The Son of Man
Passages in which “the Son of Man” is mentioned: —
Matthew viii. 20; ix. 6; x. 23; xi. 19; xii. 8, 32, 40; xiii. 37, 41; xvi. 13, 27, 28; xvii. 9, 12, 22; xviii. xix. 28; xx. 18, 28; xxiv. 27, 30, 37, 39, 44; xxv. 31; xxvi. 2, 24, 45, 64.
Mark ii. 10, 28; viii. 31, 38; ix. 9, 12, 31; x. 33, 45; xiii. 26, [34]; xiv. 21, 41, 62.
Luke v. 24; vi. 5, 22; vii. 34; ix. 22, 26, 44, [56], 58; xi. 30; xii. 8, 10, 40; xvii. 22, 24, 26, 30; xviii. 8, 31; xix. 10; xxi. 27, 36; xxii. 22, 48, 69; xxiv. 7- The square brackets indicate interpolations.
II
r I “HE name by which Jesus most frequently ■*- designated Himself was “the Son of Man,”
* The following list contains the principal books on the subject; but neither here nor in the lists at the beginning of the subsequent chapters are the older treatises on New Testament Theology included: — Weiss: Neuiesta?nenlliche Theologie, 1880, § 16. Beyschlag: Neutestamentliche Theologie, 1891, I. pp. 54 ff. Holtzmann: Neutestamentliche Theologie, 1897, pp. 246 — 264. Stevens: The Theology of the New Testament, 1899, cap. IX. Noesgen: Christus der Menschen- ttnd Gottessohn, 1869. Bruce: The Kingdom of God, 1889, cap. VII. Wendt: Die Lehre Jesu, 1890, II. pp. 440 ff. Baldensperger: Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu, 1892, c. VII. Grau: Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu, 1887, c. VI. Lietzmann: Der Menschensohn, 1896.
Appel: Die Selbstbezeichnung Jesti: Der Menschensoh?i, 1 896. Boehmer: Reich Gottes und Menschensohn im Buche Daniel,
1899. Franz Sieber: an essay printed at p. 257 of Schnedermann’s
second volume on Jesu Verkilndigung und Lehre vom
Reiche Gottes. Krop: appendix on La Question du Fits de IHomme in his
book on La Pense’e de Jesus sur le Royaume de Dieu,
pp. 118 ff. 1897.
Dalman: Die Worte Jesu, 1898, cap. IX.
which occurs in St. Matthew thirty-two times, in St. Mark fifteen times, in St. Luke twenty-five times, and in St. John twelve times.
How did Jesus come to designate Himself in this way?
He never either defines the title or mentions where He found it; so that we have to ascertain its origin and significance for ourselves by examining His mode of using it. This proves to be a difficult inquiry, which has given rise to extraordinary diversity of opinion. A laborious German, writing on the subject, has recently collected a perfectly bewildering enumeration of the different meanings assigned to the term by different writers.*
The supposition which would most naturally occur to the unsophisticated mind is that He invented the term Himself. If this was His favourite self-designation, it must, one would suppose, express what was most prominent in His consciousness of Himself, and He must have carefully constructed a phrase to express His own conception; in which case the way for us to arrive at the meaning would be to analyze the words themselves. In sound the title
* Appel, work named in the list given in the foregoing note. Though rather bewildering, the conspectus of opinions is most interesting.
seems to be a most appropriate expression for the human side of His person; and in this sense it has been understood by Christendom. The Greek and Latin Fathers, from Irenseus downwards, thus employ it; and at the present day probably ninety-nine out of every hundred Christians do the same. To the average man it is a designation for the human side of our Lord’s person, as “the Son of God” is for the divine; and these two phrases, complementing each other, define the God-man.
Merely to read over, however, a continuous list of the passages in which the name occurs will shake anyone’s faith in the correctness of this assumption; because it will at once be felt that the statements made about “the Son of man” are anything but characteristic predicates of humanity. How, for example, does this assumption harmonize with a saying like the following: “And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but He that came down from heaven, even the Son of man, which is in heaven “; or with this, “When the Son of man shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory, and before Him shall be gathered all nations, and He shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth the sheep from the goats, and He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left “? Many more sayings of a similar strain might be quoted, in which things are predicated about “the Son of man,” which are the reverse of simply human. This has never escaped the observation of those who have actually looked at the facts; and as early as Origen we find the hermeneutical principle laid down, that throughout the Scripture the divine nature of Christ is mentioned with human characteristics and the human nature adorned with divine attributes.*
In modern times the belief that this title refers primarily to the humanity of our Lord has been represented by many famous names and from different points of view, without its being held, however, that Jesus Himself invented it. Thus Neander interprets it as the ideal man; and he has had a multitude of followers. His beautiful words are well worthy of quotation: “Jesus thus names Himself as belonging to mankind — as one who in human nature has accomplished such great things for human nature — who is man, in the supreme sense, the sense corresponding to the idea, — who makes real the ideal of humanity.” He supports this definition by reference to such passages as St. Matthew ix. 8, where it is said that to the Son
* The remark is a common one in subsequent Fathers.
