NEANISKOS CAN MEAN YOUNG BOY SO WE WORRY ABOUT JESUS HAVING ACCESS TO BOYS

Jesus knew that female children were being forced into wedlock with men and thus into the bedroom. As a Rabbi he performed wedding ceremonies and showed no concern for what the bride would suffer.  Jesus defended marriage in an age where it was almost always a young girl being forced to wed and suffer rape and forced early pregnancy that was extremely likely to kill her and her baby.  There was no mention from him of how parents often added on a year to a girl's age in order to benefit from marrying her off.  Most girls were unhealthy and poor and malnourished and slow to mature. Whoever is complicit in such a culture and who legislates to protect it has no respect for the bodies of young children male or female forced to wed.

Marital child rape was condoned on the grounds that babies were needed as people didn't live long enough to wait.  He ruthlessly banned a girl from divorcing her husband.  Female divorce did not happen but he was not going to take any chances.  This was clearly child abuse and worse for remember the girls were not well nourished and in the condition of children much younger.  It was not fair on the males either who were expected to sire children so young.  The Bible or Jesus never once laid down guidelines for minimum age or protecting the young people.  Also, Jesus had a large following and did not comment on child slavery.  He knew that there was a terrible problem with slaves being abused and raped by their masters.

Gay sex in those days surely involved people doing it too young too.

He as good as attacked love when he said there is no reward in loving anybody who loves you back.  That is central to his Sermon on the Mount.

The uncensored Gospel of Mark uncovered by Morton Smith suggests Jesus was interfering with a young man, neaniskos, whom he "raised" from the dead.  As soon as Jesus went into the garden where the tomb was a scream came from it.  Jesus went into the tomb indicating that the lad was not dead for tombs were unclean.  He took his hand so he was not in burial bandages.  He was not decaying.  The young man saw Jesus and loved him and they spent days together and Jesus did a rite with him with the lad scantily clad in a flimsy sheet.

The word for erotic love eros does not appear in the Secret Gospel. It is a love based on benevolent principles. It is a form of agape.

But that only adds to the alarming nature of the story. A child-abuse supporting gospeller is not going to make it obvious what kind of love is happening. And it gets more complicated when a man can have that kind of love for his wife and also eros. They are two different kinds of love and one does not exclude the other.

There is no rule that a word for non-eros love can not be used for eros. Do you know what a euphemism is? Look at the lines around the word.  The story is suggestive.  The story has a grooming feel.

The fact that this love involved a boy meant you couldn’t expect anything else but a euphemism.  The absence of eros is a strong hint of authenticity.  The allegation that Smith forged the story to endorse homosexuality is a false one.

Jesus would not have been the first person to use feigned miracles and resurrections to get access to minors.

The word normally translated “youth” in the New Testament is neaniskos. Neaniskos is derived from the word neos, meaning “new” and usually means a young boy or a young man.

In Acts 20, a neanias named Eutychus fell asleep during one of Paul’s long sermons. Bruce speculates, “Perhaps he had put in a hard day’s work from dawn to sunset, and now in the stuffy atmosphere not even the words of an apostle could keep him from falling asleep.”

He fell from the third story window. It appears Eutychus was killed, and Paul raised the neanias from the dead (Acts 20:9). He is referred to as a child [paida] later in the story (Acts 20:12), so it seems likely Eutychus was young, perhaps a young teenager.

Mark wrote of a neaniskos who, on the night of Jesus’ arrest, followed Jesus clad only in a linen cloth. Some of the church fathers believed the neaniskos was Mark himself.

When soldiers grabbed him, the neaniskos lost the cloth and ran away naked (Mark 14:51). Lane suggests that the language Mark used “designates young men who are exceptionally strong and valiant, or faithful and wise.”  He identified this as a fulfillment of the prophecy in Amos 2:16: “And he who is stout of heart among the mighty shall flee away naked in that day” (ESV). Even the valiant young men were scattered the night of Jesus’ arrest.  There is no reason to assume such a magical link.  Amos is not speaking of the arrest of Jesus.

The detail about the young man is odd. Why is it in there at all?  What is being hidden?  The young man would not have gotten away that easily either.

The gospels do not specify every charge against Jesus.  Was one of them sexual abuse?  Sexual abusers in the hands of soldiers are sure to be mocked and violated to avenge what they did. Seneca the Younger 4 BC to CE 65 recorded that before and during crucifixion, sexual abuse to degrade the victim further was in fact happening.  Scourging the prisoner could be combined with their sexual degradation simply by hitting the private parts and the buttocks.  Jesus was made into a mock king.  You can imagine the soldiers grabbing his sexual organs and saying, "You need a good servicing down there to keep your bloodline alive".  Perhaps a man dressed as his queen which could be an insinuation of Jesus' homosexuality.

Paul uses a form of the word when he warns Timothy to “flee youthful [neōterikos] passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace . . .” (2 Tim 2:22). Mounce believes that while “youthful passions” could include “the sensual lusts of youth,” the context better fits a “youthful temperament and the possible difficulty of avoiding arguments.”  Such issues seem more easily associated with “faith, love, and peace” (2 Tim 2:22).John offers insight into the role and expectations of the neaniskos when he addresses the church as children, fathers, and young men in 1 John 2, I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his name’s sake. I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men [neaniskoi], because you have overcome the evil one. I write to you, children, because you know the Father. I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men [neaniskoi], because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one. (1 John 2:12–14).

Twice John repeated that the neaniskoi have “overcome the evil one” (vv. 13, 14). He casts the young men as warriors. Because they are forgiven, they can overcome the devil.

Theologian John Stott writes, “The forgiveness of past sins must be followed by deliverance from sin’s present power, justification by sanctification. So in both messages to the young men it is asserted that they have overcome the evil one. Their conflict has become a conquest.”

In verse 14, John explains why the neaniskoi have overcome: they are “strong,” and “the word of God abides” in them (1 John 2:14). Kruse indicates that the reason they are strong is because the word of God dwells in them.  He writes, “Believers’ victory over the evil one [is] achieved because God himself abides in them and his Son, Jesus Christ, protects them, and as a result they are able to overcome the evil one through their faith in God.”

Paul told Timothy, “Let no one despise you for your youth". Neaniskoi.

It is clear that we are talking about very young men here and possibly boys.  The gospels say that the apostles kept children away from Jesus for the sake of peace.  Jesus objected.  What if the concern was something else?

The Gospel of John has Jesus affirming that the Old Testament cannot be broken and he refers to the rule from Torah that nothing should be believed unless two witnesses see it.  As child sex abuse and rape were almost pandemic in those days and is done in secret he was clearly asking for perpetrators to get away with it.  Paul affirmed the rule as well that no church worker should be tried unless two witnesses can testify.  Arguments exist defending a portion of Mark that implicates Jesus in safeguarding violations.  One argument in favour, is his caviler attitude to protecting the vulnerable. Not once do we read of any early Christian reporting child sex abuse to the authorities in the Church or the state.