The Son of Man
"...There are only a handful of passages in the synoptic gospels in which Jesus refers to himself as the Christ, or as the Son or Son of God. In sharp contrast, there are a large number of Son of Man sayings. There are thirteen in Mark, twelve in Q, eight in Matthew's special material (M), six in Luke's special material (L), and eleven in John's Gospel."
"Although 'Son of Man' is used so frequently in the gospels, in Greek it is an awkward phrase. Hence there is general agreement that it is a clumsy translation of an Aramaic phrase bar enash(a) ['man' or 'mankind']. But what did the Aramaic phrase which Jesus would have used mean? Unfortunately very few writings in Aramaic have survived from the time of Jesus. Several scholars claim that some rabbinic tradition put us in touch with first century Aramaic usage....Rabbi Judah is challenging the tradition view that every man (or a son of man) passes into the next world in the same condition or status as he leaves the present world."
- Graham N. Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus, The Oxford Bible Series (1989), paperback, pp. 227, 230
"It is said that Rabbi (Judah) was buried in a single sheet, because, he said, It is not as bar enasha (the son of man) goes that he will come again. But the Rabbis say, As bar enash (a son of man) goes, so he will come again."
- j. Ket. 35a"Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai said: If I had stood on Mount Sinai when the Torah was given to Israel, I would have asked the Merciful One to create two mouths for bar nasha [i.e., 'for me', or 'for a man like me'], one for the study of the Torah and one for the provision of all his needs."
- j. Ber. 3b
"The formula ('Son of Man') originated, so Frederick Houk Borsch indicates in his The Son of Man in Myth and History, in the enthronement rites of Near Eastern peoples. Naturally, because those rites actually were observed, they provided the context for many of our Psalms. The Feast of Booths in the Jewish liturgucal year perpetuated the myth. Both Judah and the northern kingdom of Israel observed enthronement practices. The rites themselves dramatized the re-creation of First Man in the person of the king-candidate, 'the Son of the First Man.' We should not try to read the prophets without understanding the monarchical usages of both north and south. Galilee, like many isolated regions of the world, appears to have preserved a residue of rite and expectation. Hence,...the 'persistence' of a Son of man ideology."
- Philip B. Lewis (CrossTalk - 27 Nov 1998)
"The phrase 'son of Adam' [son of man] is employed in three different senses in the gospels.
1. To refer to the heavenly figure who is to come;
"On the lips of Jesus these references to the apocalyptic figure of the future are not self-references but allusions to a third person."
2. To refer to one who is to suffer, die, and rise;
"These refer to unique events in the story of Jesus' suffering and death, so that 'son of Adam' seems to be only a roundabout way of saying 'I'."
3. To refer to human beings.
"These sayings appear to conform to...senses drawn from the Hebrew Bible - human beings."
"The confusion in how this phrase is to be understood owes to the fact that the Christian community tended to understand the phrase messianically or apocalyptically. The original senses derived from the Hebrew Bible were lost or supressed."
- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels
| Uses of "Son of Man" in Mark and Parallels |
| Heavenly Figure to Come |
| Mark 8:38 (Matthew 16:27; Luke 9:26) - "comes in his Father's glory"
Mark 13:26 (Matthew 24:30; Luke 21:27) - "coming in clouds" Mark 14:62 (Matthew 26:64; Luke 22:69) - "sitting at the right hand of God" |
| One to Suffer, Die, and Rise |
| Mark 8:31 (Luke 9:22) - "suffer, be rejected and rise in three days"
Mark 9:9 (Matthew 17:9) - "had risen from the dead" Mark 9:12 (Matthew 17:12) - "must suffer much and be rejected" Mark 9:31 (Matthew 17:22; Luke 9:44) - "betrayed into the hands of men" Mark 10:33 (Matthew 20:18; Luke 18:31) - "will be betrayed" Mark 10:45 (Matthew 20:28) - "to serve, and to give his life" Mark 14:21 (Matthew 26:24 ; Luke 22:22) - "woe to that man who betrays" Mark 14:41 (Matthew 26:45) - "is betrayed into the hands of sinners" |
| A Human Being |
|
Mark 2:10 (Matthew 9:6; Luke 5:24; John 5:27) - "healing paralytic"
Mark 2:28 (Matthew 12:8; Luke 6:5) - "Lord even of the Sabbath" |
The authority to forgive sins (associated with the healing of the paralytic) and to override strict Sabbath observance are more suggestive of the supernatural powers of the apocalyptic judge described in the Similitudes of Enoch than a human being.