of man is given the power on earth to forgive sins; and xii. 8: “The Son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath day.” * Others have supposed the view of humanity which the title expresses to be from beneath rather than above — from the side of weakness and lowliness rather than of dignity. This was the view of Baur, and he has had many supporters. “Jesus,” he says, “designates Himself by this term as one who is man, with all the attributes which belong to human nature... one who takes His share in all that is human, qui nihil humani a se alienum patat.” In support of this view he appeals especially to St. Matthew viii. 19: “Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay His head,” which he thus paraphrases, “A child of man, like Me, must endure the very lowest which belongs to the lot of any man.” f
One circumstance which might make it doubtful to an observant reader of the Bible whether Jesus invented this phrase Himself is, that it occurs frequently in the Old Testament. Everyone is aware how steeped the mind of Jesus was in biblical
* Also St. John i. 32; ii. 13; v. 27; vi. 53. — Leben Jesu, p. 117.
t N. T. Theologie. pp. 80, 81.
phraseology, and, therefore, the suggestion is not unlikely, that He may have adopted this name from one or other of the Old Testament passages in which it is found.
The most famous of these is in the eighth
Psalm: —
“When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, The moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained; What is man, that Thou art mindful of him, And the son of man, that Thou visitest him?”
Here “man” and “the son of man” are obviously synonyms; and the whole psalm is an incomparable utterance on human nature, bringing out both its lowliness and its loftiness. When contrasted with God, man is nothing: it is a marvel that the Creator of the moon and the stars should condescend to look upon him. Yet, regarded from a different point of view — as a favourite among God’s creatures — this being, insignificant in himself, is crowned with glory and honour; he is but a little lower than the divine; and to him has been committed the empire over the rest of the creatures, which the psalmist causes to march past, as if in procession, testifying their submission. Thus, in this splendid poem, which seems to have been composed beneath the midnight heavens, both the heights and the depths of human nature are brought to light; and, if the origin of the self-designation of Jesus were found here, both the meaning of the term already quoted
from Neander and that quoted from Baur would be
united. One distinguished theologian, Keim, was
of opinion that it was in this place that Jesus
obtained the first hint of the name; but he has
not been followed by many.*
There is another instance in the Psalms of the
use of the “son of man” as a synonym for “man”
which I am surprised has never been referred to as
possibly furnishing the seed- thought out of which
grew the ideas which Jesus combined in His favourite
self-designation. In Psalm lxxx. 17 occur these
words:
“Let Thy hand be upon the man of Thy right hand, Upon the son of man whom Thou madest strong for Thyself.”
The whole psalm is a passionate appeal for national
revival. It describes, first, the public defeat and
humiliation: the people are fed with the bread
of tears, and are given tears to drink in great
measure; they are a strife unto their neighbours,
and their enemies laugh among themselves. Then
comes in the celebrated comparison of the nation
to a vine, brought out of Egypt and planted in
Canaan, where it grew and flourished, till the
hills were covered with the shadow of it and the
* Jesus of Nazara, iii. 79-92. The whole passage is one of great beauty.
boughs thereof were like the goodly cedars. Alas, however, days of calamity supervened, when the hedge was broken down and the fair plant defaced: “the boar out of the wood doth waste it, and the wild beast of the field doth devour it.” In these circumstances the sacred poet appeals to the Shepherd of Israel to shine forth — to come and save them — and the form in which he anticipates deliverance is indicated in the words quoted above. He expected a hero to be raised up, whom Jehovah would favour and sustain, until He should have accomplished the grand task of emancipating His people. This passage is interpreted messianically in the Targums *; the situation sketched in the psalm is only too faithful a description of the political condition of Palestine during the youth of Jesus; and the picture of a deliverer, under the designation of “the son of man,” is such as might well have fired a pious and patriotic mind. Here, it will be observed, the idea is totally different from that in the eighth psalm: in the latter passage “the son of man” is humanity in general, but here the term signifies an individual, chosen from the mass and endowed with special gifts and graces for God’s work.
There is another book of the Old Testament in
* See Delitzsch: Die Psahnen, in loco which the phrase “the son of man” occurs no fewer than ninety times. This is the Book of Ezekiel; and the term is always applied to the prophet himself. Thus, in the opening vision, which describes his call to the office of prophet, the very first words addressed to him by Jehovah are, “Son of man, stand upon thy feet, and I will speak to thee.” “And,” he proceeds, “the Spirit entered into me, when He spake unto me, and He set me upon my feet, that I heard Him that spake to me.” Then the voice continued, “Son of man, I will send thee to the children of Israel “; and, a little further on, “Son of man, be not afraid of them, neither be afraid of their word... thou shalt speak My words unto them, whether they will hear or whether they will forbear.” The designation has obviously but one meaning throughout the entire book; and it is not difficult to gather from these first instances of its use what this is. “It expresses the contrast between what Ezekiel is in himself and what God will make out of him, the aim being not exactly to humble the prophet, but to make his mission appear to him not as his own, but as the work of God, and thus to lift him up whenever the flesh threatens to faint and fail. By this form of address God testifies how well He knows what His prophet is in himself, and, therefore, promises to lay no burden upon him without accompanying it with the appropriate equipment.” *
Thus there was one before Jesus of Nazareth who bore this name, at least in certain moments of his life, and may have derived from it some of the support with which it inspired our Saviour. It would not have been surprising if other prophets, imitating Ezekiel, had appropriated it to themselves, as a designation of their office, since it expresses so admirably the situation of the prophet, as a man weak in himself but strong in the Lord; and at least one young prophet betrays a disposition to do so; for in Daniel viii. 17 we read, “So He came near where I stood; and, when He came, I was afraid and fell upon my face; but He said unto me, Understand, O son of man “; and then follow words calculated to restore the trembling prophet’s courage. Weizsacker f and others have suggested that Jesus may at first have used the term to express His claim to be reckoned one of the prophetic line in succession to Ezekiel and Daniel; and it has also been suggested that His frequent employment of it may have led to His being classed among the prophets in popular opinion; but these suggestions are somewhat
* NOsgen: Christus der Menschen- und Gottessohn, p. 16. f Vntersuchungen Uber die Evangelische Geschichte, p. 429.
far-fetched, and they have not commanded anyconsiderable amount of assent.
