Who Is This Son of Man

by Larry W Hurtado

  They indicate in terms of their form of presentation that the style of linking two themes from the Scriptures together could be refl ective of Jesus.48 So, there is nothing in terms of content or form that prevents this kind of association of texts 46. So, for example, Hampel, Menschensohn und historischer Jesus, pp. 179–80. He argues that this form of the combination refl ects the early church, as does the reference to a returning Son of Man. Against the second point, see above on apocalyptic Son of Man. In fact, this formal objection is probably the most common argument that the passage is not authentic.

  The claim is that the linkage of Ps. 110.1 and Dan. 7.13-14 refl ects an early church midrashic teaching about Jesus.

  47. A similar teaching appears in the response of the scribe in Lk. 10.25-29 to introduce the parable of the Good Samaritan, but the context is distinct enough that this may well refl ect a distinct tradition, not a true parallel. See the discussion of the Lucan pericope in my Luke 9:51–24:53, pp. 1018–21.

  48. Another example is Lk. 4.16–20, where Isaiah 61 and 58 are combined (but it is singly attested).

  5. The Use of Daniel 7 in Jesus’ Trial

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  from reaching back to Jesus. In many cases the evidence that the expression goes back to him is stronger than that the church created it.

  Because he has said it so clearly, I cite two of Raymond Brown’s remarks about Mk 14.62.49 One full citation presents his perceptive assessment of Perrin’s claim that Mk 14.62 is Christian midrash, a common view echoed by Hampel and Boring. The second citation comes from his conclusion on the Son of Man in Mark 14:

  First, if it seems quite likely that the Gospel picture is developed beyond any single OT or known intertestamental passage or expectation, and that this development probably took place through the interpretative combination of several passages, any affi rmation that all this development must have come from early Christians and none of it from Jesus refl ects one of the peculiar prejudices of modern scholarship.

  A Jesus who did not refl ect on the OT and use the interpretative techniques of his time is an unrealistic projection who surely never existed. The perception that OT

  passages were interpreted to give a christological insight does not date the process.

  To prove that this could not have been done by Jesus, at least inchoatively, is surely no less diffi cult than to prove that it was done by him. Hidden behind the attribution to the early church is often the assumption that Jesus had no christology even by way of reading the Scriptures to discern in what anticipated way he fi tted into God’s plan. Can one really think that credible?

  Later he concludes:

  Jesus could have spoken of the ‘Son of Man’ as his understanding of his role in God’s plan precisely when he was faced with hostile challenges refl ecting the expectations of his contemporaries. Inevitably the Christian record would have crossed the t’s and dotted the i’s of the scriptural background of his words. Even though all of Mark 14.61–62 and par. is phrased in Christian language of the 60s 49. Brown,

  The Death of the Messiah, pp. 513–14 is the fi rst citation, and the second appears on pp. 514–15. The emphasis in the citation is his.

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  (language not unrelated to issues of AD 30/33), there is reason to believe that in 14.62 we may be close to the mindset and style of Jesus himself.50

  I agree and would like to push Brown’s point. There is a far greater likelihood that this text, with all of its sensitivity to Jewish background, goes back to Jesus or, at least, refl ects an earlier setting than Mark or the early church with which he was associated.

  Implications for Jesus’ self-understanding

  That Jesus used the Son of Man imagery from Daniel 7 of himself has several points of signifi cance.

  First, it indicates that the line between Jesus and kingdom is not as great as 50. Brown,

