Who Is This Son of Man

by Larry W Hurtado

  What Kvanvig, in my opinion, cannot explain is the reason(s) which led an

  ‘Enochic’ Jew to make such a move, so out of step with the rest of Parables – to say nothing of the rest of 1 Enoch. On the other hand, Jesus of Nazareth, the crucifi ed and risen Messiah, and Son of Man of Jewish Christianity, offers a plausible catalyst for just such an innovation.

  94. Collins, ‘Heavenly Representative’, pp. 125–26.

  95. Kvanvig, ‘Son of Man’, pp. 207–10. I am less convinced by his arguments for 1En.

  32.6.

  8

  SUMMARY AND CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS

  Larry W. Hurtado

  Part of my task in this concluding chapter is to note where we are in discussion of the thorny issues connected with ‘the Son of Man’ expression in the Gospels, especially in light of the foregoing contributions to this book. I will also offer a few observations of my own, and conclude by indicating what I think is the most reasonable proposal as to origins of this expression. As an entrée, it may be helpful to review the main data that provoke and puzzle, and continue to generate the efforts of scholars to propose solutions for them. As I will argue below, I think that a clear and sustained engagement with the data is essential, and may enable some progress in understanding things.

  ‘Just the facts, ma’am’ 1

  As with any really important problem, so in the case of the one before us there are data that require to be engaged and explained. Especially in light of the many theories and proposals generated, it is well to have these data clearly in mind. We are concerned essentially with usages of key expressions in certain ancient Greek texts. Even though Semitic-language constructions typically underlie (or are commonly thought to underlie) all the Greek expressions 1. I beg the indulgence of readers in this allusion to the most famous ever detective series on American radio and TV, ‘Dragnet’. For those unfamiliar with the series and the unforgettable Jack Webb, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragnet_(series).

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  in question, it is the usage of these latter that provides the starting point for analysis.2

  To clarify one point at the outset, o( ui(o&j tou~ a)nqrw&pou is not an expression that is native to, or common in, ancient Greek. With the benefi t of the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, it is possible to verify this readily. Simply put, there is no instance of the singular or plural form of this construction, anarthrous or articular, in extant Greek literature outside of the LXX, the NT, Philo ( Vit. Mos.

  1.283), and subsequent texts that show the infl uence of the LXX and/or NT.

  That is, all uses of this particular Greek expression appear in texts of ancient Jewish provenance or infl uenced heavily by Jewish texts.3 To be sure, these expressions are all framed in understandable Greek vocabulary and syntax, but they are simply not ones that came naturally on the lips of native Greek speakers/writers uninfl uenced by the Greek OT and Jewish tradition.

  The Greek Old Testament

  By contrast, in the LXX I count some 166 instances of various forms of the singular or plural ‘son of man’ and ‘sons of men’.4 These all refl ect, either directly (translation) or indirectly (Semitic phrasing exerting infl uence on writers of Greek), equivalent Hebrew or Aramaic expressions, which are thoroughly idiomatic in both Semitic languages. Nearly all the LXX uses are in texts known to have been translated from Hebrew or Aramaic.5 This is a boon for any interest in how the relevant Semitic expressions were handled when translated. The general observation to make is that the various LXX translators appear to have 2. See also my previous discussion of these matters in Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), pp. 290–306.

  3. Our editions of the LXX rest mainly upon Christian copies of the Greek OT writings (from the third century CE and later), and we have only limited evidence of the pre-LXX Greek OT. But there is no reason to think that ‘Old Greek’ translators differed greatly in their rendering of the phrases in question. Hence, for economy of expression, in the following discussion I shall refer to LXX translators, meaning the translators whose work is preserved for us in our editions of the LXX.

  4. In the following discussion, I draw upon results using BibleWorks for Windows (version 4.0), counting instances found in standard printed editions of the LXX and Greek NT.

  5. The few possible exceptions include Wis. 9.6 (‘sons of men’), on the common assumption that Wisdom of Solomon was composed in Greek. In this case, we have here an instance of someone writing in Greek but consciously or unconsciously refl ecting a Semitic idiom.

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  161

  rendered the underlying Hebrew and Aramaic expressions faithfully, sometimes even somewhat woodenly.