In the Book of Daniel, besides the passage just quoted, there is another reference to “the son of man” far more famous. It occurs in the seventh chapter, in one of the apocalyptic visions common in this prophet. He sees four beasts coming up out of the sea — the first a lion with eagle’s wings, the second a bear, the third a four-headed leopard, and the fourth a terrible monster with ten heads. To the distress of the prophet, in his dream, these beasts bear rule over the earth; but at last the kingdom is taken away from them and given to a fifth ruler, who is thus described: “I saw, and, behold, one like the son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before Him; and there was given unto him dominion, glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.”
This chapter is not a place where one would naturally look for the origin of a name so beautiful as “the Son of man “; for to many minds the imagery of Daniel is anything but attractive, on account of its deficiency in those graces of plastic beauty which distinguish the Greek from the Hebrew imagination; and even a writer as near to our own time as Schleiermacher speaks of the notion, that Jesus could have derived His favourite designation from this source, as an odd fancy. Yet, since Schleiermacher’s time the belief has steadily grown, that this is the classical passage to which we must go back, and this opinion seems destined to become universal. Read the words of Daniel: ‘’ Behold, one like the son of man came with the clouds of heaven... and there was given unto Him dominion, glory, and a kingdom:” then read the words addressed by Jesus to the high priest in the hour of His condemnation: “Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven;” and the echo of the Old Testament words is unmistakable. It is equally indubitable in the following, from the great discourse on the future in the twenty-fourth of St. Matthew: “Then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven; and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn; and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory; and He shall send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.” There are other passages in which the echo is distinguishable, if not quite so distinct, such as
Matt. xiii. 41: “The Son of man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire; there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth,” or Matt. xvi. 27, 28: “For the Son of man shall come in the glory of the Father, with His angels, and then He shall reward every man according to His works. Verily, I say unto you, there be some standing here which shall not taste of death till they see the Son of man coming in His kingdom,” or Matt. xix. 28: “Verily, I say unto you, that ye which have followed Me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of His glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.”
In Daniel the kingdom given to “one like unto the son of man “supersedes the kingdom of the beasts; and it is obviously the messianic kingdom, for it is described as universal and everlasting. No mention is, however, made of a personal Messiah: on the contrary, thrice over, in the explanation of the vision supplied in the second half of the chapter, the occupant of the throne is described as” the people of the saints of the Most High.’’ Obviously, therefore, the “one like unto the son of man” is a symbolical figure, representing Israel, just as the lion, the bear, the leopard, and the ten-headed monster represent the world-conquering peoples of that epoch. Jesus, however, by assuming the title, puts Himself in the place of Israel, no doubt on the ground that in Him its attributes culminated and its kingly destiny was fulfilled.
If it is a little disappointing to find the place of origin of this beautiful name in one of Daniel’s visions, it will to some minds be even more disappointing to discover what, if this is granted, must be its primary signification; for evidently it describes position, not character: it is an official, not a personal designation. Nevertheless, this is the key which fits the lock. The passages in the Gospels where Jesus calls Himself “the Son of man,” are easily divisible into three classes. First, there is a large number, of which the verses last quoted are specimens, in which functions are attributed to Him above the range of ordinary humanity. These have been explained, by those who hold “the Son of man” to be the ideal man, as describing functions of humanity in its loftier aspects; but they are much more simply explained as functions of the Messiah.* There is a
* How awkwardly, on the theory that “the Son of man” designates humanity on its humble and suffering side, comes in the addition in the first of these quotations, that “the third day He shall be raised again” 1 second large class of passages referring to the humiliation, sufferings and death of Jesus, like Matt. xvii. 22: “The Son of man shall be betrayed into the hands of men, and they shall kill Him, and the third day He shall be raised again,” or Matt. xxvi. 24: “The Son of man goeth, as it is written of Him; but woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed; it had been good for that man if he had not been born.” These have been explained, in accordance with another of the theories mentioned already, as descriptive of our Lord’s humanity on its lower side, where it was exposed to the trials of the human lot; but they are far more completely and satisfactorily explained as descriptive of what was to fall to His lot as Messiah. The point in these numerous passages is the contrast between the great destiny of Jesus as Messiah and His actual experiences during His earthly life — a contrast the pathos of which comes supremely out in the saying that “even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.” The third class of passages is miscellaneous, and in them different points of view may be contended for; but there is not one of them in which the messianic view does not yield a good and natural sense.
I have discussed the possibility of Jesus inventing this name Himself, and, secondly, that of His borrowing it from the Old Testament; but there remains a third possibility — that He may have derived it from the thought of the time in which He lived, or that, at all events, its transference to His mind from the Old Testament may have been mediated by means of the postcanonical literature of the Jews.
