tyrian ‘official temple’ coinage to the foreign pilgrims who did not have it. As I said long ago, it could not have been the priests doing this since they would not be allowed to touch unofficial and therefore idolatrous money. Others sold ‘blemish free’ doves, the typical offering of the poor, no doubt at high prices. People carrying vessels through the area might suggest there was all sorts of buying and selling going on, not necessarily anything to do with the Temple.
Picketing would imply not wanting anyone to go in, which is not the case here. It is those who were dishonoring the Temple that were the problem. Jesus called it ‘of all nations the house of prayer’. Obviously, Jesus is not dishonoring the Temple as picketing would imply. He is honoring the Temple and with it the priests who perform the Temple functions.
How Galileans described their clothing and the Greek words chosen are probably very different.
So what? Mark wrote in Greek. He deliberately chose the word
sindónwhich is both burial shroud and nightshirt. There were other words he could have chosen if he wished. In Mark 2:21, Mark 5:27, Mark 6:56, Mark 9:3, Mark 10:50, Mark 11:7-8, Mark 13:16 and Mark 15:34, he uses
himation, a general purpose word for any kind of clothing. In Mark 6:9, he uses
chitōn, a tunic. In Mark 12:38 and Mark 16:5, he uses
stole, which means a long robe.
Plenty of choices, but Mark chooses to have the young man wear a
sindón, a nightshirt or burial shroud. On the few occasions when Mark chooses a different word from the generic
himation, a reason can be seen. In Mark 6:8-9, Jesus is being specific: a walking staff, no beggar’s bag, no bread, no money, sandals, not two tunics. In Mark 12:38 it is the scribes, the honored authorities who wear long robes. In Mark 16:5, it is the young man, speaking with authority of the resurrection of Jesus, who wears a long robe.
But the young man on the Mount of Olives wears none of those things. He wears a
sindón. Or perhaps ‘wears’ is not the most appropriate word. In the Greek, the word used is
periballō which is to throw around. The form of the verb is passive perfect, suggesting that the
sindón had been placed around him. I have been calling it a nightshirt, something with a hole for the head and sleeves for the arms. The young man was being held but he escaped, leaving the
sindón behind. It would be easier to escape if instead of being a nightshirt that he was wearing, the
sindón was simply wrapped around him, just as implied by {I]periballō[/I]. It sounds very much like Mark was saying that the young man had a burial shroud wrapped around him. Wearing just a night shirt in the open on a chilly night is improbable enough. But a living person wearing a burial shroud is very unlikely to be meant literally. This is symbolism.
IMO Mark used the ambiguity of
sindón as both nightwear, tying into the sleeping / denial of Jesus triples, and as burial shroud, connecting with the burial of Jesus where
sindón appears again, as a way of bracketing the time from the arrest of Jesus to the burial of Jesus. This is the time of loss of faith. Surrounding all this and the Last Supper where Jesus says he will be betrayed and killed is: on the frontend the woman pouring the ointment on the head of Jesus which he calls anointing him for burial (Mark 14:1-9), and on the backend with the young man (that phrase again) wearing a robe of authority saying that Jesus has risen from the dead, a restoration of faith. And why did the women go to the tomb in the first place? To anoint the body of Jesus which could not be done because the Sabbath was about to begin. Connecting clues all over.
The naked young man being symbolic sounds a whole lot more likely than that it was Mark acting crazy on a cold night and not even seeing the things you claimed he witnessed because he ran away.
There does not seem to be any foundation of reality to the Jesus story as far as I can perceive..... which would mean that you are a myther. It is all theological myth and contrivance for you.
On the contrary, as I have already discussed, the existence of a real historical Jesus seems like the most credible option as the starting point of the whole NT.
The people Paul writes to all over the Empire already know about a religious figure named Jesus who was crucified and was called Son of God and who supposedly rose from the dead, although some of the people balk at believing that. Paul does not have to tell them those things. He provides explanations about what they really mean. Anyway, why make up a story about a supposed Messiah getting crucified?
Mark incorporates a number of realistic sounding pericopes that could easily have been early traditions about Jesus. They are accurate in their presentation of times and places that no longer existed when Mark wrote. They portray a Jesus that, when the Pauline influences and supernatural trappings are removed, is entirely believable in his arguments with the Pharisees of that time and his reaction to the bazaar like atmosphere in the Temple. Mark 15 sounds quite believable in its description of how the Jewish court changed the charge from Jesus being the Messiah (called Son of God) to King of the Jews, which would get the attention of the Romans. Also, who would invent a story whose Jewish hero came from Galilee where people talked funny and there were altogether too many Gentiles in the neighborhood?
So it seems to me that a real historic Jesus is a perfectly reasonable position to take. The stories told about him are another matter. But the word ‘myth’ does not really fit those stories. Myth in the original sense refers to traditional stories containing supernatural elements, these stories embodying cultural values and beliefs. The stories are only nominally historical, really residing in an eternal realm outside time rather than a worldly one. The stories told about Jesus are not properly called traditional, being of recent creation when they were first distributed. They were also intended to be taken as historical, taking place in the real world in a very recent timeframe. Each of the Gospels has a clear individual agenda that led to the invention of much of its material. Other mythos were not so obvious in their agendas, embodying their values ‘under the covers’ so to speak, rather than ‘in your face’ as the Gospels do it.
Since I do not consider the existence of Jesus to be mythical, in the sense of being untrue, and since I do not consider the NT to be mythical in the classic sense, I do not think ‘myther’ is an appropriate label.