  For example, the singular and plural forms of the Semitic expressions are carefully rendered by corresponding forms in Greek. So, the 54 instances of the plural ‘(the) sons of men’ (ui(oi_ a)nqrw&pwn / oi( uioi& tw~n a)nqrw&pwn) in the LXX all seem to translate equivalent Hebrew plural forms. The typical Hebrew expression translated is the plural, Md) ynb, but in a number of instances it is Md)h ynb (i.e. with the article, Pss. 33.13; 145.12, and 10× in Ecclesiastes), and occasionally #$y) ynb (Pss. 4.2; 62.10 [LXX 61.10]). The LXX translators typically preferred to translate these Hebrew plural expressions with oi( ui(oi_

  tw~n a)nqrw&pwn (i.e. with defi nite articles before each noun, 27×), less frequently using ui(oi_ a)nqrw&pwn (i.e. without any article, 17×), and one instance of ui(oi_ tw~n a)nqrw&pwn (Odes Sol. 8.82, perhaps a rather wooden translation of the underlying Hebrew construct form). However, in LXX Ecclesiastes we fi nd ui(oi_ tou~ a)nqrw&pou (6×) and oi( ui(oi_ tou~ a)nqrw&pou (4×), the underlying Hebrew in all these ten instances being Md)h ynb. As to why the LXX

  translators preferred one or the other Greek phrasing, the matter need not detain us here. Basically, it seems that the alternative Greek expressions carried a suffi ciently similar sense, the choices refl ecting efforts by LXX translators to render Semitic constructions for which there were not already direct equivalents in use native to Greek.

  There are some 112 instances of the singular forms for ‘(a) son of man’ in the LXX, each of these faithfully rendering a corresponding Hebrew (or Aramaic) singular form. Ninety-four of these are the vocative singular (ui(e a)nqrw&pou) in Ezekiel, rendering the peculiarly frequent use of ‘son of man’ as the expression by which Yahweh addresses the prophet. It is noteworthy that each of these 112 singular forms in the LXX is ‘anarthrous’ (no defi nite article), e.g. ui(o&j a)nqrw&pou in Ps. 8.4/LXX 8.5, accurately refl ecting in each instance the Hebrew (or Aramaic) expressions. In nearly all instances the Hebrew is Md) Nb (e.g. Num. 23.19; Ps. 8.4; Jer. 2.6), the exceptions being Ps. 80.16/LXX 79.16

  (htcm) Nb, ‘the son you have reared’), Ps. 144.3/LXX 143.3 (#won) Nb), Jer. 2.6 (Md)), and of course the Aramaic expression in Dan. 7.13 (#$n) rb).

  We can now draw some summarizing observations from these details. First, the singular form, ‘son of man’, is consistently without an article in the Hebrew texts of the OT (and in its few OT instances in Aramaic does not have the fi nal

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  aleph that would give a corresponding defi nite sense to a noun).6 Thus, as far as the evidence of the Hebrew OT and other Second Temple Jewish literature is concerned, it appears that the articular form ‘the son of man’ was not a familiar expression, in Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek, in the period in which these writings were composed.7 There is certainly no basis for thinking that the Semitic articular/defi nite forms were used somewhat interchangeably with the anarthrous/

  indefi nite forms of the expressions involved. Instead, the impression given is that the articular/defi nite singular expression, ‘the son of man’, would have been regarded as highly unusual, perhaps even peculiar.

  Second, and perhaps as interesting, although the LXX translators often supplied defi nite articles in re
ndering plural forms (‘the sons of men’), including instances where the Hebrew construction has no article (e.g. Ps. 11.4/LXX

  10.4), they rather consistently refrained from doing so in translating these many instances of singular forms. Even in cases where it would seem fully appropriate to have supplied the defi nite article in the interest of conveying the connotation of a given sentence, and where subsequent translators often have done so (e.g. Ps. 8.4; 80.17/LXX 79.16; 144.3/LXX 143.3), the LXX translators scrupulously refrained from adding a defi nite article to ‘son of man’, retaining the indefi nite forms of the various underlying Semitic expressions. Perhaps the articular form, ‘the son of man’, seemed still more strange in Greek than the indefi nite (anarthrous) form. In any case, based on this evidence we should be cautious in ascribing to ancient Greek translators of Hebrew and/or Aramaic a readiness to supply a defi nite article to instances of ‘son of man’ where there was none in the underlying Semitic being translated.

  6. There is one apparent instance where a copyist has added the defi nite article in the Qumran manuscript, 1QS (11.20), producing Md)h Nb. For discussion, see Joseph A.

  Fitzmyer, ‘The New Testament Title “The Son of Man” Philologically Considered’, in A Wandering Aramean: Collected Aramaic Essays (SBLMS 25; Missoula: Scholars Press, 1979), pp. 143–60, esp. 146.