I have already pointed out that the term “son of man,” applied by the prophet Daniel to Israel as a nation, is by Jesus applied to Himself as an individual; but the question may be raised, whether this modification was entirely due to Jesus, or whether it may not have been made to His hand. Daniel was a favourite book in the interval between its composition and the commencement of the Christian era; and it is conceivable that the religious mind, brooding on its promises, may have transmuted the prediction of a messianic kingdom into that of a messianic king. By some scholars it is considered that remarkable proof of this having taken place is found in the Book of Enoch.
This book may be roughly said to belong to the second century before Christ; it is apocalyptic in character and strongly influenced by the Book of Daniel; and “the Son of man” plays in it a remarkable role. To prove this, let me make a few quotations, which might easily be multiplied: —
“And there I saw One who had a head of days, and His head was white like wool, and with Him was another being, whose countenance had the appearance of a man, and His face was full of graciousness, like one of the holy angels. And I asked the angel who went with me and showed me all the hidden things concerning that Son of man, who He was, and whence He was, and why He went with the Head of days. And he answered and said unto me, This is the Son of man, who hath righteousness, with whom dwelleth righteousness, and who reveals all the treasures of that which is hidden, because the Lord of spirits hath chosen Him, and His lot before the Lord of spirits hath surpassed everything in uprightness forever. And this Son of man, whom thou hast seen, will arouse the kings and mighty ones from their couches, and the strong from their thrones, and will loosen the reins of the strong, and grind to powder the teeth of the sinners. And He will put down the kings from their thrones and kingdoms, because they do not extol and praise Him, nor thankfully acknowledge whence the kingdom was bestowed on them.’’
“And in that hour that Son of man was named in the presence of the Lord of spirits, and His name before the Head of days. And before the sun and the signs were created, before the stars of heaven were made, His name was named before the Lord of spirits. He will be a staff to the righteous, on which they will support themselves and not fall; and He will be the light of the Gentiles and the hope of those who are troubled at heart. All who dwell on earth will fall down and bow the knee before Him, and will bless and laud and celebrate with song the Lord of spirits. And for this reason has He been chosen and hidden before Him, before the creation of the world and for evermore.”
“And He sat on the throne of His glory, and the sum of judgment was committed unto Him, the Son of man, and He caused the sinners and those who have led the world astray to pass away and be destroyed from off the face of the earth.”
According to this book, “the Son of man” pre-exists with the Ancient of days; at the critical moment He is to be sent forth to destroy the unrighteous and to reign over the righteous forever; and He is the judge by whom the destiny of men is to be decided. If these passages are genuine products of the period between the Old Testament and the New, they are among the most important documents of the life of Christ; for their influence upon His thought and language is unmistakable
But the question of their date and origin is a highlydebatable one. The Book of Enoch used to be considered the work of a single author, with possibly a few interpolations; but its latest editor, Mr. Charles, considers it to be an extremely composite production, made up of at least five documents of different authorship and different dates. Indeed, he says, it is rather a collection of the fragments of an Enoch literature than a literary unity. The passages about “the Son of man” all occur in a portion of it known as the Book of Similitudes, which is a document of peculiar character and uncertain origin. It abounds with acknowledged interpolations, and the passages about “the Son of man” have been regarded by trustworthy authorities as Christian additions.
At the present moment, indeed, the trend of criticism is rather in the opposite direction; and this is not to be wondered at; because it falls in with the tendencies of a school, claiming several very able and zealous adherents, which is taking a prominent part in the discussion of the teaching of Jesus, and the watchword of which is, that He is to be understood by studying the conditions of thought and life in the midst of which He grew up.* The old way, they say, was to approach
* Baldensperger’s Das Selbstbeivussisein Jesu is the ablest production of this school.
Jesus from the side of St. Paul and the other apostolic writers and to see Him in the light which these cast upon Him; but this was not the light in which He actually lived and moved. The true way is to approach Him from the opposite direction, coming down to Him through the society in which the presuppositions of His life are to be found. No doubt the older theology approached Him in this way too, for it developed with peculiar zeal the Christology of the Old Testament; but, they would say, it leaped from Malachi to St. Matthew without taking any account of the centuries lying between. Yet this interval was as long as from the Reformation to the present day, and the human spirit was not dead then: on the contrary, in Palestine and the other homes of the Jews the keenest intellectual activity was going on; changes were taking place in the beliefs and the language of religion from generation to generation; and a literature exists in which the course of this history can still be traced. Jesus, like every other human being, was a product of His age; and it is to the ideas and customs of the age we must look, if we desire to understand Him.
The adherents of this school speak of their method in the tone of discoverers, and unfold remarkable enthusiasm and assiduity in exploring the records of the two or three centuries immediately before Christ. It is not to such noble productions of this period, however, as The Wisdom of Solomon or Ecclesiasticus that they chiefly turn their eyes, but to a series of apocalyptic writings, imitations of the spirit and style of the Book of Daniel, lying for the most part outside of the collection known to the common man as the Apocrypha; * and among these the largest and most important is the Book of Enoch.