"In the anecdote [Mark 2:1-12] Jesus declares that the man's sins are forgiven. By whom? By God of course. It is the passive voice. At some stage this has been underlined by the statement that Jesus, the Son of Man, has authority on earth to forgive sins - like the priests, like other charismatics, like John the Baptist, who did it every day in association with his water rite. Jesus, like John, included declaration of God's forgiveness in his message. The Mosaic Law does not establish a monopoly concerning who may declare God's forgiveness, although it was mostly something linked with the Temple. Assurance of forgiveness forms part of the piety of the Jew who knew the psalms. Nevertheless both John and Jesus, while not acting contrary to the Law, were somewhat maverick. Unorthodox channels of spiritual power are uncomfortable for any religious system."
- William Loader, "Jesus the Jew"
(2) The Prophesy of Daniel
"In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence."
- Daniel 7:13
Here "son of man" (without the definite article in Hebrew) refers to the leader who symbolically personifies the "saints" of the kingdom of Israel envisioned as a human-like angel - as opposed to Belshazzar of the Neo-Babylonian empire symbolized as a lion, Cyrus the Great of the Persian empire symbolized as a bear and Alexander the Great of the Greek/Macedonian empire symbolized as a leopard. (See "The Symbolic Depictions of the Leaders of the Kingdoms " for details.)
After the ending of the David line with the destruction of Jerusalem and Babylonian exile (ca. 598-586 B.C.E.), "the Jewish people began to dream of that ideal king who would someday restore the throne of David and who would inaugurate anew the Kingdom of God. In time this messianic figure was transformed in Jewish fantasy and in Jewish prayers to a divine and even a preexistent figure. From the writing of Daniel (ca. 165 B.C.E.) on, the messiah was identified as the Son of Man, who sat at God's right hand and who rode on the clouds of heavens (Dan. 7:13, 14). This apparently supernatural figure would, at the end of time, be God's agent in establishing the new heaven and the new earth."
- John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels, p. 224-225
The Son of Man of Daniel 7 "is not simply one who appears at the end of time to act as judge: rather it is because he is Son of Man now - i.e., elect, obedient, faithful and therefore suffering - that he will be vindicated as Son of Man in the future: the eschatological role of the Son of Man is based upon his obedient response to God now."
- M. D. Hooker, The Son of Man in Mark, p. 90
"'Son of Man' on the lips of Jesus referred to the role of the Son of Man in Dan. 7; only later in Jewish writings and in further development of the sayings of Jesus did 'Son of Man' become a title. The odd definite article 'the' at the beginning of the Greek phrase may be a pointer to its original sense: Jesus may have been referring his listeners to 'that well-known Danielic Son of Man."
- Graham N. Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus, The Oxford Bible Series (1989), paperback, p. 232
"If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man [ o uioV tou anqrwpou] will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels."
- Mark 8:38 (Matthew 16:27, 10:32-33; Luke 9:26, 12:8-9)
Matthew 10:32 substitutes "I" for "the son of Adam."
"'The son of Adam' is here an apocalyptic figure who will appear at the end of history and sit in judgment...The identification of Jesus with the son of Adam almost certainly excludes the possibility of tracing this saying back to Jesus."
- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels , p. 78
In Matthew 11:20-24, Jesus issues a dire warning that cities of his home region of Galilee will be damned on the day of judgement for not repenting their ways. In a later passage Jesus describes the wrath wrought by the Son of Man. (According to the Hebrew translation, "Son of Man" is used with a definite article - ben ha adam - the Son of Man.)
"The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil."
- Matthew 13:41
"...The apocalyptic judge's title, the Son of Man, did not stem from Jesus himself or even from the common voice of all those early Christian communities. It is not present, despite the allusion to Daniel 7:13, in the apocalyptic expectations of Paul, in the source used by Didache 16, or in the apocalyptic visionaries opposed in the Gospel of Thomas. But it did arise very early in the tradition, as is clear from its independent presence in the Sayings Gospel Q, the Gospel of the Hebrews, and Mark. The conclusion is that Jesus' return could be described as the scenario of Daniel 7:13 without anyone using a titular Son of Man."
"My proposal is that those early traditions also held texts in which Jesus spoke of 'son of man' in the generic or indefinite sense and that it was the presence of such texts that facilitated the transition from Jesus as apocalyptic judge from Daniel 7:13 to Jesus as the Son of Man from Daniel 7:13."
- John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus, The Life of a Mediterranean Peasant (1991)
The first connection in the New Testament with Daniel 7:13 can be found in 1 Thessalonians, which dates from 50 C.E. Although Paul never specifically refers to Jesus as the Son of Man in his writings, the cloud imagery from Daniel 7:13 is apparent.
"Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord."
- 1 Thessalonians 4:17
(3) The Wathful Figure in Enoch
The First Book of Enoch (The Parables of Enoch) states that the Son of Man was created "before the stars of heaven". The book also introduces the idea of a Holy War between the angels of the Lord and fallen angels known as Watchers. The Yahad appears to have been awaiting the second coming of their founder, the Teacher of Righteousness (executed in 103 B.C.E.). Leading an army of angels, he would drive the Romans out of Palestine.
"And this Son of Man whom thou hast seen
Shall raise up the kings and the mighty from their seats,
[And the strong from their thrones]
And shall loosen the reins of the strong,
And break the teeth of the sinners.
[And he shall put down the kings from their thrones and kingdoms]
Because they do not extol and praise Him,
Nor humbly acknowledge whence the kingdom was bestowed upon them.
And he shall put down the countenance of the strong,
And shall fill them with shame.
And darkness shall be their dwelling,
And worms shall be their bed,
And they shall have no hope of rising from their beds,
Because they do not extol the name of the Lord of Spirits."
- 1 Enoch 46:4-6
"There is a relation between the Son of Man speculation in the similitudes of 1 Enoch and (a) the two powers controversy among the first and second generation of Judean tannaim ['teachers' or 'repeaters' of an extensive, oral, legal tradition, parts of which were codified in the Mishnah] and (b) Metatron [the Archangel Prince identified in 3 Enoch as Enoch himself] speculation in early proto-kabbalistic texts (2nd-3rd c. CE). But this comes in form of either rejection or alteration of claims made about a heavenly son of man per se....In fact Mark 13 (and indeed the gospel as a whole) can be read as a Christian reaction to Jewish speculation (based on Daniel) about a heavenly Son of Man appearing in Judea to defeat the nations and restore the temple (which is just what 4 Ezra predicts)."
- Mahlon H. Smith (CrossTalk)
"And all the kings and the mighty and the exalted and those who rule the earth
Shall fall down before him on their faces,
And worship and set their hope upon that Son of Man,
And petition him and supplicate for mercy at his hands."
- 1 Enoch 62:9
According "to the evidence of I Enoch...at the time of Jesus 'Son of Man' was an apocalyptic messianic title. Since Jesus did not make any messianic claims (so the argument runs), the Son of Man sayings cannot go back to him. They originated as part of the apocalyptic fervor of the very earliest post-Easter communities and were further developed in the early church and by the evangelists. Some scholars...insist that if Jesus spoke about the Son of Man, he used the phase to refer to someone other than himself."
- Graham N. Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus, The Oxford Bible Series (1989), paperback, pp. 230-231
Regarding the healing of the paralytic in Capernaum:
"But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins - he said to the paralytic - 'I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home.'
- Mark 2:10-11 (Matthew 9:6; Luke 5:24)
"Jesus ascribes to himself functions that in contemporary Jewish literature are attributed to the 'Son of Man' This figure is known to us from the Similitudes of Enoch (chs. 37-71), in which he acts as the universal judge at the end of time. The Son of Man knows all the secrets of justice, for he was created for all time."
- Paolo Sacchi, "Recovering Jesus' Formative Background" in Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls (James H. Charlesworth, Ed. - 1992), p. 126
(4) The Parousia of the Son of Man
"Immediately after the distress of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken [Isaiah 13:10; 34:4]. At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other."
- Matthew 24:29-31
"The Day(s) of the Son of Man cannot simply be equated with the
basileia tou qeou [Kingdom of God]. E.A. Abbott long ago pointed out that the terms 'Son of Man' and 'Kingdom of God' never occur in the same sayings in the NT. Early writers had a tendency to confuse the two, so Matthew could substitute predictions about the parousia of the Son of Man for Maarkan statements about the kingdom's coming. But for clarify sake one has to analyze the development and connotations of distinct concepts separately. The parousia of the son of Man is a peculiarly Matthean motif."
- Mahlon H. Smith (Crosstalk)
"As the lightning lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will Son of man be in his day.
"As it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of man. They ate, they drank, they married, they were given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed then all.
"As it was in the days of Lot; they ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built, but on the day when Lot went out from Sodom fire and brimstone rained from heaven and destroyed them all. So will it be on the day when the Son of man is revealed."
- Luke 17:24, 28-30
"Luke 17:30 is an explicit apocalyptic prediction: there 'will be' ( estai) a day when the son of man 'will be revealed' ( apokalyptetai). ...None of the sayings in Luke 17 justifies the conclusion that God's kingdom is an order instituted only AFTER a cataclysm precipitated by the advent of the son of Man."
