Table Of ContentTHE SON
OF MAN
TRADITION
DOUGLAS R. A. HARE
.
"
FORTRESS PRESS Minneapolis
THE SON OF MAN TRADITION
THE SON OF MAN TRADITION
Copyright © 1990 Augsburg Fortress. All rights reserved. Except for brief
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Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from the Revised Stan
dard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, and 1972 by the Division
of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches.
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Library of Congress Cataloging· in-Publication Data
Hare, Douglas R.A.
The Son of Man tradition / Douglas R.A. Hare.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8006-2448-3 (alk. paper)
l. Son of Man. 2. Bible. N.T. Gospels-Criticism,
interpretation, etc. 3. Bible. N.T. Acts-Criticism,
interpretation, etc. I. Title.
BT232.H37 1990 90-42907
226' .06-dc20 CIP
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
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94 93 92 91 90 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
In memory of
R. B. Hare and W. M. Mustard
CONTENTS
Preface ix
Abbreviations xiii
1. Introduction 1
2. From Ignatius to Barth 29
3. Luke-Acts 47
4. John 79
5. Matthew 113
6. Mark 183
7. The Pregospel Tradition 213
8. Jesus 257
Bibliography 283
Index of Scripture and Ancient Sources 299
Index of Authors 313
vii
PREFACE
Since my days as a theological student, I have been intrigued by
the mysterious phrase "the Son of man." One of my first papers as a
doctoral student focused in large part on the meaning of this expression.
At that time I assumed that the majority of New Testament scholars had
good reasons for maintaining that the words constituted an apocalyptic
title. Daniel 7:13f., I was assured, reflects a Jewish myth concerning an
angelic champion who was expected to arrive "on the clouds of heaven" at
the end of the age to liberate God's people and judge sinners. Rudolf
Bultmann, the leading German Neutestamentler, confidently asserted that
Jesus could not have identified himself as "the Son of man"; only those
sayings are authentic in which Jesus points away from himself to a heavenly
figure whose imminent arrival he announces.
Despite my assumption that these scholars were correct, I could not
help having certain reservations because of the way the phrase is actually
used in the Gospels. In Mark, for example, the motif of the messianic
secret powerfully influences the way the story is told. The readers are
informed that Jesus is Christ in the opening verse, but this knowledge is
hidden from all narrative audiences except the demoniacs (who are
promptly silenced) until Peter's confession. Yet Jesus is represented
as referring to himself publicly as "the Son of man" early in the story
(2:10, 28), without thereby divulging his identity to anyone. The scholars
assured me that these passages are simply instances of Mark's clumsy
inconsistency, but their explanation failed to satisfy, because the same phe
nomenon appears in connection with other sayings in Matthew and Luke.
The scholarly consensus was challenged linguistically by Geza Vermes.
In a brief paper Vermes argued that the alleged title could not have been
expressed in Aramaic, the language of Jesus and his earliest followers.
Behind the gospel phrase lies the Aramaic expression bar nash or bar
ix
x PREFACE
nasha, which can serve as an indefinite pronoun, "a man," or, in some
contexts, as a circumlocution for "I." Authentic sayings of Jesus employed
bar nasha as an indirect reference to the speaker. While it received a great
deal of attention, Vermes's hypothesis was stoutly resisted, and for two
good reasons: his linguistic evidence was not wholly satisfactory, and he
seemed guilty of arranging the New Testament evidence to fit his hypoth
esis. While attracted by the proposal, I was not convinced that Vermes had
proved his case.
For me the decisive turning point in modern study of "the Son of man"
was effected by the Norwegian scholar Ragnar Leivestad. A short English
version of Leivestad's study, provocatively entitled "Exit the Apocalyptic
Son of Man," appeared in New Testament Studies in 1972. Leivestad's point
was clear and unequivocal: nowhere in the literature of pre-Christian
Judaism is there any evidence of a mythical figure bearing the title "the
Son of man." The significance of the evangelists' use of the phrase must
therefore be derived from the Gospels themselves, not from the alleged
apocalyptic tradition.