Unquestionably there is a true idea in this movement; and, if in some minds a great deal too much is expected from it, this also belongs to the nature of the case; for it is by such illusions that nature gets the necessary work done in unremunerative fields of inquiry. One is reminded of a literary parallel — the sensation created at one time in the region of Shakspeare criticism by the discovery of the sources from which the poet derived the materials of his plays. For a moment it seemed as if the very secret of Shakspeare had been found out; and to this day no one can read without astonishment for the first time, in the introductions of Mr. Aldis
* Mr. Charles, in Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible gives the following as the leading products of Apocalyptic Literature: Apocalypse of Baruch, Book of Enoch, Book of the Secrets of Enoch, Ascension of Isaiah, Book of Jubilees. Assumption of Moses, Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, Psalms of Solomon, Sibylline Oracles.
Wright or other able editors, the old plays, the stories from Boccaccio, the extracts from Plutarch, and the other rough materials with which the dramatist worked; for he adheres to them, often for pages at a time, with extraordinary closeness. On second thoughts, however, everyone perceives that the copiousness of such borrowing only enhances the marvel of that genius which was able to transmute whatever it touched into a product entirely its own. The secret of Shakspeare no more lies in his sources than does the secret of the Parthenon in the quarry out of which it was built. Of late certain editors have been making similar discoveries about Burns, and have been so surprised at them as to express the fear lest the general diffusion of their knowledge might impair the popular faith in the poet’s originality; and it certainly does give a shock of surprise to compare, for example, The Coder’s Saturday Night for the first time with The Farmer’s Ingle of Ferguson. But they may spare their fears; for authors who can make of foreign materials what Shakspeare and Burns have made of theirs may borrow wherever they can and on any scale they please. It may be that Jesus was more the child of His age than we have been accustomed to suppose; and ideas or phrases may be recovered from apocalyptic literature which have entered into His teaching; but these are no more than the particles of inorganic matter which the plant takes up into its own substance and transmutes into forms of beauty. Indeed, the more the apocalyptic literature is unearthed, the more is the incomparable originality of Jesus enhanced; for nothing else in the whole range of human records is more utterly wearisome and worthless. The sneer of the great scholar, Lightfoot, about rabbinical literature might be applied to it with at least equal justice — Lege, si vacal, et si per icedium et nauseam potes*
* Those who insist so much more than is meet on the influence of the later Judaism on the teaching of Jesus might ponder, with profit to themselves, some words of Carlyle on a kindred subject: —” Show our critics a great man, they begin to, what they call, ‘account for him.’ He was ‘the creature of the time,’ they say; the time called him forth; the time did everything, he nothing. This seems to me but melancholy work. The time call forth? Alas, we have known times call loudly enough for their great man, but not find him when they called. He was not there, Providence had not sent him. The time, calling its loudest, had to go down to confusion and wreck because he would not come when called. I liken common times, with their unbelief, distress, perplexity, their languid doubting character, impotently crumbling down through even worse distress to final ruin, all this I liken to dry, dead fuel, waiting for the lightning out of heaven that shall quicken it. The great man, with his free, direct force out of God’s own hand, is the lightning. All blazes now around him. The critic thinks the dry, mouldering sticks have called him forth. They wanted him greatly, no doubt. But as to calling him forth! They are critics of small vision who think that the dead sticks have created the fire.’’
As for the Book of Similitudes, my belief, after many readings, is, that the passages on “the Son of man” are derived from Christianity. The whole book is strewn with interpolations, and must always have invited interpolation on account of the excessive looseness of its texture. Whatever definite connexion it has is interrupted by these passages, which bear a stamp of their own quite different from the adjacent materials. At all events their literary character is too doubtful to permit of any really scientific conclusions being built upon them.* Those who champion their genuineness suppose that the Enoch literature enjoyed an extensive circulation and was well-known in the circles in which Jesus grew up; one proof of which is that his brother, St. Jude, quotes one of the opening verses of the Book of Enoch — “And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of His saints, to execute judgment upon all; and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.” The name of “the Son of man,” as a messianic title, was, therefore, in the
* See Appendix B.
atmosphere which Jesus breathed; and it may have been thence, rather than directly from the Book of Enoch, that He derived it. But the phenomena of the Gospels are not in harmony with these assumptions. In the book called by his name Enoch is a heroic figure; he is the prophet of prophets; once, at least, he is even identified with the Messiah. But in the Gospels he is never once mentioned, and, even when all kinds of conjectures are being made as to who Jesus is, it is never once suggested that He is Enoch, though this might have been expected to be the very first suggestion, if Enoch had held the position supposed in the popular mind. That “the Son of man” was in any degree a current name for the Messiah is contradicted by the fact, which lies on the very surface of the Gospels, that, while Jesus called Himself “the Son of man” in all audiences, He continued, almost to the very end, to forbid His disciples to make Him known as the Christ. And the form of His question to the Twelve in the critical interview at Caesarea Philippi, “Whom do men say that I, the Son of man, am “? shows that the knowledge of Him as “the Son of man” was not identical with the knowledge of Him as the Messiah. To His own mind this was the meaning of the title; and it was destined sometime to convey the same meaning to others; but it more than half concealed the secret till it was ripe for disclosure.*
Thus we have passed in review the possible sources of this name, with the result that the indications point strongly to the passage in Daniel. And the place of origin determines the sense to be
* Baldensperger speaks with so much assurance of the sayings about the Son of man as original parts of the Enoch literature that in this country also some are affecting to take this for granted; but I am glad to find that Bousset, one of the younger and certainly one of the ablest members of the same school, in his work entitled Jesu Predigt in ihrem Gegensatz zum Judenthum, takes the same view as I have done; and the general tone in which he speaks of the postcanonical literature is identical with that which I have used. His reasons for looking upon the passages in question as interpolations are three. First, they interrupt the connexion, which is restored when they are removed; secondly, the view of the Son of man which they represent. is non-Jewish, such an uplifting of the Messiah to equality with God and to the position of Judge of the world being totally unlikely on Jewish soil; thirdly, in the development of Jewish Apocalyptic there is no tendency towards giving such a prominence to the Messiah: the tendency is rather the contrary way: the Messiah retreats more and more into the background, God’s own infinite power alone being looked to as the agency by which the changes of the future are to be brought about; so that the divine figure of the Messiah in this part of the Book of Enoch is neither preceded by anything similar to itself, leading up to it, nor followed by anything which it has produced. Wellhausen also declares it to be incredible that Jesus can have picked up His favourite title in the Book of Enoch: see Israclitische und Jildische Geschichte, p. 312, note.