"Note three Q passages:
- (1) God's kingdom is described as a table fellowship (Luke 13:29);
(2) The Son of Man is described as one who CAME eating and drinking (Luke 7:34);
(3) The days of the the Son of Man are compared to Noah's when people ate and drank (Luke 17:26). But this ceased when Noah (and presumably the Son of Man) entered 'the ark.'
- Mahlon H. Smith (Crosstalk)
(5) A Man in My Position
"The Aramaic phrase bar enash(a) is said to mean 'man' or 'mankind in general' (M. Casey) or 'a man in my position' (B. Lindars)."
- Graham N. Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus, The Oxford Bible Series (1989), paperback, p. 232
"...We have only a handful of instances in which the idiom bar nasha occurs in Aramaic sources prior to the Syriac Peshitta (3rd c. CE). Since the term always designated a human person, one can argue that Jesus' use of it to refer to himself would indicate a sense of solidarity with other members of the human species. He was aware that he shared the human lot."
"In New Testament Greek the Semitic idiom was translated awkwardly with two definite articles as
o uioV tou anqrwpou which accounts for the titular-sounding English translation as 'the son of man.' But the term does not function as a title in the New Testament. In the gospels it is used only by Jesus in self-reflexive sayings.....Whereas other people call Jesus 'Christ,' 'Lord,' 'prophet,' 'son of god,' etc., no character in a gospel refers to him as 'son of man.' Only in John 12:34 is the idiom found on any lips but those of Jesus, where the crowd questions what Jesus meant when he said 'the son of man must be lifted up.' This request for definition of an ambiguous idiom hardly qualifies for evidence of a titular use of 'son of man'."
"...'Son of man' always functioned as a generic idiom for a human being. Its ambiguity comes from the ambiguous status of the human being in the Hebraic view of the cosmos. On the one hand, any 'son of humanity' is a mere earthling; on the other hand, the Creator was viewed as endowing this genus of creatures of the dust with cosmic authority and dignity second only to his own (e.g., Ps 8). Jesus' statements about 'the son of man' display both characteristics. Therefore, the NT use of the term is better characterized as an idiom than a title."
- Mahlon H. Smith (CrossTalk)
(6) Confusions in Meaning
Jewish mystics, like Saul of Tarsus, interpreted the "Son of Man" as Adam Kadmon, the archetypal man created in God's image. The multiple meanings of the phrase "Son of Man" created confusion even for the writers of the Gospels.
"I tell you the truth, all the sins and blasphemies of men will be forgiven them. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin."
- Mark 3:28-29"Do not test or examine any prophet who is speaking in a spirit, for every sin shall be forgiven, but this sin shall not be forgiven."
- Didache 11:7
While Didache11:7 "simply eliminated the original Semitism of 'sons of men' for human beings, others kept it and generated thereby a magnificent stream of theological confusion. Thus generic 'sons of men' became titular 'Son of Man' in the Sayings Gospel Q at Luke 12:10. And Matthew combined both sources by translating the 'sons of men' from Mark 3:28 into 'men' in Matthew 12:31 but then accepting the Sayings Gospel Q's confusion with 'Son of Man' in Matthew 12:32. The result, even if somehow explicable, was surely a most unfortunate distinction of forgivable sins against Jesus as Son of Man but unforgivable sins against the Holy Spirit. And Gospel of Thomas 44 compounded and consummated the entire muddle by enlarging it into a Trinitarian formula of forgivable sins against Father and Son but not against the Holy Spirit."
- John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus, The Life of a Mediterranean Peasant (1991)
| "And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven." - Luke 12:10 |
"And so I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come." - Matthew 12:31-32 |
"Whoever blasphemes against the father will be forgiven, and whoever blasphemes against the son will be forgiven, but whoever blasphemes against the holy spirit will not be forgiven either on earth or in heaven." - Thomas 44 |
"...The Markan & Lukan parallels to the Matt 12:31...use 'holy spirit' rather than 'the spirit' absolute. Moreover, Matt 12:31-32 is clearly a composite saying juxtaposing 2 similarly worded judicial declarations. Matt 12:31 is verbally parallel to Mark 3:28-29 but is more polished grammatically. Hence, in this case Matt 12:31 is most likely represents an edited rounding down of the Markan text (just like Matt 22:43). For in the very next verse (Matt 12:32) Matt produces a paraphrased version of this ruling (regarding words against 'the son of man') -- paralleled in Luke 12:10 -- that identifies the unforgivable sin as speaking against 'the holy spirit.'"
- Mahlon Smith (CrossTalk - 09 Oct 98)