  The Death of the Messiah, p. 515, n. 55) adds one more point for authenticity in this Marcan text. He notes that the phrase ‘you will see’ is diffi cult and may favour authenticity, because ‘post factum, Christians producing such a statement might have been clearer’. A variation on this kind of defence of authenticity, which I believe is less likely is advocated by Bruce Chilton, who suggests that Jesus taught about the Son of Man as an angel of advocacy in the divine court, who would defend and vindicate the accused because Jesus’

  mission represented the programme of God. In this view, the Son of Man, though distinct from Jesus, is inseparably bound with his mission. Thus, at the trial, the remark would still refl ect some authenticity and would still be seen by the leadership as a blasphemous rebuke of the leadership’s rejection of Jesus’ divinely directed announcement of God’s programme. The Synoptics transform this close association into a purely Christological identity. See his ‘Son of Man: Human and Heavenly’, in The Four Gospels 1992: Festschrift Frans Neirynck (BETL, 100C; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1992), vol. 1, pp. 203–18. This reading does defend the remark’s essential historicity, but construes its force differently. Such a view, though possible, seems to leave the issue of the person of Jesus understated and unanswered as the reply in effect becomes, ‘I am who I claimed, whoever that is, and God will vindicate me through his agent, showing this examination to be in grave error’. Chilton argues that Jesus’ appeal to the witness of heaven is like an appeal he engages in Mk 9.1, where the idiomatic phrase ‘to taste death’ refers to the immortality of the witnesses Moses and Elijah, to whom Jesus appeals through an oath in the midst of the transfi guration scene. My problem with this view of Mark 9 is that, despite the important linguistic evidence for the possibility of an idiom, it is not clear that Moses was seen in Jewish tradition as one who was taken up while never experiencing death. See the dispute over this in the Moses discussion in my Blasphemy and Exaltation, pp. 133–37. For this view, see Chilton, ‘“Not to Taste Death”: A Jewish, Christian and Gnostic Usage’, in Studia Biblica 1978, II: Papers on the Gospels, Sixth International Congress on Biblical Studies, Oxford, 3–7 April 1978 (ed. E. A. Livingston; JSNTSup, 2; Sheffi eld: JSOT

  Press, 1980), pp. 29–36. For the reasons I am arguing, I think a more direct, personally focused reply from Jesus is slightly more likely.

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  some suggest. The imagery in Daniel is primarily descriptive of the approach of God’s kingdom made not with hands (Daniel 2). Jesus’ kingdom presentation is a central feature of most scholars’ treatments of Jesus. So Jesus’ evocation of Son of Man before the Jewish leadership raises the issue of kingdom authority. Who speaks for God, Jesus or the leadership? The reaction of the Jewish leadership to Jesus in this scene shows that they got Jesus’ point. What Jesus saw as vindication pointing to the support of his mission from God, they viewed as blasphemous, giving them a reason to take a political charge to Pilate. The evocation of a kingdom other than Rome as primary was competition that Rome would not take kindly. The central role of Jesus in the kingdom’s disclosure and presence stands at the heart of what became the message of the emerging Jesus movement that eventually became the church. That message cost Jesus his life, and brought life to the subsequent message of his followers.

  Second, there is a need to be careful of reading texts in a fl at manner that attributes all key theological and Christological developments to the early church. The roots for the theological innovations within the Jesus movement appear far more likely to be rooted in him than in a nameless and faceless group of followers who made far more out of him than he gave them inclination to do, often in directions opposite of what these reconstructions suggest Jesus emphasized. One of the problems with views that see so much theological innovation in the early church alone is that it is hard to see what motivated these innovations, if Jesus did not seriously start them down this path. These claims brought intense opposition with them, even to the point of placing followers’

  lives at risk. To int
roduce them as a means of underscoring what many allege was a controversial call to reform in Judaism without a central role for Jesus appears to be an implausible case of theological overkill. On the other hand, if Jesus’ role was as central as these texts from his followers suggest, and his confi dence was that suffering and current rejection would lead to full vindication, then the lines of theological development we do see in the early church have roots that make sense of what grows out of it. It is important to recall that the sense of vindication the early movement attributed to Jesus was not merely a demi-god-like presence in the heavenly pantheon, like his Graeco-Roman divinely honoured contemporaries, but a full vindication to a status that was inseparably connected to God’s throne and rule within the context of a Judaism that guarded God’s unique honour (with only very rare exceptions even being

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  entertained as possible by some Jews). A much easier path for theological creation by the community in this mixed Jewish and Greco-Roman context would have been for Jesus to be received in heaven, much like an emperor was perceived as being received. What we have here in Jesus’ remarks was far more, because Jesus fi nds a place on God’s throne, not just a place in his midst.

