Who Is This Son of Man

by Larry W Hurtado

  This means the term could be an effective vehicle as a cipher for Jesus that he could fi ll with content, defi ning it as he used it. One can argue, looking at the fl ow of Jesus’ ministry as it appears in the Synoptics, that Jesus used the term ambiguously initially and drew out its force as he continued to use it, eventually associating it with Daniel 7.30

  28. Representative of a host of recent monographs since 1980 are: A. J. B. Higgins, The Son of Man in the Teaching of Jesus (SNTSMS, 39; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980); Seyoon Kim, The ‘Son of Man’ as the Son of God (WUNT 30; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1983); Barnabas Lindars, Jesus Son of Man (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983); Chrys C.

  Caragounis, The Son of Man: Vision and Interpretation (WUNT, 38; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1986); Volker Hampel, Menschensohn und historischer Jesus: Ein Rätselwort als Schlüssel zum messianischen Selbtsverständnis Jesu ( Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1990); Anton Vögtle, Die ‘Gretchenfrage’ des Menschensohn-Problems: Bilanz und Perspective (QD, 152; Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1994); D. Burkitt, The Son of Man Debate: A History and Evaluation (SNTSMS 107; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

  29. I have already commented on this issue in a special excursus entitled ‘The Son of Man in Aramaic and Luke (5:24)’, in Luke 1:1–9:50 (BECNT, 3a; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994), pp. 924–30; and in ‘The Son of Man in Luke 5:24’, BBR 1 (1991), pp. 109–21. For Vermes’

  argument, see ‘The Use of #n rb/)#n rb in Jewish Aramaic’, An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts (3rd edn, by M. Black; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), pp. 310–30. For J. Fitzmyer, ‘Another View of the “Son of Man” Debate’, JSNT 4 (1979), pp. 58–68; and A Wandering Aramean: Collected Aramaic Essays (SBLMS, 25; Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1979), pp. 143–61.

  30. I have made this argument elsewhere already in ‘The Son of Man in Aramaic and Luke (5:24)’ in BBR 1 and in ‘The Son of Man in Luke 5:24’ in my Luke commentary.

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  ‘Who is this Son of Man?’

  But as was shown above, it is one thing to say that the Son of Man fi gure was not a given in Judaism and quite another to say that Daniel 7 was not the object of refl ection in that period. Even if a fi xed portrait and title did not exist, the outlines of such a fi gure were emerging and the context for his activity was being appealed to regularly in the midst of expressions of eschatological hope. These ideas were ‘in the air’ and thus were available for refl ection and development.

  So what is the evidence in the Gospels themselves concerning the apocalyptic Son of Man? The designation Son of Man appears 82 times in the Gospels and is a self-designation of Jesus in all but one case, where it reports a claim of Jesus (Jn 12.34).31 When one sorts out the parallels, it looks as though 51 sayings are involved, of which 14 appear to come from Mark and ten from the sayings source, often called Q.32 Of the four uses outside the Gospels, only one (Acts 7.56) has the full phrase with the defi nite article as it appears in the Gospels (Heb. 2.6; Rev. 1.13, 14.14). In other words, the term is very much one associated with Jesus’ own speech. So in texts where the early church is clearly speaking, the term is rare, and the full form of the title almost never appears. The nature of its usage by Jesus and the oddity of the term as a Greek expression are the probable reasons that the expression appears in this limited way. Other titles such as Son of God, Messiah and Lord were more functional.

  Jeremias makes the following observation about the pattern of usage: How did it come about that at a very early stage the community avoided the title o9 ui9o_j tou= a)nqpw&pou because it was liable to be misunderstood, did not use it in a single confession, yet at the same time handed it down in the sayings of Jesus, in the synoptic gospels virtually as the only title used by Jesus of himself? How is it that the instances of it increase, but the usage is still strictly limited to the sayings of Jesus? There can only be one answer; the title was rooted in the tradition of the sayings of Jesus right from the beginning; as a result, it was sacrosanct, and no-one dared eliminate it.33

  31. Mk 2.10 is sometimes seen as an editorial aside by Mark, but the syntax of the verse makes the case for this awkward and quite unlikely. The breakdown is 69 times in the Synoptics (Matt 30, Mark 14, Luke 25) and 13 times in John.

  32. Brown,

  The Death of the Messiah, p. 507.

  33. J.

  Jeremias,

  New Testament Theology: The Proclamation of Jesus (trans. John Bowden; New York: Scribner, 1971), p. 266.

