Son of Man, The

The conclusion that this title expresses, not the personal qualities of Jesus as a man, but His functions as Messiah, may be disappointing; but there is a way of recovering what seems to have been lost; because we must now inquire for what reasons He made use of this term.

1. Consciousness of Being the Messiah:

The first reason, of course, is, that in Daniel it expressed Messiahship, and that Jesus was conscions of being the Messiah. In the Old Testament He was wont all His days to read His own history. He ranged over all the sacred books and found in them references to His own person and work. With divinatory glance He pierced into the secrets of Scripture and brought forth from the least as well as the best-known portions of the ancient oracles meanings which are now palpable to all readers of the Bible, but which He was the first to discover. From the passage in Daniel, or from some other passage of the Old Testament in which the phrase "the son of man" occurs, a hint flashed out upon Him, as He read or heard; and the suggestion grew in His brooding mind, until it rounded itself into the fit and satisfying expression for one side of His self-consciousness.

2. Half Concealed, Yet Half Revealed His Secret:

Another reason why He fixed upon this as His favorite self-designation may have been that it half concealed as well as half revealed His secret. Of the direct names for the Messiah He was usually shy, no doubt chiefly because His contemporaries were not prepared for an open declaration of Himself in this character; but at all stages of His ministry He called Himself the Son of man without hesitation. The inference seems to be, that, while the phrase expressed much to Himself, and must have meant more and more for those immediately associated with Him, it did not convey a Messianic claim to the public ear. With this accords well the perplexity once manifested by those listening to Him, when they asked, "Who is this Son of man?" (Joh 12:34); as it also explains the question of Jesus to the Twelve at Caesarea Philippi, "Who do men say that the Son of man is?" or, as it is in the margin, "that I the Son of man am?" (Mt 16:13). That He was the Son of man did not evidently mean for all that He claimed to be the Messiah.

3. Expressive of Identification with Men in Sympathy, Fortunes and Destiny:

But when we try to realize for what reasons Jesus may have picked this name out from all which presented themselves to Him in His intimate and loving survey of the Old Testament, it is difficult to resist the belief that a third and the principal reason was because it gave expression to His sense of connection with all men in sympathy, fortunes and destiny. He felt Himself to be identified with all as their brother, their fellow-sufferer, their representative and champion; and, in some respects, the deepest word He ever spake was, "For the Son of man also came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many" (Mr 10:45 parallel).

4. Speculations (Lietzmann, Wellhausen, etc.) on Aramaic Meaning: These Rejected (Dalman, etc.):

In 1896, Hans Lietzmann, a young German scholar, startled the learned World with a speculation on the "Son of man." Making the assumption that Aramaic was the language spoken by Jesus, he contended that Jesus could not have applied to Himself the Messianic title, because there is nothing corresponding with it in Aramaic. The only term approximating to it is barnash, which means something very vague, like "anyone" or "everyman" (in the sense of the old morality play thus entitled). Many supposed Lietzmann to be arguing that Jesus had called Himself Anyone or Everyman; but this was not his intention. He tried to prove that the Messianic title had been applied to Jesus in Asia Minor in the first half of the 2nd century and that the Gospels had been revised with the effect of substituting it for the first personal pronoun. But he failed to show how the manuscripts could have been so universally altered as to leave no traces of this operation, or how, if the text of the New Testament was then in so fluid a state as to admit of such a substitution, the phrase should not have overflowed into other books besides the Gospels. Although the hypothesis has secured wide attention through being partially adopted by Wellhausen, whose view is to be found in Skizzen und Vorarbeiten, VI, and at p. 66 of his Commentary on Mark, it may be reckoned among the ghosts which appear for an hour on the stage of learning, attracting attention and admiration, but have no permanent connection with the world of reality. Dalman, the leading authority on Aramaic, denies the foundation on which the views of both Lietzmann and Wellhausen rest, and holds that, had the Messianic title existed, the Aramaic language would have been quite capable of expressing it. And in 1911 Wellhausen himself explicitly admitted this (Einleitung in die drei eraten Evangelien(2), 130).

LITERATURE.

See the books on New Testament Theology by Weiss, Beyschlag, Holtzmann, Feine, Schlatter, Weinel, Stevens, Sheldon; and on the Teaching of Jesus by Wentit, Bruce, Dalman; Abbott, The Son of Man, 1910; very full bibliography in Stalker, The Teaching of Jesus concerning Himself.

James Stalker


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