Son of man

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" Son of Man " ( Hebrew ben adam בן – אדם, Aramaic bar enascha or bar nascha ) is a term from the Hebrew Bible . There it describes a member of the human species in the sense of “someone” or “one”, and then in post-exilic prophecy and biblical apocalyptic a certain transcendent mediator of salvation of the end times .

In the New Testament (NT) the Greek expression ἱὸ υἱὸς τοὺ ἀνθρώπου ( ho hyios tu anthropu , "the son of man") appears almost exclusively in Jesus of Nazareth's own statements , only once as a statement about him, always in the third person, never as a statement about others. Many New Testament scholars therefore consider the title to be a self-designation for the historical Jesus. On the other hand, they consider other sovereign titles such as “ Son of God ”, “ Son of David ”, “ Messiah ” or “ Kyrios ” (Lord) to be names that the Jews and early Christians of the time attached to Jesus, partly during his lifetime and partly after his death.

Bamberg Apocalypse : The Son of Man under the seven candlesticks. ( Rev 1.12f  EU ).

Jewish writings

genesis

Prehistory describes the creation of the world as a goal-oriented process of God's creation that is oriented towards human life . The first human appears under the name Adam ( Gen 1.26  EU ) as the archetype and prototype of all his fellow species, whereby "Adam" can mean both "human" and "man". However, for the Bible all human beings apply in the polarity of man and woman as being of the same kind created in God's image (1.27 EU ). 3.15 EU suggests that as descendants of Adam and Eve they are definitely different from God and subject to the conditions of existence, but who nevertheless remain images and partners of God responsible for the preservation of all life. Then Ps 8,5  EU asks :

"What is a person that you think of him and what is the child of a person that you take care of him?"

This justified in God's care, not empirically demonstrable human dignity refers to the generic name Son of man in the Bible, which today also gender neutral with man is translated.

prophecy

With Ezekiel , vision as the medium of divine revelation moves into the center of prophetic speech. This prophet is addressed by God 87 times as son of man ( ben adam ). He is filled with God's spirit ( Ez 2,1  EU ) seer of the sin of God's people (8,5 EU ), who dwell under this hardened people, announce God's judgment to them in riddles (17.2 EU ) and suffer from it themselves ( 24.16 EU and others) must. He may then also refer to the coming “good shepherd” (34.23 EU ), the gathering of all of Israel in the vision of the resurrection of dried bones (37 EU ) and the Last Judgment (40.4 EU ; 43.7–10 EU ; 47.6 EU ) anticipate and announce, even set it in motion yourself (39.17 EU ). The address as the Son of Man is, on the one hand, a determination to suffer the judgment of God over his people, and on the other hand, an honor as a prophet of the end times for all peoples.

Book Daniel

The book of Daniel describes the "who looked like the son of a man" as the future representative of mankind, to whom YHWH would transfer his rule over the coming world, the kingdom of God , after his final judgment . This figure was also assigned God's role as an end-time judge in the post-biblical Jewish apocalyptic , and she was identified with the Messiah .

In Ez 1.26 f. EU appears to God himself on his throne as one who looked like a human being . Daniel's vision of the coming of God to the final judgment is linked to this, in which it says ( Dan 7:13 f.  EU ):

“[…] There came one [who looked] like a son of man with the clouds of heaven. He got as far as the very old man and was brought before him. He was given rule, dignity, and kingship. All peoples, nations and languages ​​must serve him. His rule is an eternal, imperishable rule. His empire will never end. "

This figure appears here in contrast to the four animal figures that rose one after the other from the Chaos Sea and embodied the violent, increasing inhuman rule of ancient empires. After their destruction by God, the Son of Man asserts God's rulership worldwide.

The vision takes up motifs from the ancient oriental religion of Canaan : God's final battle with mythical opposing powers, the council of a pantheon , the replacement of the rule of an old god by a young god. Here, however, these motifs are transformed from specifically biblical prophecy :

  • God alone appears for judgment, the other thrones remain vacant.
  • The judgment begins by uncovering the violations of the law recorded by God (“Books have been opened”, v. 10).
  • The world empires destroyed in the fire of judgment are not antigods, but powers permitted by God himself and limited in time (v. 12).
  • The king, characterized as a “loudmouth”, who asserts himself against three predecessors (v. 8) and persecutes and destroys the “saints” (v. 25), refers to Antiochus IV. He tried to revive the religion of the Israelites at the time the vision was written ( approx. 170 BC). Daniel hopes that this will be followed by God's final judgment and the human kingdom of the Son of Man.
  • He is given the task of realizing God's will worldwide. By transferring his power to him, God creates peace among nations . Since all peoples serve this true, God-determined man, the language confusion among them ( Gen 11: 1-9  EU ) is finally overcome.

