The Son of Man: Jesus, Eschatology and Mission

Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus, 2007

The interpretation of the synoptic Son of Man is still a formidable swamp with no consensus emerging. Unfortunately, one of the most interesting suggestions, the collective interpretation of Manson, Moule and Gaston, has been somehow left by the wayside. It has certain advantages, however, in respecting both the basic 'generic' sense of an underlying Semitic expression and the Danielic kingdom imagery, without denying this expression for the historical Jesus. The present article focuses on the coming Son of Man sayings and demonstrates the plausibility of applying a collective interpretation to them. The result is an eschatology, focusing not on an individual redeemer figure, but on the manifestation of the Kingdom in community practice. Some suggestions are offered for how such an eschatology, based on a collective interpretation of the coming Son of Man, could 'mutate' so quickly into the idea of a second coming of Christ. ), pp. 47-68.

The expression " Son of Man " is Jesus " preferred title in the Gospels. The meaning of the phrase and Jesus " probable motive for using the title constitute the basis for this study. The work explores some instances in the Gospels where the phrase is used in relation to Jesus and identifies a common pattern; attempt an explanation of the meaning of the term as expressive of the mediatory role Jesus performs as the one who unites God and the world and therefore the heart and centre of human salvation. The concluding statements highlight the importance of the title in the light of Jesus " mission to save and the obligations it imposes consequently on Christians as imitators of Christ.

This thesis is about the Son of Man expression and how scholars have interpreted it on the basis of its source. Chapter one deals with the relationship between the Son of Man and the concept of Messianism. This relationship in my view is an open ended question. In chapter two, some of the primary and sources have been presented. Sources like the Book of Daniel, 4.Ezra and the Gospels are presented in brief. There is no singular meaning of Son of Man in these sources. Chapter three deals with the titular/ apocalyptic Son of Man School of thought and their use of sources to defend their positions. These views range from a titular and/ or apocalyptic view meaning Jesus (Mowinckel) to a titular and/ or apocalyptic view meaning another person other than Jesus (Bultmann) and titular and/ or apocalyptic Christology about Jesus developed by the evangelists due to their resurrection experience (Tödt). Chapter four deals with the non-titular/ apocalyptic Son of Man positions and their use of sources to defend their positions. Here the positions of Leivestad, Vermes, and Muller are presented. These view the Son of Man expression with some variations. They use of sources ranging from Daniel VII to the Gospels to defend their positions. This is done with certain variations. In chapter five I’ve dealt with analyses of both schools of thought. As noted, Scholarly view both within and without these two main schools of thought vary though they mainly maintain either an apocalyptic/ titular meaning of the expression, on the one hand, or a non-apocalyptic/non-titular meaning of the expression on the other hand. In conclusion, I maintained among other things the fact that scholars make choices with regards to their use of source to defend their positions. I also maintained that the expression may well mean a circumlocution for “I”, but that considering it’s exclusively used by Jesus, the Gospel writers may have wanted to communicate something more than “I”. Thus in the Son of Man sources, the expression has no singular meaning.

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 2019

In several recent works, Bart Ehrman has argued that Jesus frequently taught about the coming of a figure called the Son of Man who was a divine figure, cosmic judge, and ruler of the kingdom of God. Although Jesus did not see himself as this Son of Man, his disciples mistakenly identified him as this figure as a result of their belief in Jesus’s resurrection. This article surveys the use of the title Son of Man by Jesus and Jewish literature and generally confirms Ehrman’s view of the meaning of the title. It further argues that the standard criteria of authenticity which Ehrman confidently employs in his works also confirm that Jesus identified himself as the Son of Man. Thus, the high Christology of early Christianity is not the result of “legend” as Ehrman claims but resulted from Jesus’s own divine claims.

New Torah , 2023

The ‘Son of Man’ has been a great enigma, because the New Testament profile does not quite match up with that of Daniel (7:13-14). The best match is to be found in the pseudepigraphical book of the Parables of Enoch (1Enoch 37-71), which has been preserved only in the Ethiopian Church. Scholars have recently got to work on it, and are now seeing its footprints in many parts of the New Testament, especially in St. Matthew’s Gospel, the writings of St. John (especially the Apocalypse) and some say, also, in the Christology of St. Paul. The only obstacle has been chapter 71, the last chapter, in which the Son of Man is identified with Enoch, the seer himself. In this essay, we explain this this chapter as an appendix designed specifically to prevent Christians from using the whole text. It wasn’t a problem for Christians anyway, because St. John was given his Revelation to replace it, in the light of the Ascension and Glorification of Jesus.