messianic; though it does not seem to me at all unlikely, but the reverse, that the other Old Testament passages in which it occurs may have contributed to enrich its significance in the consciousness of Jesus.
Our conclusion is established by the linguistic structure of the phrase. The Greek is full-sounding — 6 vt6s tov av9p(x)Tiov — with the definite article before each of the nouns, literally “the son of the man.” The Fathers used to discuss the question, who “the man “was of whom He was the son. It was frequently held, that the reference was to the Virgin Mary, because of course” man “is equivalent to” human being.” Other suggestions were David, Abraham, Adam. But some even of the Fathers were aware, that in the circle of thought in which Jesus moved “man “and” son of man “were synonymous, and that, therefore, the article before” man “is generic; and this is now the accepted opinion. The other article, before ‘” son,” in all probability points directly back to the passage in Daniel, indicating that the” son of man ‘’ intended is the famous one referred to there.*
* A very thorough discussion of the Greek words will be found in Holsten’s famous article on Die Bedeutung der Ausdruiksform 6 vl6s toO avdpamov im Bewusstsein Jesu in Zeitschrift fiir wissenschaftliche Theologie 1S91, pp. 46 ff. Beyschlag,
The force of such linguistic deductions has been entirely called in question on the ground that the language spoken by Jesus was Aramaic, in which, it is argued, no phrase exists, or can have existed, equivalent to this Greek one. It is assumed, that the phrase employed by Jesus was barnash, which, instead of being a definite and dignified phrase like 6 uios tov av8pa>Trov, is in the highest degree vague and indefinite, meaning only “man” in the most general sense, or rather “anyone.” Wide attention has been drawn to this suggestion through Wellhausen having lent it the support of his great name; and a young scholar, Hans Lietzmann, has recently devoted an entire book to the development of the theory. His conclusions are, that Jesus never made use of the phrase at all, but that it came into use as a messianic title in Asia Minor not later than the middle of the second century. To English-speaking people such a theory will hardly appear serious enough for discussion, but will be thought one of those tours de force by which the German Privatdocent seeks to attract public attention. It may, however, be worth while to show wherein its weakness lies. One point of
following a hint derived from Hnpfeld, explains the second article from the Hebrew practice of placing the article before the second noun in such a compound phrase as “the son of man.’’ weakness is the dogmatic assertion, that the Aramaic language was incapable of supplying an equivalent to the Greek phrase. Evidently, barnash is no equivalent; but this only proves that a mistake has been made in assuming this to have been the phrase employed by Jesus. The Greek words have all the appearance of an effort to render something which was not Greek; and the task of scholarship is to find out what this was. But a still greater difficulty is to account for the introduction of the phrase, on so extensive a scale, into the Gospels, if, as is presupposed, these did not originally contain ’ it. To begin to call Jesus “the Son of man” would have excited the strongest suspicion at a time when belief in His godhead was everywhere diffused; and Lietzmann has not allowed himself to realise the difficulty of getting such a form of speech, arising in Asia Minor, introduced so extensively into the Gospels that no copies have remained without it. The author adduces, as one of his strongest arguments, the absence of the name from the Epistles of St. Paul and the other New Testament writings; for it occurs only once in the Book of Acts, in Stephen’s speech, and twice in the Book of Revelation.* But there may be other
* The writer of the Revelation seems, however, to go back not to the use of the term by Jesus, but to its use by Daniel.
