Who Is This Son of Man
Page 10
Taken as a whole, the evidence from Onkelos and Jonathan and other relevant corpora strikingly confi rms the picture offered by the Qumran Aramaic.
While the Aramaic of Palestine in the Middle Aramaic period had a range of ways of referring to ‘a man’, the only two occurrences of the singular emphatic forms of the expression appear in a context in which a particular son of man is being referenced (see above).
Given that the singular emphatic form would eventually appear in later phases of Aramaic (cited by Casey), how may we explain the striking absence of it in Aramaic of this provenance in this particular period (200 BCE to 200 CE)?
Curiously, one clue may come not from the Aramaic, but rather its more famous Semitic sister tongue, Hebrew, of this same period.35 Indeed the analysis of the Aramaic above is strikingly paralleled by the situation in Rabbinic Hebrew in which the plural form (Md) ynb) is found frequently in the Mishnah and the midrashim of the Tannaim as a way of referring to humanity.36 But, as Fernández points out:
the singular form, Md) Nb, is hardly used at all: it never appears in the Mishnah, not even in quotations, or in Sifra; it is found just once in Sifre to Numbers [103.4
(H102)] in a quotation of Ezekiel 16:2, fi ve times in [the] Mek[ilta] always in 34. Vered
Noam,
Megillat Ta’anit (Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Press, 2003), pp. 43–48 (line 38).
35. A.
Sáenz-Badillos,
A History of the Hebrew Language (trans. J. Elwolde; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 171; M. P. Fernández, An Introductory Grammar of Rabbinic Hebrew (trans. J. Elwolde; Leiden: Brill, 1999), pp. 1–2.
36. Fernández,
Rabbinic Hebrew, p. 70.
60
‘Who is this Son of Man?’
quotations (Isaiah 56:2, Ezek 2:1, 17:2, 26:2, 28:2) and eight times in Sifre to Deuteronomy of which six are quotations (Ezek. 8:12, 17:2, 24:1-2, 33:7, 24, 39:17; 44:5). Thus in the whole of the Mishnah and the tannaitic midrashim, there are just two original passages in which Md) Nb is employed.37
Given that the Aramaic infl uence on Rabbinic Hebrew has been widely observed,38
it is perhaps not surprising that they share a similar aversion to the singular form of our expression and a virtual rejection of it in its defi nite (Heb.)/emphatic (Aram.) state. While few scholars these days argue that Jesus spoke Hebrew rather than Aramaic, the lack of this expression in either Semitic language in the fi rst centuries of the Common Era deprives Casey of any substantial basis for the suggestion that the Greek was a mistranslation of such an expression.
In the light of such a lack, the articular form of the Greek expression found on the lips of Jesus in the New Testament is best explained as a faithful translation of his use of the singular emphatic )#n()) rb ‘the son of man’. Indeed, if the Palestinian Talmud’s memory of the tannaitic period is to be trusted, it was in some measure the titular use of this expression which would ensure that it would remain as ‘ extra-ordinary’ in the years after Jesus’ use of it, as it was before: hb twhtl wpws yn) Md) Nb )wh bzkm yn) l) Md) Kl rm)y M) whb) ybr rm) Rabbi Abbahu said: ‘If a man says to you “I am God”, he is a liar; “I am a (the) son of man”, he will regret it/it will be the end of him’ ( y.Taanit, ii, 65b).
Of course, for the moment, explanations such as the one offered above – which might account for the absence of the singular emphatic )#n()) rb ‘the son of man’ in relevant phases/dialects of Aramaic – must remain within the realm of the hypothetical. On the other hand, unless or until further evidence is forthcoming, the hypothesis that this expression was either an ordinary or a common way of generically referring to ‘a man’ in the Aramaic of Jesus’ time seems utterly bereft of relevant evidence.
37. Fernández,
Rabbinic Hebrew, p. 71.
38. Fernández,
Rabbinic Hebrew, pp. 5–6. See Saenz-Badillos, History of the Hebrew Language, pp. 162–64 for discussion of Kutscher’s and Fellman’s corrections of the excesses of Segal.