  5. The Use of Daniel 7 in Jesus’ Trial

  91

  These factors make a good case for seeing the expression as having roots in Jesus’ own use. But such observations only defend the general use of the term.

  What can be said about the apocalyptic Son of Man sayings?

  It is signifi cant to note how well-attested the apocalyptic Son of Man is within the tradition:34

  Mark: Mk 8.38

  Mk 13.26

  Mk 14.62

  Q: Mt. 24.27 (like Lk. 17.24)

  Mt. 24.37 (like Lk. 17.26)

  Mt. 24.39 (like Lk. 17.30)

  Lk. 12.8 (Mt. 10.32 lacks the title)

  M: Mt. 10.23

  Mt. 13.41

  Mt. 19.28 (Lk. 22.30 lacks the title) [this could be Q]

  Mt. 24.44

  Mt. 25.31

  L: Lk. 17.22

  What the list clearly shows is that the apocalyptic Son of Man shows up in every level of the Synoptic Gospel tradition. If the criterion of multiple attestation means anything or has any useful purpose, the idea that Jesus spoke of himself in these terms should not be doubted. At the least a signifi cant burden of proof is required to deny the term’s authenticity and to explain the depth of the presence of this theme across the tradition. The text that a few of these sayings most naturally refl ect is Dan. 7.13-14 (triple tradition: Mk 13.26 =

  Mt. 24.30 = Lk. 21.27; Mk 14.62 = Mt. 26.64 [though Lk. 22.69 lacks an allusion to Daniel 7]; M: Mt. 13.41; Mt. 19.28; Mt. 25.31; Q: possibly Lk. 12.8 [though 34. The following list is part of a longer apocalyptic Son of Man discussion in my Luke 9:51–24:53, pp. 1171–72.

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  ‘Who is this Son of Man?’

  the parallel in Matthew lacks the title, it does have a vindication-judgement setting]). Though the association with Daniel 7 is less widely attested, it is the only biblical text that supplies the elements for the texts that do treat vindication. Once the category of apocalyptic Son of Man is present, then a connection with Daniel 7 cannot be very far away.

  The idea that this expression was solely the product of the early church faces two signifi cant questions that bring a post-Easter church view into doubt.

  (1) Why was this title so massively retrojected, seemingly being placed on Jesus’ lips in an exclusive way unlike any other major title, such as ‘Lord’,

  ‘Son of God’ and ‘Messiah’? (2) If this title was fashioned by the early church and was created as the self-designation of Jesus, why has it left almost no trace in non-Gospel NT literature, unlike the other titles?35 Martin Hengel may summarize all of this best when he says,

  I am simply unable to believe that the so-called earliest Palestinian community (that is, in reality, his closest disciples) made him the resurrected Son of Man after the appearances, and then quickly suppressed the cipher because it was unsuitable for mission proclamation, while at the same time being extremely careful to insure that in the gospels tradition only Jesus speaks of the Son of Man, never his disciples, just as the Messiah title was strictly held at a distance from him in the production of the dominical sayings. Radical critical exegetes seem to me to be too trusting here. In a similar context, A. Schlatter speaks of the ‘conjecture that creates

  “history”’.36

  35. These two penetrating questions are raised by Brown ( The Death of the Messiah, p. 507).

  36. Hengel,

  Studies in Early Christology, pp. 59–60. He cites A. Schlatter, Der Zweifel an der Messianität Jesu, p. 182. Later Hengel notes, �
��It is in any case wrong to construct a thoroughgoing antithesis between the “(Son of) Man”, and the “Messiah”: both the Jewish and the early Christian sources forbid this. Jesus employs “(Son of) Man”, an expression characterized both by Dan. 7.13, and ordinary, everyday use, precisely because it is a cipher, and not explicitly messianic. It becomes, then, paradoxically, the expression for the eschatological mystery connected with his mission and passion’ (p. 60). Hengel’s proposition assumes that the latest origin for the Son of Man tradition comes from the Jewish Christian context within the area of Palestine; it is a Semitic, not a Hellenistic tradition. The case for this conclusion is shown by Donald R. A. Hare, The Son of Man Tradition (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), pp. 231–35. It is the consistent and unusually awkward construction of the phrase o9 ui9o_j tou=

  a)nqpw&pou in Greek that leads to this conclusion.