My excitement over this proposal was tempered by the discovery that
many of my peers were no more impressed by Leivestad's frontal attack
on the Bultmannian consensus than by the linguistic argument of Vermes.
It became increasingly clear to me that if the consensus was to be success
fully challenged, a different methodology would be required. The wisest
course, it seemed, would be to proceed from the known to the unknown.
Rather than starting with Daniel 7:13f. or with the Aramaic bar (e) nash (a) ,
one should begin with the most recent understanding of the mysterious
phrase and work backward through the various strata, just as an archaeol
ogist begins at the top of the tell and moves down through its evidence to
earlier occupations. Sound arguments regarding the meaning of the phrase
in the Greek strata could alone provide a firm basis for inferring the use
and meaning of the phrase in the Aramaic tradition and in Jesus' original
sayings.
The working hypothesis I adopted was Leivestad's, namely, that "the
Son of man" was not the title of a mythical figure but Jesus' self-designation,
but I presupposed no specific proposal concerning the content of the phrase.
My backward method required that Jesus' understanding of the term be
determined only as the final step in the chain of inferences that would be
developed. Much to my own surprise, this process led me to a position
very close to that of Vermes. In chapter 7 I infer that Jesus did in fact
employ the phrase but without attributing to it any theological content. In
his use it constituted a modesty idiom that functioned in much the same
PREFACE xi
fashion as the self-referring "one" in English. In the final chapter I make
tentative proposals regarding what kinds of Son of man sayings may on
this basis be regarded as probably authentic.
What importance can be attached to a study whose outcome is primarily
negative? If the reasoning pursued in this book is justified, it will offer
further support to the claim being made by a number of scholars that
Christology centering on the study of titles, which has been so popular
during the twentieth century, must now be replaced by one that pays
greater attention to statements than to words and titles. As Donald Juel
points out in a letter, "The death of the son of man clears the way to pose
new questions about the [linguistic] resources available to Jesus' followers,
how they employed them, and what the whole process tells us about the
language of faith."
A subsidiary contribution of this book to future research may lie in the
methodology employed. If the backward approach here employed is per
ceived as successful, it may prove fruitful in other studies.
The English translation of the Bible most frequently followed in this
book is the Revised Standard Version. Where the renderings depart from
this version. they are my own, unless otherwise specified.
Readers are advised that full publication data for sources cited are to be
found in the Bibliography and are therefore omitted from the notes, where
titles are frequently referred to in shortened form.
This extended study occupied most of my research time for fifteen years.
I would like to record my gratitude to the administrators and directors of
Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, who generously granted me several sab
batical leaves for work on the project. The staff of the Barbour Library
were unfailingly gracious and efficient in their assistance. Portions of earlier
drafts were read at various national and regional meetings of the Society
of Biblical Literature; I am grateful to all who responded with criticisms
and encouragement. I would like to express appreciation to my colleague
Jared Jackson, for his persistent kindness over the years in supplying me
with references to new articles on the Son of man. Special thanks are due
to my colleagues Ulrich Mauser and George Kehm, for their careful reading
of chapter 5, and to Jack Kingsbury and Ulrich Luz for their kind invitation
to present a condensed form of this chapter to the Matthew Seminar of the
Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas at its Dublin meeting. An expanded
version of a small section of the same chapter is to be published in a
Festschrift for my retired colleague William F. Orr, under the title "The
Mountain Where Jesus Laid Down Rules for Them." I am especially
grateful to Donald Juel, who carefully read the whole manuscript and
xii PREfACE
made several very helpful suggestions. John Hollar of Fortress Press,
whose untimely death is deeply regretted by a host of theological writers,
encouraged me from the project's earliest stages; I am grateful both to him
and to his associate, Marshall D. Johnson, who has edited the manuscript
for the press.
Finally I would like to thank my wife for her patience in supporting a
project that took far more time than either of us anticipated. The book is
dedicated to her father and mine, both of whom modeled for us their faith
in the one who modestly referred to himself as "a son of man."
2 April 1990 DOUGLAS R. A. HARE
Wm. F. Orr Professor of New Testament,
Pittsburgh Theological Seminary