reasons for this. For example, the name “Christ” itself had become so universal as to make other equivalents for the Messiah unnecessary. Verylikely the chief reason was the fear, just alluded to, of throwing doubt on our Lord’s divinity. At all events, if the name had been introduced into the Gospels in the way suggested by Lietzmann, is it not perfectly certain that it would have been inserted in the other New Testament writings as well? *
* Wellhausen’s statement occurs in a footnote, p. 312, of his Geschichte Israels. He assumes that Jesus simply said “man “where the Gospels make Him say” the Son of man.” Krop, in his book entitled Le Royaume de Dicu, has shown that this theological novelty is nothing more than the resurrection of a notion of the old rationalist Paulus. Great confusion is introduced into Lietzmann’s book by the fact that he seems often to be arguing for this hypothesis too. This, however, is not really his drift. He sees that a splendid phrase like 6 vlbs toO avdpimov cannot have been a rendering of barnash. But he is rash in affirming that it cannot have had any equivalent in Aramaic. Dalman, who, I suppose, is the most eminent Aramaic scholar living, sees no such difficulty, and he regards the discovery of Wellhausen as a mare’s nest — “Holtzmann nennt es eine ‘Entdeckung,’ dass in Jesu Muttersprache Menschensohn der einzige zu Gebote stehende Ausdruck fur Mensch sei. Wellhausen behauptet ‘Die Aramaer haben keinen anderen Ausdruck fur den Begriff,’ und Lietzmann in Uebereinstimmung mit Eerdmans begrilndet darauf seine These, ‘Jesus hat sich selbst nie den Titel Menschensohn beigelegt, weil derselbe im Aramaischen nicht existiert und aus sprachlichen Griinden nicht existieren kann.’ Gleichwohl ist es ein schlimmer Irrtum,
We hold ‘it, then, to be established that the passage in Daniel is the source of this title, and that its meaning is messianic. But a question of great importance still remains: Why did Jesus appropriate this name as His favourite from among all those which were offered by the Old Testament or which might have occurred to His own mind? It was not, as we have seen, thrust upon Him by its popularity among His contemporaries; nor, if it had, would this alone have determined His choice: a
welcher bei gewissenhafter Beachtung auch nur des biblischaramaischen Sprachgebrauchs unmoglich gewesen ware. Wenn der zusammangesetzte Ausdruck Ciii 12 Menschensohn determiniert werden sollte, konnte die Determination nur zu CJXtreten, wie bei hebr. DIN J3 zu D1X. So entsteht NB’JN 13, D“lNn |3 was eben nicht ‘der Mensch ’ (so de Lagarde, Wellhausen Lietzmann) sondern nur mit ’ der Menschensohn’ iibersetzt werden darf, wenn man nicht die Eigenart des Ausdrucks vollig verwischen will.” Mrs. Lewis informs me that in Old Syriac the rendering of “the Son of man “is generally bareh de ansha (in Cureton’s MS. 42 times, in her own palimpsest 65 times), though it is a few times bareh de gabra. She does not, however, suppose that this was the form of words used by Jesus; but she adds, with much point,” It seems to me that the Evangelists and the copyists of their text must have been perfectly well acquainted with Syriac idioms and, therefore, could not have translated barnash by d vios toO avBpamov, and that some more definite phrase must have been behind the Greek.’’ I am indebted to Mrs. Lewis and her sister, Mrs. Gibson, for their kind courtesy in examining manuscripts and interviewing experts for me on this ticklish point.
self-designation so intimate must have had its chief reason in His own mind.
The suggestion has been made, that it commended itself to Him because the figure in Daniel, being of heavenly origin and engaged in high and solemn fellowship with the Ancient of days, before descending to engage in his earthly task, would correspond with His consciousness of pre-existence. Again, the practical reason has been hinted at already, that the name suited His purpose of concealing His messianic claims, while it expressed them to Himself and hinted them to His disciples. But, it seems to me, the deepest reason for His choice of this name must have been the admirable expression which it gives to His connexion with the human race. That the sense of His identity with all mankind was one of His master-sentiments requires no demonstration. With whatever is high and noble in man’s nature or destiny He was in intimate sympathy; and His compassion reached down to everything that is painful or pathetic in the human lot. He is the Brother of all, the Man of men. This is one of the two poles on which His messiahship rests. Without this connexion with the race and this universality of sympathy He could not have been the Messiah.
It must be confessed, however, it is surprising in how few of the passages in which “the Son of man” occurs there is direct and undeniable reference to this.* It has even been argued, that there is no such reference in any of them at all. But this is an exaggeration. When He says, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath,” and then adds, “Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath,” the force of the inference lies partly in the identity of the Speaker with all the children of men and partly in His supremacy above them. He is the head and representative to whom it belongs to guard and vindicate their rights.f When He contrasted Himself with the Baptist by saying that “the Son of man came eating and drinking,” He was pointing to His sympathy with all simple and natural human enjoyments. Even when He says, “The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost,” while He may be describing a function of the Messiah, the great saying gains immeasurably in depth and pathos, if we consider it to express His sense of brotherhood with all men,
* Of course there is abundant reference to it in His sayings in general; and nearly every incident of His life could be quoted in illustration.
+ Lietzmann and others take the inference to be that man collectively is Lord of the Sabbath. But would Jesus have made this assertion? I do not think so.
even the worst. Indeed, even if it be allowed that the primary reference in every saying about” the Son of man ‘’ is to messiahship, yet, on the other hand, everyone of them gains in point and power, if this under-sense be also remembered.
There must have been a moment in the experience of Jesus when the text in Daniel, so often referred to, suddenly shone forth upon Him as the guiding-star of His career; and, if only a record of this incident had been vouchsafed to us, much that is dark would have been made clear. Where did it take place? Was it in Nazareth, some Sabbath, when in the synagogue the Prophets were being read? or was it later, during one of the nights of communion with His Father on some mountain-top of Galilee, when the words of the sacred Book stood out on the sky of His imagination in letters of fire? To those His experience will not be altogether foreign to whom, in some great spiritual crisis, a word of God, detaching itself from the rest of Scripture, has been given as a pledge of the divine choice, to be kept forever. I have expressed a certain regret and disappointment that our Lord’s favourite name is official rather than personal; but I take this back; because I now see, that, when He was standing before the Word of God, to receive the message of destiny, it was meet that this should come to Him not as a reflection upon His own qualities and attributes, but as a summons to a grand work, which was to carry Him out of Himself and absorb all His powers. Or if, in any degree, in that solemn hour there was the consciousness of self, it was the consciousness of His identity with all the children of men, whom He was to seek and to save*
Identity — and yet at one essential point there is no evidence of participation by Jesus in the experience of humanity; for He betrays no consciousness of sin.