  The power of a highly regarded personality is far more likely to be responsible for such a conceptual breakthrough than a vague appeal to an amorphous community. Evidence for such a perspective from such a personality comes to us from this scene where Jesus identifi ed himself as the Son of Man, a claim that forced the leadership’s hand to oppose him to the full force of their powers, given that they did not accept his self-confession. Jesus, in his reply, was content to journey along the path he saw as his divine calling, and allow God’s future actions to speak on his behalf.

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  THE USE OF THE SON OF MAN IDIOM IN THE GOSPEL OF JOHN

  Benjamin E. Reynolds

  Use of the expression ‘the Son of Man’ in the Gospel of John is normally absent from scholarly attempts to solve the Son of Man problem. Even Delbert Burkett, whose published thesis was on the Johannine Son of Man, is mostly silent on this topic in his second book, The Son of Man Debate.1 Why this silence? Why is the Johannine Son of Man left out of most historical studies of the expression o9 ui9oj tou= a0nqrw&pou? The reason is essentially related to the questions surrounding the historicity of John. To cite Ernst Käsemann: ‘We must admit that nowhere in the New Testament is the life story of Jesus so emptied of all real content as it already is here [in the Gospel of John], where it seems to be almost a projection of the present back into the past.’2 A similar sentiment is expressed by A. J. B. Higgins in the concluding chapter of his book on the Son of Man:

  ‘the Fourth Gospel . . . makes no positive contribution to the problem of Jesus 1. D.

  Burkett,

  The Son of Man Debate (SNTSMS, 107; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Burkett, The Son of the Man in the Gospel of John (JSNTSup, 56; Sheffi eld: Sheffi eld Academic Press, 1991). However, Maurice Casey has recently included a chapter on the Johannine Son of Man in The Solution to the ‘Son of Man’ Problem (LNTS, 343; London: T&T Clark, 2007), pp. 274–313. See also the earlier work of F. H. Borsch, The Son of Man in Myth and History (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1967); B. Lindars, Jesus Son of Man: A Fresh Examination of the Son of Man Sayings in the Gospels (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984; fi rst pub. London: SPCK, 1983); and D. R. A. Hare, The Son of Man Tradition (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), pp. 79–114.

  2. E. Käsemann, ‘The Problem of the Historical Jesus’, in Essays on New Testament Themes (trans. W. J. Montague; SBT, 41; London: SCM, 1964), p. 32.

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  and the Son of man’.3 In contrast to John, the Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke are understood to contain at least some historical information about the actions and words of Jesus, and John, on the whole, is not.

  So why include a chapter on the Johannine Son of Man in a book with the subtitle The Latest Scholarship on a Puzzling Expression of the Historical Jesus, even if the title ‘Who is this Son of Man?’ derives from Jn 12.34? A good question and one that I think needs to be answered, even if briefl y, before we proceed. First, although the Gospel of John may not carry the sort of historical credentials that satisfy contemporary scholarship, it still represents an early Christian understanding of Jesus’ use of the phrase o9 ui9oj tou= a0nqrw&pou.

  The four Gospels are the primary witnesses to Jesus’ use of the idiom, an idiom which quickly disappears from early Christian usage.4 If some of these Son of Man sayings in Matthew, Mark and Luke are considered authentic sayings of Jesus (e.g. Mk 2.27-28; 10.45; pars.),5 it is at least worth taking note of the other Gospel that also places the use of this idiom on the lips of Jesus, especially if the idiom is not as prevalent in later Christian writing.6 In this sense, the sayings in John add further evidence for the authenticity of the use of o9 ui9oj tou=

  a0nqrw&pou by Jesus, whether or not these sayings themselves are considered to be authentic. They at least point to a common early Christian tradition of the words being spoken by Jesus, and as such it is at least worth discussing the Johannine Son of Man sayings with regard to the Son of Man debate.

  Second, there has been a recent trend to reconsider the historicity of the 3. A. J. B. Higgins, Jesus and the Son of Man (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1964), p. 185.