4
EXPRESSING DEFINITENESS IN ARAMAIC: A RESPONSE TO
CASEY’S THEORY CONCERNING THE SON OF MAN SAYINGS
P. J. Williams
Introduction
I present here a response to select aspects of Professor Maurice Casey’s comprehensive explanation of the ‘Son of Man’ problem.1 One of the elements in Casey’s ‘solution’ is the contention that there was a substantial change in sense from what was originally intended by the Aramaic ‘son of man’ phrase and the later sense in which o9 ui9oj tou= a0nqrw/pou was taken. In this contention Casey’s work displays affi nities to that of other scholars, such as Vermes and Lindars. However, since Casey has been the most prolifi c and persistent writer arguing for such a change in sense, his approach merits a separate treatment.
The fullest expression of Casey’s explanation comes in his 2007 monograph The Solution to the ‘Son of Man’ Problem. However, where ideas in that monograph have been anticipated in Casey’s earlier publications I will seek to go to the earlier statements that he has made, provided that the approach in the later monograph does not differ.2 There will be various aspects of the recent monograph and of Casey’s general approach that I will not be addressing, in particular his theories about the development of the sayings within the Greek gospel tradition. My focus will rather be on Aramaic stages of the sayings tradition and the transfer of sayings into Greek.
1. Maurice
Casey,
The Solution to the ‘Son of Man’ Problem (LNTS, 343; London: T&T
Clark, 2007).
2. A bibliography of Casey’s writings on the Son of Man question is found in Casey, Solution, pp. 327–28.
62
‘Who is this Son of Man?’
Casey’s argument
The Son of Man question has been a continuous theme during Casey’s career.
He published three articles on the question in 1976 and completed his doctorate on the Son of Man in Daniel 7 the following year.3 Since then he has published at least eight further articles on the question, two monographs on the gospel traditions in Aramaic,4 one on the development of New Testament Christology,5
and, of course, the 2007 monograph bringing together his ideas. There has been a considerable degree of consistency over the years in Casey’s position on the development of the Son of Man sayings, though he has made a number of refi nements in his approach to Aramaic sources and to questions of detail as well as to his understanding of the development of particular sayings. However, many of the pivotal points in his argument in his most recent monograph were already in his published doctoral work or even in a brief article entitled ‘The Son of Man Problem’, published in 1976.6
Casey’s work takes its cue from the seminal article, published in 1967 by Geza Vermes, ‘The Use of #n rb/)#n rb in Jewish Aramaic’.7 Here Vermes argued that #n rb or )#n rb could mean ‘I’.8 This had previously been stated, but without the provision of examples. Vermes used examples from Palestinian Aramaic postdating the New Testament (e.g. Talmud and midrash) using the form #n rb or )#n rb to argue that the phrase ‘son of man’ could be a circumlocution for ‘I’. Care is needed here, for instance when Vermes argues that one example makes it ‘justifi able to assume that the speaker has in mind not some random member of the human race, but one particular person, and that that person cannot but be himself’.9 To argue that an author may have the fi rst 3. Published as Maurice Casey, Son of Man: The Interpretation and Infl uence of Daniel 7
(London: SPCK, 1980).
4. Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel (SNTSMS, 102; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); An Aramaic Approach to Q: Sources for the Gospels of Matthew and Luke (SNTSMS, 122; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
5. From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God: The Origins and Development of New Testament Christology (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1991).
6. ‘The Son of Man Problem’, ZNW 67 (1976), pp. 147–54.
7. Appe
ndix E, Matthew Black, An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 3rd edn, 1967), pp. 310–30.
8. Vermes, ‘Use’, p. 323. Note the use of the phrase ‘means “I”’ followed by ‘reference to’ on p. 323.
9. Vermes, ‘Use’, p. 326.
4. Expressing Defi niteness in Aramaic
63
person in mind is different from arguing that a phrase ‘means’ the same as the fi rst person pronoun. The implied reference might be something pragmatically indicated rather than belonging to the semantics of the phrase itself. Vermes did not show that the phrase meant ‘I’. Casey and Lindars developed and adapted Vermes’ approach, using some of the same textual examples. Lindars took it to mean ‘A man in my position’;10 Casey took it to mean ‘a man’ (generally) but to contain an implicit reference to the speaker. Casey’s argument includes the following ideas:
1. The
phrase
bar enash(a) was a normal word for ‘man’ in Aramaic.