The proof of the sinlessness of Jesus is not derived exclusively from the Gospels; and in the Gospels it is not proved exclusively by His own words; nor are the most forcible even of such words in the Synoptists. The Synoptists, indeed, draw frequent attention to the impression of His perfection made on both friends and foes. Thus they tell us, how the centurion at the cross declared, evidently with
* During the passage of this book through the press an important essay on “The Son of Man” has appeared in the sixth volume of Wellhausen’s Skizzen und Vorarbeiten. It adds little to the arguments advanced by Lietzmann for eliminating the phrase from the words of Jesus; but it is much more cautious about determining when and where the name was given to our Lord.
deep emotion, that Jesus was “a righteous man “; how Pilate and Pilate’s wife acknowledged His innocence; how the Baptist affirmed,” I have need to be baptized of Thee, and comest Thou to me? “how St. Peter, in the boat, dazzled with the proximity of perfect moral purity, cried out, ‘’ Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord “; and how even Judas confessed that he had betrayed “innocent blood.” * But they do not record sayings in which He lays claim to sinlessness.
They even narrate incidents which might be interpreted as acknowledging the reverse. Such is His baptism. Was not the baptism of John the baptism of repentance? Such it was to others; but it need not necessarily have been so to Him; for, besides this negative side, it had also a positive side: it not only symbolized the washing of the nation from sin, but its consecration to a new career of holiness. Jesus knew Himself to be the Leader ot this new movement; and, knowing this, He might choose, in His humility, to go through the common door, although the negative virtue of the ordinance was not a necessity to Him. Then, there is His statement to one who hailed Him as “Good Master”:” Why callest thou Me good? there is none good
* Luke xxiii. 47, 4; Matt, xxvii. 19; iii. 14; Luke v. 8; Matt, xxvii. 4.
but One, that is God.” Is not this a confession of imperfection? It is an acknowledgment of a certain kind of imperfection — the imperfection of a character that is growing, and has to realise its goodness on every fresh stage of advancement — but this does not necessarily imply a guilty imperfection at any stage. It is not, however, for anything which they make Him say positively about His sinlessness that the Synoptists are remarkable, but for the things they do not make Him say. A recent writer has adduced as a fresh proof of His sinlessness, that He never prayed in company with others: He taught the Twelve to pray, but He did not pray even with them, the reason being that prayer requires the confession of sin, which He could not make.* On this I lay no stress, because I am doubtful of the fact. It seems to me that He did pray with others when He gave thanks in their name; and may there not be prayer without confession? But the broad fact remains, that Jesus did not confess sin. His habits of prayer are commemorated in the Gospels, and specimens of His prayers are given; but these include no acknowledgments of personal transgression. This is in striking contrast with the other great
* Forrest, The Christ of History and of Expeiicnce, c. I. T .e chapter, as a whole, is an admirable statement on the sinlessness ot Jesus.
figures of the Jewish race. Isaiah confesses, “Woe is me, for I am undone, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips.” David says, “I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.’’ Job says, “I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” Ezra says, “my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to Thee, my God, for our iniquities are increased over our heads, and our trespass is grown up unto the heavens.” Our Lord’s own apostles make similar acknowledgments. Thus St. Paul groans, “Oh wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” And even the saintly St. John confesses, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” Such is the tone of all the men of religious genius who were either the teachers of Jesus or His disciples. If He was merely the supreme religious genius among them all, it would be natural to expect from Him still more agonizing cries of penitence. But nothing of the kind is ever heard from His lips. What is the explanation of this singular phenomenon? It will hardly be interpreted as a defect. Could it be so understood, it would lower Him far beneath such figures as have just been quoted; for what quality of saintliness is more essential than humility? But, if it was not a defect, the only alternative is, that
He confessed no sin because He had none to confess but was “holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners.”*
* The proof of the sinlessness of Jesus rests primarily on His own testimony in St. John (see especially iv. 34; viii. 29, 46) and the Synoptists, secondly on that of the apostles (see, for example, Heb. iii. 15; vii. 26; Acts iii. 14; 1 Peter iii. 18; I John iii. 5; 2 Cor. v. 21), and thirdly on the prevalence in Christendom of the ideal of holiness. Wherever Christianity exists, holiness exists. Remarkable holiness may be a rare phenomenon; but in every Christian community there are many striving after it, and there are few places in Christendom where there cannot be found some whose holiness impresses others as distinctly a divine creation. Not infrequently the’ effect is overawing in a high degree — a vision of unearthly beauty. And Christian holiness, which is a well proportioned mixture of religion and morality, traces itself back to Christ. Its communion with God is founded on reconciliation through Him; it knows itself to spring from a life rooted in Him; it is a never-ending imitation of Him; and it knows Him to be infinitely above itself. But, if He is far above the holiest, must He not have been perfectly holy? The Christian movement towards holiness must have as its fons et origo One whose holiness was perfect. Ullmann’s book on the Sinlessness of Jesus is one of the most artistic and enduring products of German theology.