Son of man (Christianity)

Son of man is an expression in the sayings of Jesus in Christian writings, including the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles and the Book of Revelation.

Interpretation of the use of "the Son of man" in the New Testament has remained challenging and after 150 years of debate no consensus on the issue has emerged among scholars.

[3] Geza Vermes has stated that the use of "the Son of man" in the Christian gospels is unrelated to Hebrew Torah usages.

In the Koine Greek of the New Testament, "the son of man" is "ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου" (ho huios tou anthropou).

Vermes begins with the observation that there is no example of "the" son of man in Hebrew sources and suggests that the term originates in Aramaic – ברנש – bar nash/bar nasha.

[5] However, other sources argue that the Son of Man is a title, claimed by Jesus as a way of asserting his own divine nature.

[7][10] In Matthew 8:20 and Luke 9:58 Jesus states: "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head."

[13] The title "Son of Man" is used nine times in the Book of Moses, a 19th-century work considered canonical scripture by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and included in its publication The Pearl of Great Price.

[2] The earliest approaches, going back to the Fathers of the Church, relied on the Greek expression and interpreted "son" in a parental sense.

[2] By the time the Protestant Reformation was under way, three new approaches had emerged, one that saw it as an expression of the humanity of Jesus, another that viewed it as a messianic title derived from the Book of Daniel (7.13) and a third which considered it as a general idiom for self-reference.

[2] In the last part of the 20th century, the messianic view was highly criticized and the concept of idiomatic use began to gain support among some scholars.

[1][2] Another view put forward by Bart D. Ehrman (1999) is that there are some passages (as such Mark 8:38, 13:26, 14:62; Matthew 19:28, 25:31–46; and Luke 12:8–9) in which Jesus mentions 'the Son of Man' and does not appear to be talking about himself, but about someone else, namely a cosmic judge who would come down from heaven to bring judgment.

[15][19] Sixty-nine times in the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus calls himself (the) "Son of man", a Greek expression which in its Aramaic (and Hebrew) background could be an oblique way of indicating the speaker's own self (e.g., Matt 8:20), or else simply mean "someone" or "a human being" (as in Ps 8:4, where it is a poetic variant for "man").

In Daniel 7:13–14 the "Son of man" seems to symbolize the angels (perhaps the archangel Michael) and/or the righteous and persecuted Jews who will be vindicated and given authority by God (Dan 7:18,21–22,27; 10:13, 21; 12:1) rather than function as one individual, heavenly figure who represents the people.

8:4) or be a way of pointing to a prophet's insignificance and finite dependence in the face of God's glory and infinite power.

[21] According to the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus referred to himself as "Son of man" in three contexts, each with its own circle of fairly distinct meanings.

Now, if the early Church had freely created the Son of man sayings, it would be puzzling that this designation for Jesus is not found on the lips of others.

The puzzle disappears once it is agreed that there is here a genuine historical recollection: only Jesus used the term, and the evangelists and their sources faithfully recorded that.

Later on, the Church Fathers would use the term as a way of referring to Christ's humanity as opposed to his divinity or to his being the Son of God.

Apparently, Luke has preserved the original form of the saying, which indicates a certain unity of function between Jesus himself and the Son of man, but at the same time introduces some differentiation between the two figures.

The differentiation makes sense once it is recognised that it recalls a turn of phrase actually used by Jesus to distinguish his present preaching from his future judging.

The distinction had its point in the historical context of his ministry, but not later in the post-Easter situation where believers acknowledged the personal unity between the risen Jesus and the Son of man who would come in glory.

Jesus responded "I am: and you shall see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.

"[9] In the parable of the Sheep and the Goats, the returning Son of man has the power to judge, by separating men from "all the nations" into distinct groups, in Matthew 25:31–46.

[9] However, James Dunn has pointed out that there is no overall scholarly agreement on these issues, and the Christological debates have continued for well over a century without the emergence of consensus.