Two other also appeared to him, young men notable in their strength, and beautiful in their glory, and splendid in their apparel, who stood by him on either side, and scourged him unceasingly, inflicting on him many sore stripes.
⛓ Read 2 Maccabees 3 forward — the whole chapter and its afterlife →Where this passage surfaces again, sorted by the strength of the link. Each kind of reuse — formal quotation, deliberate allusion, faint echo, figural pattern — carries its own mark. Follow any reference to read it in place.
Allusion2
A deliberate verbal borrowing without a citation formula.
The two young men of 'splendid' appearance who appear in the Jerusalem temple to Heliodorus furnish a close Second-Temple parallel to Luke's two men in dazzling clothing. The doubling of radiant angelic figures (cf. also 2 Macc 3:33-34) was a recognizable Hellenistic-Jewish topos for divine vindication and intervention. Availability and coherence support it.
Medium confidenceThe 'young man' (neaniskos) sitting in the tomb dressed in a white/dazzling robe matches the Second-Temple convention of angelic figures appearing as young men in bright apparel; in 2 Macc 3 two glorious young men in splendid robes (and elsewhere five) appear at the temple. Volume is moderate (shared vocabulary of youthful angelic messengers in shining garb) and the convention is widely available in Jewish literature of the era, supporting an angelophany reading of Mark's 'amazement.'
Medium confidence