The one who "looked like a human being" can therefore be understood as a representative of the human species, who, in contrast to the earthly world powers, embodies and enforces the divine determination of all human beings to be partners and likenesses of God in the preservation of creation. In prophecy since Micah and Isaiah, this role was intended for a future descendant of King David , later called Mashiach . Here, on the other hand, the universal implementation of the divine plan of history is no longer expected from a person of earthly origin, but from a being who comes from God's realm, and not within history, but after the breakdown of world history by God himself.

The following interpretation of the vision ( Dan 7,16-28  EU ) relates the figure to the "saints of the Most High". In the context, the expression means the people of God Israel, at least the remaining believing Jews who remain faithful to their God to the last in the devastating situation of persecution. The Son of Man also represents their permanent election, which is not canceled in God's theocracy . This expresses the hope that God himself - and then finally - will one day renew creation, which is dominated, deformed and destroyed by ever new tyranny, and thus Israel's determination to be the people of God for all other peoples ( Gen 12.3  EU ) will confirm and realize.

Extra-biblical apocalyptic

Later apocalyptic writings of Judaism , which were not included in the Tanakh , took up Daniel's vision and varied their motifs. The figurative discourses of the Ethiopian Book of Enoch (Chapters 37-71) describe a figure with the appearance of a human being as a pre-existing heavenly figure at God's throne (48.3.6 f .; 62.7), who at the end of time not only takes over God's world domination (48 , 5; 69.26), but will judge the world itself (62.5; 69.27 ff.). He is called both this Son of Man and the Chosen One . Only in the attached chapter 71 is he identified with the Enoch of prehistory ( Gen 5:24  EU ).

The 4th Book of Ezra proclaims in the 13th chapter within the framework of an apocalyptic vision the figure like that of a human being who - contrary to Daniel's vision - rises out of the sea as an earthly king and then, flying on the clouds of heaven, destroys and destroys an innumerable army of God's enemies a peaceful army is gathering. In the interpretation of the vision he is referred to as this person or the man (Adam) through whom God will redeem creation (13.25); let him be his son (13:32). However, his task does not go beyond what has been expected of the coming descendant of David since Isaiah: the victory over the peoples hostile to God and the gathering of the true believers from Israel. Here the prophetic expectation of the Messiah and the apocalyptic expectation of the sons of man after the lost Jewish War were combined and renewed as a warlike image.

Both texts use the nouns the Son of Man (1st Enoch) or the human being (4th Ezra) in addition to other sovereign titles. They do not designate any representative of the human species, but rather an apocalyptic judge, each of its own form, whose special task is the universal implementation of God's will in the context of the end of the world.

Early Christian Scriptures

Findings in the New Testament

The finding in the NT shows a number of abnormalities:

  • The Greek expression is found almost exclusively in the Gospels.
  • It always shows a double determination that is unusual for a Greek sense of language: " the son of man".
  • It appears in a total of 82 places; after subtracting all parallels, there remain 36 independently formulated Son of Man logia .
  • All of these words appear as self-statements from Jesus. Only once does the expression appear in an indirect quote from Jesus ( Lk 24.7  EU ), another time as a question of understanding for Jesus' interlocutors ( John 12.34  EU ).
  • Jesus always speaks of the Son of Man in the third person, mostly with reference to his own actions. But the statement form “I am the Son of Man” never appears.
  • Only one more time, in the creed of the early Christian missionary Stephen ( Acts 7.56  EU ), the term appears outside the Gospels as a foreign name for Jesus, but again not as a direct equation "Jesus [he] is the Son of Man".
  • In the church letters one usually only finds the terms “man” ( 1 Tim 2,5  EU ), “human child ” ( Heb 2,6 ff.  EU , quotation from Ps 8,6) and the indefinite “son of a man” ( Rev. 1.13 f.  EU and Rev 14.14  EU ) without direct reference to the name Jesus.
  • None of the Son of Man passages in the NT cite passages from the Book of Enoch or Esra. Direct quotations, partial quotations and allusions to them can only be found from Daniel's vision.
  • That being said, the Gospels show clear differences in the context and use of the Son of Man title; some parallels use the personal pronoun "I" instead.