2. Since bar enash(a) was a normal phrase for ‘man’, the gospels and the Similitudes of Enoch originally referred to ‘a man’ not a specifi c title ‘The Son of Man’.
3. At the time of Jesus, Aramaic did not consistently use the defi nite (or emphatic) state and the indefi nite (or absolute) state with a difference in meaning.
4. Bar enash(a) when used by Jesus had a general reference to people and can be translated ‘a man’ and yet Jesus could use it with particular application to himself.
5. Bilingual translators did a good job of translating this phrase into Greek using o9 ui9oj tou= a0nqrw&pou, using the fi rst article as a ‘generic’ one.11 Since they knew Aramaic they knew that this was a general (indefi nite) phrase.
6. The translators knew that Jesus applied this term to himself and so rendered the phrase by o9 ui9oj tou= a0nqrw&pou in cases where they knew it applied to Jesus and by other terms when it referred to others.
7. However, monoglot Greek speakers misconstrued the phrase o9 ui9oj tou=
a0nqrw&pou to be a defi nite title.
I will take up parts of Casey’s argument in his own words:
Moule declared that behind the Greek ‘must be some Aramaic expression that meant, unequivocally, not just “Son of Man” but “the son of Man” or “that Son of 10. Barnabas Lindars SSF, Jesus Son of Man: A Fresh Examination of the Son of Man Sayings in the Gospels (London: SPCK, 1983).
11. In fact their translation was ‘virtually inevitable’ (Casey, Solution, p. 37).
64
‘Who is this Son of Man?’
Man”’, and that this phrase was thus demonstrative because it expressly referred to Daniel’s ‘Son of Man’. Moule was not, however, able to produce a satisfactory expression. The defi nite state, )#n()) rb, is not suffi cient to do this, for two reasons. One is that it does not tell us which son of man is referred to. Given that it was a normal term for ‘man’, reference to Dan. 7.13 requires suffi cient contextual indicators, which are absent from most Gospel sayings. The second point is that the force of the defi nite state was declining.12
Or again:
The Aramaic term bar nash(a), “son of man”, was a normal term for “man”: further, it now seems clear that it was not also a title in the Judaism of the time of Jesus.
The mere fact that it was a normal term for man means that sentences containing bar nash(a) would not have suffi cient referring power to denote a single individual, unless the context made this reference clear. This means that bar nash(a) was a generally unlikely term for an author or a social group to select for use as a major title.13
The assumption in both these quotations is that it is diffi cult for a word to be simultaneously ‘normal’ and a messianic title, though we should note that Horbury has proposed that no less common a word than a)/nqrwpoj was recognized as a messianic title.14 Thus, not all judge commonness to be an adequate ground to reject a term as a title. A further claim of Casey is that such a term would not generally have suffi cient ‘referring power’ to denote an individual.
This is presumably based on the assumption that Aramaic of the period could not mark defi niteness. This assumption is implicit throughout Casey’s work, as shown by the importance for him of stressing that the defi nite state was losing its force. However, it is diffi cult to fi nd an explicit statement by him about defi niteness in general in Aramaic. The nearest I have come to is the following citation in which he gives the lack of defi nite article as a secondary 12. Casey, ‘Method in Our Madness, and Madness in Their Methods: Some Approaches to the Son of Man Problem in Recent Scholarship’, JSNT 42 (1991), pp. 17–43 (40–41).
13. Casey,
From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God, p. 47.
14. W. Horbury, ‘The Messianic Associations of “the Son of Man”’, JTS n.s. 36 (1985), pp. 34–55 (49).
4. Expressing Defi niteness in Aramaic
65
reason alongside the fact that the term ‘son of man’ was common to argue that it was not a title:
Black devotes a large part of his article to discussing the possibility that ‘son of man’ was a title in Judaism at the time of Jesus. Firstly, it seems very probable that the force of the emphatic state in Aramaic, the approximate equivalent of the English defi nite article, was declining in our period, though we do not know how far this had gone when the Similitudes of Enoch were written. It is therefore important that this is not the main point. Languages without defi nite articles can have titles. Accurate communication requires that the situational and linguistic context conveys what we would perceive as a titular usage in a different way. The fundamental point is that the Aramaic barnash(a) is generally agreed to have been a normal term for ‘man’.15
By saying that the lack of a defi nite article was not the ‘main point’ he admits that he is using it as a subsidiary point. Clearly also in the exchange with Owen and Shepherd, the question of the defi niteness of the phrase is important;16 if Casey cannot maintain a general application for the son of man sayings then his interpretation falls.