  5. The Use of Daniel 7 in Jesus’ Trial

  93

  All of this makes it inherently much more likely that Jesus referred to himself as Son of Man in an apocalyptic sense than that the church was responsible for this identifi cation, despite claims otherwise in studies on the Son of Man as recent as Burkett’s survey of the Son of Man discussion in New Testament.37

  The evidence suggests that Dan. 7.13 was a signifi cant feature of his thinking by the end of his ministry, because most of the explicit references to Daniel 7

  appear as Jesus drew near to Jerusalem.

  One other strand of evidence also makes a connection between king and Son of Man. The combination of Son of Man imagery and the imagery of a royal fi gure, the very combination appearing in Mk 14.62, also has traces in the NT

  and in Jewish tradition. In the NT the other such text is Mk 2.23-27, where the authority of David appears side by side with an appeal to the authority of the Son of Man, because the famous king is the prototype and justifi cation for Jesus’ exceptional activity with his disciples on the Sabbath.38 In Judaism, it has been noted how the Danielic figure has elements of authority that other texts from the Jewish Scriptures attribute to the great expected king.39

  Bittner notes how the themes of rule, kingdom and power refl ect the presentation of a regal fi gure, not a prophetic fi gure: ‘Das Wortfeld von Herrschaft, Königtum, und Macht ist in der altorientalischen Königsvorstellung, wie sie sich in der davidischen Königstradition widerspiegelt, verwurzelt, hat aber mit 37. Delbert

  Burkett,

  The Son of Man Debate: A History and Evaluation (SNTSMS, 107; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Hengel’s questions and perceptions challenge the conclusions of Burkett, who relies on Perrin’s approach (pp. 53–56), while work in Second Temple Judaism on the Son of Man and the dating of 1 Enoch raise questions about the signifi cance of his claim of no unifi ed Son of Man title or concept in pre-Christian Judaism (pp. 121–22). Burkett favours a fi rst century CE date for 1 Enoch. On this dating question, see above, n. 19. The key here is not whether such a unifi ed view existed, but whether these concepts were extant and able to be utilized. Thus, Burkett’s analysis gets us off the track for what may be required and relevant for Jesus to have appealed to such categories. He downplays the issue of the date of 1 Enoch, but it is more signifi cant than he allows.

  38. This example is noted in Evans ( Jesus and His Contemporaries, p. 452). One must be careful here. There is no direct reference to Daniel; only the title is present. Nonetheless, the issue of authority in a major area, the Law, leads one to see the usage as descriptive of a person with some form of judicial or discerning authority.

  39. Wolfgang Bittner, ‘ Gott-Menschensohn-Davidssohn: Eine Untersuchungen zur Traditionsgeschichte von Daniel 7,13f.’, FZPhTh 32 (1985), pp. 343–72 (357–64).

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  ‘Who is this Son of Man?’

  Prophetenberufungen nichts zu tun’.40 He also notes that such authority, when it involves vindication or the subordination of the nations, points to the royal offi ce (Mic. 5.3–4; Zech. 9.10; Pss. 2, 89). When the issue of duration surfaces, it is kingship that is present (2 Sam. 7.16, Isa. 9.5 [6–7]). The description of the king as Son and the closeness of the Son of Man to God is paralleled most closely by the image of the king as son (2 Sam. 7.14, Ps. 2.6, Isa. 9.5 [6–7]). As such, the parallels, all of which are a part of the Jewish Scripture and so were available to Jesus, suggest the possibility of making the association present in this text between Messiah and Son of Man. Thus, the old and famous attempt to separate kingdom from Son of Man will not work; it underplays the most natural set of associations.41

  Another challenge to the use of these two texts together comes from James Dunn.42 Dunn argues that Ps. 110.1 was not likely to have been originally present. So he sees Daniel 7 as original, the early church adding awkwardly the Ps. 110.1 reference, and then Luke resimplifying the reference by dropping the Daniel 7 allusion in this scene.43 He goes on to suggest the possibility that Jesus did appeal to the representation in Daniel 7 as a way of declaring his own vindication, a move that he sees just as possible for Jesus as the early church. This was then heard as a self-claim of Jesus. Each of these suggestions, though possible, seems unduly complicated. The traditional historical sequence 40. Ibid., p. 358. Bittner’s quotation observes that sonship language is associated with kingship in the ancient Near East and in Israel is associated with the Davidic House, not with the prophetic offi ce.

  41. This point about the connection between Son of Man and king (and thus kingdom) is our ultimate response to a view like Douglas Hare’s, where Son of Man is an acceptable reference from Jesus as a modest self-reference but then cannot be used apocalyptically. This kind of either-or division seems to ignore the entire context of how Jesus presented his own authority as he discussed the approach of the kingdom. For Hare’s view, see his The Son of Man Tradition, especially his conclusion on pp. 277–80.