Synoptic Gospels

According to the two-source theory that is widely recognized today, the synoptic Son of Man's words can be found both in the Gospel of Mark and in the common source of the Logia (abbreviated as Q), which is only available to the Gospel of Matthew and Luke, as well as in their own special property . They are divided into three groups in terms of content:

Words from the presently working Son of Man

This group of sayings can be found both in Markus and in the Logienquelle.

  • Mk 2,10  EU (present sovereignty): But you should recognize that the Son of Man has the authority to forgive sins here on earth.

As a sign of this “authority” (Greek exousia ) for the forgiveness of sins , which according to the Jewish understanding of the time was only granted to God, Jesus then commands a paralyzed person to get up, take his bed and go away. For just as incurable illnesses were regarded as the result of sin, so the unexpected healing was a sign of forgiveness. The title of the Son of Man thus justifies Jesus' present healing action (see also the miracles of Jesus ). The Matthean variant of Mt 9.8  EU thus justifies Jesus' demand that his disciples also forgive sins.

  • Mk 2,28  EU : So the Son of Man is also Lord over the Sabbath.

Here the title of Jesus establishes the authority to interpret individual commandments of the Torah in such a way that they do not stand in the way of healing.

  • Mt 11:18 f. EU (Q): John has come, he does not eat or drink and they say: He is demon possessed. The Son of Man has come, he eats and drinks; then they say: This eater and drunkard, this friend of tax collectors and sinners!

Here the title of Jesus denotes the mission of the religiously and socially excluded, to whom his mealtimes - in contrast to the rigorous ascetic penance of John the Baptist - appropriated the forgiveness of sins and thus participation in the kingdom of God. Obviously some Pharisees took offense at this action; Jewish tax collectors were often viewed as despised, lawless, fraudulent collaborators with the Roman occupying power.

  • Lk 9.58  EU (= Mt 8.20; Q): The foxes have pits and the birds of the sky have nests; the Son of Man, on the other hand, has nothing to lay his head on.

Here the title describes the present humiliation as the homelessness of the Messenger of God, who is even unsecured from animals in the world. In the style of the Gospels, this already indicates his impending end on the cross.

Words from the suffering, dying and resurrecting Son of Man

This group appears in the so-called announcements of the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus in the Gospels, which editorially braced the common material from Galilee with the Jerusalem Passion Report. Like any direct reference to the Passion tradition, it is absent in the Logia source.

  • Mk 9.12  EU : He replied: Yes, Elijah comes first and restores everything. But why then does it say of the Son of Man in Scripture that he will suffer much and be despised? I tell you, Elijah has already come, but they did what they wanted to him, as it is in the scriptures.

The word answers a disciples question about the second coming of the prophet Elijah , which was expected in Judaism as the beginning of the end times. The answer indirectly points to the fate of the Baptist, who was executed before Jesus appeared. Jesus sees him as a returned end-time prophet, so that his own appearance appears as the beginning of the end-time. Jesus puts his expected suffering, which he had in mind with the end of the Baptist, in the Jewish tradition of the murder of the prophet. However, the Tanakh does not promise suffering and despise from the Son of Man, but from the Servant of God ( Isa 53  EU ).

  • Mk 9:31  EU (second announcement of suffering): The Son of Man is delivered into the hands of men and they will kill him, and after he has been killed he will rise after three days.

This word is considered possibly authentic, as it expresses a general expectation of death and speaks of "the people". The variants Mk 8.31  EU and Mk 10.33 f. EU (first and third announcement of suffering), on the other hand, list the Jewish leadership groups who condemned and handed over Jesus: this is considered the Markinian editorial team.

  • Mk 10.45  EU : For the Son of Man did not come to be served either, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

The word of the ransom for many (Aramaic the many in the sense of the comprehensive multitude, all ) alludes to Isa 53,12 EU , the assumption of guilt by the servant of God who suffers on behalf  of the sin of his people. In contrast to the Son of Man in Isa 52:14  EU it was said of this :

"Many were appalled by him, he looked so distorted, no longer human, his shape was no longer that of a human."