  7. See the evidence cited by 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, esp. 104–20. Note also that in the Aramaic fragments of 1 Enoch there are no instances of the defi nite-singular form of ‘son of man’. J. T. Milik (ed.), The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), p. 371, s.v. rb.

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  The New Testament

  Now let us turn now to the data pertaining directly to NT texts. The fi rst thing to note is the surprising frequency of, and preference for, the articular-singular expression ‘the son of man’ (o( ui(o&j tou~ a)nqrw&pou), some 80 instances, 79 of them in the Gospels and once in Acts (7.56). In addition, we have a few uses of the anarthrous singular form, ui(o&j a)nqrw&pou (in Heb. 2.6, where it is part of a quotation of Ps. 8.4, and in Rev. 1.13; 14.14, both of these likely allusive to Dan. 7.13).

  Clearly, we are looking at an expression that is very unusual and plays some sort of important role in the vocabulary of the intra-canonical Gospels in particular.8

  Moreover, nearly all of these articular-singular instances are in sayings ascribed to Jesus, and ‘the son of man’ is his typical self-designation, especially prominently in the Synoptic Gospels. Other characters in the Gospels, however, basically do not use the expression, with reference to anyone. No one ever acclaims Jesus as ‘the son of man’. Nor does his use of the expression ever generate controversy or accusation. The closest that we have to an exception is Jn 12.34, where the Jewish crowd is portrayed as asking Jesus what he means by referring to ‘the son of man’. But the impression given here is that the crowd simply fi nds the expression novel and they are unsure what to make of it. ‘The son of man’ is not itself an honorifi c claim here that the crowd recognizes or contests.9 Among the several positive estimates of Jesus ascribed to people in the Gospels narratives (e.g. Mk 8.27-29, John the Baptist, Elijah, a prophet, Messiah), ‘the son of man’ is totally absent as an option. Nor is ‘the son of man’

  among the confessional titles accorded Jesus elsewhere in the NT (e.g. ‘Lord’,

  ‘Christ’, ‘the Son of God’).10 So, we cannot account readily for the expression as some regular feature of early Christian kerygmatic or confessional usage that was retrojected back into the narratives about the earthly Jesus.

  It is also interesting to note the variation in frequency and usage of the expression among the Gospels. Matthew leads in frequency (30×), and deploys the expression uniquely in some sayings with parallels in the other Synoptics 8. The plural form, ‘the sons of men’, is used only twice in the NT (Mk 3.28; Eph. 3.6).

  9. Cf. e.g. the excited questions over whether Jesus might be a prophet or even ‘the Christ’

  (Jn 7.40-44; 10.24) and the accusation that he ‘made himself the Son of God’ (19.7).

  10. The statement ascribed to Stephen in Acts 7.56 is not a real exception. In the wider context of Luke-Acts, ‘the son of man’ is already known to readers as Jesus’ characteristic self-designation. So Stephen is pictured here as claiming that the one known (to readers and to the opponents in the scene) by the sobriquet ‘the son of man’ has been exalted to heavenly glory.

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  ‘Who is this Son of Man?’

  where the expression is not used. Compare, in particular, Matthew’s use of ‘the son of man’ in Jesus’ question to his disciples near Caesarea Philippi concerning what people are saying about him (16.13) with the use of the fi rst-person pronoun in the parallels in Mk 8.27; Lk. 9.18. Compare also the reference to

  ‘the son of man’ enthroned in Mt. 19.28 with the Lk. 18.30 parallel, which lacks this image (referring instead to ‘my table’ and ‘my kingdom’). Matthew alone refers to ‘the coming of the son of man’ (h( parousi&a tou~ ui(ou~ tou~

  a)nqrw&pou, 24.27, 37, 39; and cf. also 10.23; 25.31), and to ‘the sign of the son of man’ (to_ shmei~on tou~ ui(ou~ tou~ a)nqrw&pou, 24.30). In addition, though most of the relevant sayings in Matthew have parallels in one or more of the other Synoptics, there are a few other sayings unique to Matthew in which ‘the son of man’ features: 10.23; 13.37; 26.2b.

