Evidence for God: 50 Arguments for Faith from the Bible, History, Philosophy, and Science by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: ebook, book
ISBN: 9780801072604
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2010-07-01T00:00:00+00:00

29

The Son of Man

DARRELL BOCK

This title, Jesus’s favorite according to the Gospels, is one of the most discussed elements about Jesus’s ministry in New Testament studies. Its use in the Old Testament is fairly limited, as the phrase simply means a “human being,” with son of man being an expression like son of Adam, which simply means Adam’s son. So son of man means son of a human being. It is used most often in address to Ezekiel as a human (Ezek. 2:1). This prophet uses the phrase ninety-four times. Other texts also illustrate this meaning. God is not a man (Num. 23:19) that he should lie. The suffering servant was so disfigured he did not look like a human (Isa. 52:14). Psalm 8 also uses the term this way. The most famous use, however, comes in Aramaic, not Hebrew. Here one like a “son of man” is a figure who comes to the Ancient of Days to receive authority (Dan. 7:13). The “son of man” figure is not a title here. The figure contrasts with the previous descriptions of various pagan nations in Daniel 7 as a variety of mixed animal forms. The representative of God and man is made in God’s image and receives kingdom authority.

Now another element of background is that in Aramaic the expression is an idiom. It can mean “someone” or “some human being.” It is debated whether it can be an indirect way to refer to oneself. This use is not clearly attested in the first century.

In Judaism the expression came to be used of a figure of salvation, a transcendent salvation figure as it appears frequently in 1 Enoch. However, this use cannot be dated with certainty before the time of Christ. None-theless, such usage shows that even some Jews pushed the figure of Daniel into a title.

The term appears eighty-two times in the New Testament. It is always spoken by Jesus in the Gospels. “One like a son of man” appears in Revelation 1:13 and 14:14. Stephen sees the Son of Man standing in Acts 7:56. All other uses are by Jesus.

Scholars have classified this expression in various ways.

One way is to discuss whether the use of the title comes with a clear use of Daniel 7, an indirect use, or no use, since this is the only Old Testament passage that is connected to the title specifically in the New Testament. Most uses of the title do not make an explicit connection to Daniel 7. In fact the explicit uses that do come appear in two places: (1) the eschatological discourse where Jesus discusses the return of the Son of Man and (2) at Jesus’s examination by the Jewish leadership, where he speaks of the Son of Man seated at God’s right hand coming on the clouds, a remark that combines Daniel 7 and Psalm 110:1. This means that in most uses in the Gospels Jesus used the title but did not give a reference as an explanation. Both of the explicit uses come late in Jesus’s ministry.

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