In what follows I will illustrate a few points in which I take issue with Casey’s approach. Obviously, at one level we both begin with the Greek text.
If there were no Greek text there would be no discussion. However, Casey very quickly moves to his reconstructed Aramaic. As he says in relation to the Similitudes: ‘it is the original text which is determinative for the author’s meaning, not a hypothetical Greek intermediary translation nor the Latin terms which used to be conventional among classically trained scholars’.17 Or again,
‘hypothetical misunderstandings by Greek readers ignorant of semitic idiom 15. Casey, ‘Aramaic Idiom and Son of Man Sayings’, ExpTim 96 (1985), pp. 233–36
(233).
16. Paul Owen and David Shepherd, ‘Speaking up for Qumran, Dalman and the Son of Man: Was Bar Enasha a Common Term for “Man” in the Time of Jesus?’, JSNT 81 (2001), pp. 81–122; Maurice Casey, ‘Aramaic Idiom and the Son of Man Problem: A Response to Owen and Shepherd’, JSNT 25 (2002), pp. 3–32.
17. Casey, ‘Aramaic Idiom and the Son of Man Sayings’, pp. 233–34. Similarly, further on p. 234: ‘Latin is irrelevant, Greek tells us no more than how uncomprehending readers of the possible mediating version in Greek might have understood the text . . .’.
66
‘Who is this Son of Man?’
cannot tell us what the author meant’.18 But Casey’s ideas of misconstrual by readers and interference in translators’ minds are no less hypothetical. Casey thus moves too quickly to reconstructed Aramaic, without adequately considering all ways of explaining the text we actually have. I would agree with Tuckett who says, ‘Thus, methodologically, one’s fi rst question should be about the meaning and intentions of those who recorded the words that now appear in the gospels.’19
Casey’s method from the beginning has been to reconstruct Aramaic behind gospel sayings. Where such Aramaic can, according to him, be reconstructed then this is a reas
on for accepting authenticity. Where such Aramaic cannot, according to him, be reconstructed then this is an argument against authenticity.
From Greek back to Aramaic
It is almost a cliché to say that Jesus spoke Galilean Aramaic, though we should remember that even the idea of Galilean Aramaic is not in itself simple.
Mt. 26.73 expresses the belief that a disciple of Jesus might be identifi ed by his (presumably Galilean) speech, and in Mk 14.70 (A N Q al) a group maintains that a Galilean could be identifi ed by his speech, though it is unclear whether the chief distinguishing linguistic traits related to phonology, rhythm, lexical choice, idiom, morphology, syntax, or a combination of these. Moreover, it is likely that an itinerant preacher, like Jesus, who had frequently travelled to Judaea, would adapt his speech somewhat when in the presence of those from other localities. It is also likely that sayings transmitted within groups of disciples in Judaea in the early church did not always retain putative Galilean features. All of which is to say that even the linguistic nature of the form of Aramaic which Jesus spoke or of Aramaic sayings traditions is far from simple.
When we consider the question of the sources available to reconstruct the Aramaic of Jesus, we fi nd that we are either faced with the small corpus of Aramaic among the Dead Sea Scrolls, inscriptions and contemporary documents, or we have to use sources from considerably later, including the Jerusalem Talmud, Palestinian Targums and Christian Palestinian Aramaic 18. Casey, ‘Aramaic Idiom and the Son of Man Sayings’, p. 234.
19. C. Tuckett, ‘The Present Son of Man’, JSNT 14 (1982), pp. 58–81 (58).
4. Expressing Defi niteness in Aramaic
67
sources. Casey has been criticized for relying on Aramaic sources from after the time of Jesus to reconstruct the Aramaic of Jesus. In response to this Casey replies:
I have shown elsewhere that we must use sources from after the time of Jesus, contrary to some scholars’ dogmatic insistence that we should use earlier sources only. This is basically because there is not enough earlier Aramaic extant to form a language, and virtually none of it is from fi rst-century Galilee.20