  On the other hand, whereas Lk. 12.8 promises that ‘the son of man’ will acknowledge those who confess Jesus, Mt. 10.32 simply has Jesus give this assurance using the fi rst-person pronoun and verb (o(mologh&sw ka)gw_), and where the other Synoptics have Jesus teach his disciples ‘that the son of man must suffer many things’ (Mk 8.31; Lk. 9.22), Mt. 16.21 has ‘Jesus’ show them ‘that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things’. Nevertheless, the expression ‘the son of man’ is clearly prominent in Matthew’s presentation of Jesus, and serves as the author’s favoured way of representing Jesus’

  self-designation.

  Next in frequency is Luke (23×). Here again, there are interesting distinguishing features to the Lukan usage of the expression. Luke alone refers to ‘the day(s) of the son of man’ (17.22, 30). Lk. 6.22 uniquely refers to persecution of Jesus’ followers ‘on account of the son of man’ (cf. Mt. 5.11). In addition, there are a few other sayings about ‘the son of man’ exclusive to Luke (18.8; 19.10; 22.48; 24.7, the angels at the tomb here echoing Jesus’ saying from 9.22).

  The 14 son- of-man sayings in Mark nearly all have parallels in Matthew and/

  or Luke, which is consistent with the common view that Mark was the principal source and precedent for the authors of the other Synoptics, Markan material heavily appropriated by the other two Synoptic Evangelists.11 The possible 11. Mk 2.10/Mt. 9.6/Lk. 5.24; Mk 2.28/Mt. 12.8/Lk. 6.5; Mk 8.31/Lk. 9.22 (cf. Mt. 16.21); Mk 8.38/Lk. 9.26; Mk 9.9/Mt. 17.9; Mk 9.31/Mt. 17.22/Lk. 9.44; Mk 10.33/Mt. 20.18/

  Lk. 18.31; Mk 10.45/Mt. 20.28; Mk 13.26/Mt. 24.30/Lk. 21.27; Mk 14.21/Mt. 26.24/Lk. 22.22; Mk 14.41/Mt. 26.45; Mk 14.62/Mt. 26.64/Lk. 22.69.

  8. Summary and Concluding Observations

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  exception is in 9.12, where Jesus says that ‘it has been written concerning the son of man’ that he should suffer. There is no Lukan parallel, and Mt. 17.13 has a comparable saying about ‘the son of man’ but worded differently.

  For its size, John uses the expression less intensively (12×, plus one anarthrous construction in 5.27), and the explicit emphasis on Jesus’ divine sonship is clearly more prominent.12 Nevertheless, ‘the son of man’ still plays a signifi -

  cant role in John. Indeed, in John the expression is used quite distinctively.13

  None of the Johannine sentences in which ‘the son of man’ features has an obvious or direct parallel in the Synoptic Gospels
. In John, we have sentences referring to angels descending and ascending on ‘the son of man’ (1.51), the descent (from heaven) and ascent of ‘the son of man’ (3.13-14; 6.62), his giving food of eternal life and his own fl esh and blood (6.27, 53), ‘the son of man’ being ‘lifted up’ (8.28) and glorifi ed (12.23; 13.21), and even a probable reference to belief in ‘the son of man’ (9.35).14 Clearly, the sentences in which the author deploys the expression ‘the son of man’ comprise a unique body of material in this unique Gospel.

  Indeed, I suggest that this sharply distinctive use of ‘the son of man’ in John is perhaps particularly valuable in demonstrating for us the function and signifi cance of this expression in the NT writings. We have noted already that, even among the individual Synoptics, there are some distinctive sentences or phrases in which the expression is deployed. But in John it is more boldly and thoroughly used in a body of statements that refl ect explicitly the distinctive emphases of this Gospel. The variations in the usage of ‘the son of man’ in the Synoptics, including particularly the apparent freedom of Synoptic authors to use ‘the son of man’ and the fi rst-person pronoun somewhat interchangeably in sayings of Jesus, suggests that in these texts it functions simply (or at least primarily) as a unique self-referential expression. I propose that this is rather 12. In contrast to the 12 uses of ‘the son of man’ in John, I count at least six uses of ‘the son of God’, and another 15 references to ‘the Son’ (of course, the latter all affi rmations of Jesus’ divine sonship).

  13. Cf. the essay on use of ‘the son of man’ in John by Benjamin E. Reynolds in this volume; and also Delbert Burkett, The Son of Man in the Gospel of John, JSNTSup 56 (Sheffi eld: JSOT Press, 1991).

  14. The widely supported variant, ‘the son of God’, in 9.35 is quite likely an effort to align Jesus’ question here with a more common early Christian confessional claim.

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  more obviously shown in John, where the expression is deployed entirely in sayings that refl ect this author’s particular Christological emphases.