  See also more recently, P. M. Casey, Is John’s Gospel True? (London: Routledge, 1996).

  4. The only other NT uses of the idiom are found in Acts 7.56 and Rev. 1.13; 14.14. The church fathers use it sparingly and usually in a contrast between Jesus’ humanity and divinity (Ignatius, Ephes. 20.2; Justin, Dial. 100.3-4; Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. 3.10.2; 16.3, 7; 17; 18.3-4; 19.1-2). See also, Barn. 12.10. Note the use of the idiom by Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas 86

  and the Gospel of Mary 8.12-22, where ‘humanity’ appears to be the meaning (see R. Doran,

  ‘The Divination of Disorder: The Trajectory of Matt 8:20//Luke 9:58// Gos. Thom. 86’, in B. A. Pearson [ed.], The Future of Early Christianity: Essays in Honor of Helmut Koester

  [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991], pp. 210–19; and K. L. King, The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle [Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge Press, 2003]

  pp. 59–62).

  5. Casey,

  Solution, pp. 121–25, 131–34. See M. Müller, Der Ausdruck “Menschensohn”

  in den Evangelien. Voraussetzungen und Bedeutung (Leiden: Brill, 1984).

  6. The logion in the Gospel of Thomas is parallel to Mt. 8.20 and Lk. 9.58.

  6. The Use of the Son of Man Idiom in the Gospel of John 103

  Gospel of John.7 This trend can be seen most recently in the work of the John, Jesus, and History Group of the Society of Biblical Literature, which is challenging the commonly held assumptions about John’s lack of historicity.8

  Those in the Group are not necessarily claiming that John’s account of Jesus is a purely historical portrayal untouched by Christian faith, but they are seeking to question the presuppositions concerning the ‘dehistoricizing of John’ and the

  ‘ de-Johannifi cation of Jesus’. They have coined these phrases to refer respectively to the tendencies in scholarship to dismiss John simply as an unreliable historical source and to ignore the Johannine portrait of Jesus in historical Jesus studies. Paul Anderson, one of the organizers of the John, Jesus, and History Group, has pointed out that John has largely been dismissed because of the testimony of three witnesses: Matthew, Mark and Luke. However in response, Anderson argues that if Matthew and Luke are primarily relying upon Mark, as most scholars agree is the case, we really have only one witness and not three. John then should not be pitted as one tradition against three, but rather as one against one.9 In which case, more weight should be given to John’s portrayal of Jesus’ words and deeds than has been given to them in the last century.10

  Thus, we have two reasons for including an essay on the
Johannine Son of Man sayings in a book on the historical use of the expression ‘Son of Man’.

  First, John’s Gospel is a witness to Jesus’ use of the expression to refer to himself, and secondly, recent Johannine scholarship has been questioning the view that fi nds no historical value in the Gospel of John, the view prevalent since the rise of modern critical study of the Gospel. However, even with these 7. M. M. Thompson, ‘The Historical Jesus and the Johannine Christ’, in R. Fortna and T. Thatcher (eds), Jesus in Johannine Tradition (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), pp. 21–42; F. J. Moloney; ‘The Fourth Gospel and the Jesus of History’, NTS 46

  (2000), pp. 42–58; C. L. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of John’s Gospel (Leicester: IVP, 2001).

  8. P. N. Anderson, F. Just and T. Thatcher (eds), John, Jesus, and History, Volume 1: Critical Appraisals of Critical Views (SBLSymS, 44; Atlanta: SBL, 2007).

  9. P.

  N.

  Anderson,

  The Fourth Gospel and the Quest for the Johannine Jesus: Modern Foundations Reconsidered (LNTS, 321; London: T&T Clark, 2006), pp. 102–26; Anderson,

  ‘Why This Study Is Needed, and Why It Is Needed Now’, in John, Jesus, and History, pp. 13–70.

  10. M. A. Powell, ‘The De-Johannifi cation of Jesus: The Twentieth Century and Beyond’, in John, Jesus, and History, pp. 121–32 (132).