  42. James D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered, pp. 749–54.

  43. Dunn claims an awkward syntax because Son of Man is interrupted by the ‘at the right hand’ reference. He sees this as pointing to an insertion and a shift from coming to the Ancient of Days to coming from him. Dunn fails to see that if one is going to combine these references and speak of judging the leaders one day, then the point of the clouds is not merely a vindication in exaltation, but a reception of authority that will one day be exercised on the earth. This point is correctly made by C. F. D. Moule, namely, that Jesus’ vindication by God means that this Jewish examination is not the last, or even the key, examination about who he is. See The Origin of Christology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), p. 18.

  5. The Use of Daniel 7 in Jesus’ Trial

  95

  requires three changes,44 while the use of Daniel 7 requires a simple move from a vague allusion in an eschatological context in Daniel to a more direct reference to Jesus once there is a hope of vindication. The key problem is that Daniel 7 is never entirely absent from the citation, since the title that remains in Luke’s version is from Daniel 7, which by the time of the gospels would have been seen as appealing to the rest of the Daniel 7 scenario. This retention of Son of Man does show Daniel 7 is rooted deeply in this particular saying’s tradition.

  This is reinforced by the fact that Son of Man is Jesus’ key self-designation. I have already argued above that the use of Ps. 110.1 also makes sense as a text Jesus used by the ambiguous way Jesus appeals to it in Mk 12.35-37. So both texts are available to Jesus. In my view, the ‘right hand’ reference points to near-term vindication, while Daniel 7 points to long-term vindication. Luke’s lack of a use of the image of ‘coming on the clouds’ is simple to explain. To establish his point about immediate divine vindication, Jesus’ allusion to the right hand of God makes the key point. It is all that is required. Even harder to see from Dunn’s proposal is how a vague reference to the Son of Man would be seen as blasphemous, unless it was a reference to Jesus, not merely heard as such. Had Jesus merely desired to point to some vague future divine vindication outside of himself for hi
s mission, he could have made such a point clearly enough. However, Jesus’ own consistent use of Son of Man in the tradition is against such a vague association here.

  Although I am challenging Dunn’s reading, one other point needs to be made. Had Jesus used only one of these texts in his reply, then either one of them by itself could have generated the leadership’s charge of blasphemy.

  Ps. 110.1 would have said Jesus had the right to share God’s rule, presence, and glory in heaven, pointing in the direction of something Richard Bauckham has called monolotry.45 Invoking Daniel 7 signalled that Jesus would execute a judgement (or, at least would reside in a position of vindication against the leadership) with an authority that used the imagery of a divine act in the riding of the clouds. So, although I am contending for Jesus’ use of both texts, the 44. The three-fold sequence is: no use of Ps. 110, then Ps. 110 added, and then Daniel 7

  removed.

  45. Richard

  Bauckham,

  God Crucifi ed: Monotheism and Christology in the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), pp. 13–16.

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  ‘Who is this Son of Man?’

  case for core historicity only requires one of these texts to generate the central charge of blasphemy.

  A look at the nature of the use of Daniel 7 and Ps. 110 suggests that both texts were passages that Jesus was aware of and could have used. Each passage contributes to the argument Jesus made as presented in Mark, in ways that do not require later Christology. In terms of content, nothing in the use or argument from these passages prevents the allusions to them from having been made by him as depicted here. However, an argument from content alone does not make the full case.

  A formal question remains. Is there evidence that Jesus may have combined OT texts in a way similar to that found in this passage? Objection is often made that Jesus does not combine texts from the Scripture in the way Mk 14.62

  does.46 Yet two texts point to the potential of Jesus’ conceptually linking texts together like this, side by side. In Mk 7.6-10 = Mt. 15.4-9, Jesus ties together references to the honouring of parents and the honouring with lips (Isa. 29.13; Exod. 20.12 [Deut. 5.16]; Exod. 21.17 [Lev. 20.9]) in a way that recalls Jewish midrashic refl ection. The concepts of ‘honour’ and ‘father and mother’ appear here. In a second text, Mt. 22.33-39 (like Mk 12.29-31), there is a linkage involving the concept of love (Deut. 6.4-5, Lev. 19.18), resulting in a text on the great commandments of love.47 This kind of linkage was a very Jewish way to argue, rooted in the hermeneutical rules associated with Hillel. These texts touch on ethical themes often seen as refl ective of Jesus’ social emphases.