Table Of ContentLIBRARY OF NEW TESTAMENT STUDIES
390
Formerly the Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement series
Editor
Mark Goodacre
Editorial Board
John M.G. Barclay, Craig Blomberg, R. Alan Culpepper, James
D.G. Dunn, Craig A. Evans, Stephen Fowl, Robert Fowler, Simon J.
Gathercole, John S. Kloppenborg, Michael Labahn, Robert Wall, Steve
Walton, Robert L. Webb, Catrin H. Williams
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‘WHO IS THIS SON OF MAN?’
The Latest Scholarship on a Puzzling
Expression of the Historical Jesus
EDITED BY
Larry W. Hurtado
AND
Paul L. Owen
Copyright © Larry W. Hurtado, Paul L. Owen and contributors, 2011
Published by T&T Clark International
A Continuum imprint
The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX
80 Maiden Lane, Suite 704, New York, NY 10038
www.continuumbooks.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by
any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Larry W. Hurtado, Paul L. Owen, and contributors have asserted their right under the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identifi ed as the Author of this work.
British Library Cataloguing- in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: HB: 978-0- 567-52119-4
Typeset by Pindar NZ, Auckland, New Zealand
Printed and bound in Great Britain
CONTENTS
Preface: The Son of Man Debate; What's the Problem? vii
Abbreviations x
List of Contributors xiv
1 ISSUES CONCERNING THE ARAMAIC BEHIND
o( ui(o\j tou= a)nqrw/pou: A CRITICAL REVIEW OF SCHOLARSHIP 1
Albert L. Lukaszewski
2 PROBLEMS WITH CASEY’S ‘SOLUTION’ 28
Paul L. Owen
3 RE-SOLVING THE SON OF MAN ‘PROBLEM’ IN ARAMAIC 50
David Shepherd
4 EXPRESSING DEFINITENESS IN ARAMAIC: A RESPONSE TO CASEY’S
THEORY CONCERNING THE SON OF MAN SAYINGS 61
P. J. Williams
5 THE USE OF DANIEL 7 IN JESUS’ TRIAL, WITH IMPLICATIONS FOR
HIS SELF-UNDERSTANDING 78
Darrell L. Bock
6 THE USE OF THE SON OF MAN IDIOM IN THE GOSPEL OF JOHN 101
Benjamin E. Reynolds
7 THE ELECT SON OF MAN OF THE PARABLES OF ENOCH 130
Darrell D. Hannah
8 SUMMARY AND CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS 159
Larry W. Hurtado
Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Sources 178
Subject Index 186
Author Index 189
PREFACE
THE SON OF MAN DEBATE: WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?
Paul L. Owen
The present volume seeks to advance scholarly discussion pertaining to the
usage of the expression o( ui9oj tou~ a)nqrw&pou (‘the son of man’) in the Greek
gospels. Those four words have accrued a signifi cance in theological studies,
both critical and confessional, far out of proportion to their length. Such a
seemingly inauspicious way of speaking about Jesus has been the conduit of
scholarly energy for a variety of reasons.
The phrase ‘son of man’ is strikingly frequent as a means of s elf-expression
on the part of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels. Given its frequency on the lips
of Jesus, in combination with its rarity in the epistolary writings of early
Christianity, it is by all accounts the ‘title’ for Jesus with the most convinc-
ing credentials of authenticity. Nearly all scholars admit that this manner of
speaking goes back to the historical Jesus. Whereas other titles like Son of God,
Messiah, and Lord clearly functioned later as means of confessional expression
in the early church, ‘son of man’ does not seem to have been picked up and
utilized in the same manner. What are we to make of this?
This leads us to an important question. Should ‘son of man’ even be treated as
a title for Jesus at all? Is it possible that o( ui9oj tou~ a)nqrw&pou in Greek trans-
lates an original Aramaic expression which designated Jesus in a n on-titular
manner? It has been suggested by some that Jesus used this expression in
Aramaic as a humble substitute for the personal pronoun ‘I’. Others have
argued that it stood generically for humankind in general, or a particular class
of people (‘a man in my situation’). Still others have suggested that it stood in
place of an indefi nite pronoun, simply meaning ‘someone’.
viii Preface
To what literary materials should we turn to determine the answers to such
questions? Nowhere in Aramaic texts dating from around the time of Jesus do
we fi nd any individual being referred to as ‘the son of man’ ()#$n) rb). While
there is a handful of texts which use ‘son of man’ (#$n) rb) to assert things
about a person, what is the signifi cance of such examples, since they always
lack the defi nite article we fi nd in the Greek gospels? And what are we to make
of the evidence found in later Aramaic materials drawn from rabbinic and
Targumic texts? What might we glean from their use of the same language and
expression thought to underlie o( ui9oj tou~ a)nqrw&pou in the New Testament?
Is there a way to ensure that we are reaching conclusions based on linguistic
evidence from the proper time period and geographical range?
Another issue is the connection between Jesus’ employment of the expres-
sion ‘son of man’ and Dan. 7.13, which provides the probable textual origin for
at least some of the ‘son of man’ sayings in the Gospels. Are those (‘apocalyp-
tic’) Synoptic sayings which make use of Dan. 7.13 in order to assert something
about the son of man’s role in the fi nal judgement to be attributed to Jesus
himself, or are they best seen as theological elaborations by the early church?
This then raises questions about the meaning of the vision of the ‘son of man’
in the book of Daniel. Is the cryptic fi gure described there to be understood
as an angel, a symbol of the people of God, or an apocalyptic Messiah? And
how are we to understand other apocalyptic texts which appear to appropriate
the Danielic material in their own messianic rhetoric? What of those Synoptic
sayings which are less direct in their appropriation of Daniel (the s o-called
‘suffering’ and ‘earthly’ son of man)? Are they any more (or less) likely can-
didates for authenticity than are the apocalyptic sayings? How should they be
understood by critical scholars who seek to distinguish the thoughts of Jesus
from those of his devoted followers? And what role did the early transmitters
and translators of the Jesus tradition play in passing on such sayings within the
developing hermeneutic of Christian devotion?
These sorts of questions have received an array of competing answers, and it
is to the furtherance of such discussions that the present collection of essays is
directed. The following chapters deal with a range of issues related to linguis-
tics, the Aramaic evidence, the historical Jesus, and the infl uence of Daniel 7 in
early Judaism and Christianity. First, the history of the ‘son of man’ discussion
will be surveyed by Albert Lukaszewski, who provides a formidable overview
Preface ix
of the numerous methodological and linguistic issues involved in tackling the
problem. Then, Paul Owen, David Shepherd and Peter Williams engage, at vari-
ous levels, the work of Maurice Casey, who has devoted an enormous amount
of energy to the debate in modern scholarship. Finally, Darrell Bock, Benjamin
Reynolds and Darrell Hannah explore the use of the ‘son of man’ expres-
sion, and the appropriation of Daniel 7, at Jesus’ trial, in John’s Gospel, and
within the Parables of Enoch (1 Enoch 37–71) respectively. The ‘son of man’
debate serves as a conduit for discussions about method in Aramaic studies,
the process whereby the oral teaching of Jesus took written form in the Greek
gospels, the development of messianic hope(s) in the Second Temple period,
the infl uence of Daniel 7 in Jewish apocalyptic texts, the self-understanding
of the historical Jesus, and the relationship of Jesus’ modes of speech to the
content of early Christian faith and devotion. It is our hope as editors that this
collaboration will make a fresh and fruitful contribution to the ongoing discus-
sion of these matters in New Testament scholarship.