Like Mk 9:12, the allusion proves a possible connection between the expectation of the Son of Man and the Servant of God, which could go back to Jesus. Because also in the Daniel vision there was talk of the end of all tyranny, which the Son of Man would replace. Here, however, this happens through the vicarious suffering of this same tyranny as the slave service of the Messenger of God. With this, the expectation of a Son of Man on the other side for the peoples is drawn into the earthly atonement for Israel.

  • Mk 14,41  EU : And he came a third time and said to them: Are you still sleeping and resting? It's enough. The hour has come; now the Son of Man is being handed over to sinners.

This point in the Gethsemane scene marks the beginning of the Passion events to which the announcements of suffering pointed. According to Dan 7.25  EU, the delivery into the hands of sinners was the fate of the people of God, which would precede the final judgment and the turning point towards the human realization of the kingdom of God. So here Jesus enters into this end-time suffering of his people and accepts it as his own.

Words from the coming Son of Man

This group of sayings dominates in matters that are assigned to the source of the Logia. Outside of this, such words are found almost exclusively in the so-called synoptic apocalypse (Mk 13 par).

  • Mt 10.23  EU (Q): If you are persecuted in one city, flee to another. Amen, I say to you, you will not finish the cities of Israel until the Son of Man comes.

This word connects the current persecution of the early Christian missionaries in Israel - possibly in the context of the Jewish uprising (66-70), when parts of the early community had to flee to Pella in Syria - with the end times. The resolution is: whoever remains steadfast to the end will be saved.

  • Lk 12.40  EU : For the Son of Man comes at an hour when you don't mean it.
  • Mk 13.26  EU parr: And then one will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. (indirect quotation from Daniel 7.13 f.)
  • Mk 14.62  EU : Jesus said: It is me. And you will see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of might and coming with the clouds of heaven.

This passage is Jesus' answer to the high priest's Messiah question. Only this one time does Jesus acknowledge his Messiah dignity directly in the Gospels and then announce the coming of the enthroned Son of Man to rule the world. This triggers the Sanhedrin's death sentence .

Gospel of John

The term appears 13 times in John's Gospel . With the exception of the question of understanding of the people in Joh 12,34  EU (there the term is used twice) these are exclusively self-statements of Jesus.

The following passages are announcements of a future figure who will be represented as exalted or heavenly :

The Gospel of John, however, interprets this elevation - especially in the last three places - as an elevation to the cross , with which the goal of the earthly mission of Jesus is achieved.

In addition, the Son of Man works for people in several ways, both in the present and in the future:

  • He holds court (5.27 EU )
  • He gives food and drink that lead to life (6.27 EU , 6.53 EU )
  • He heals a man born blind (9.35 EU )

The Gospel of John thus connects the dimensions of the present and future appearance of Jesus as the Son of Man in such a way that an identity is achieved between them.

Paul's letters

Paul of Tarsus never used the title of son of man, although he was otherwise familiar with titles from the early Jerusalem community such as Kyrios and Son of God , which he often cited.

The Pauline theology , however, can safely assume that Paul also knew that expression. He often quoted Psalm 8, in which the Hebrew expression occurs in a generic sense, but interpreted the passage as a reference to the Messiah ( 1 Cor 15.27  EU and Phil 3.21  EU ). Furthermore, he took over the apocalyptic notion of a resurrection to the final judgment in the book of Daniel and compared Christ as the “firstfruits” of the general dead resurrection to the archetype of all mortal people, Adam ( 1 Cor 15.12 ff.  EU ).

In addition, he quoted the early Christian Philippians hymn ( Phil 2,5-11  EU ) in full length, which probably alludes to Daniel's end-time vision of God's transfer of power to the Son of Man, the general raising of the dead and his recognition by all people:

“That is why God also exalted him and gave him the name that is above all names, so that in the name of Jesus all those knees in heaven and on earth and under the earth should bow and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ who is Kyrios - for the glory of God the Father. "

Apocrypha

The Gospel of Thomas , the oldest components of which, according to today's view, may have originated at about the same time as the source of the Logia - i.e. between 40 and 70 AD - contradicts the synoptic finding: only once does the term son of man appear as Jesus' own statement (Logion 86), otherwise always as a designation of the people around Jesus ( Logion 28) who are distinguished by him (Logion 106).

Logion 86 changes a word of Jesus known from the NT ( Mt 8.20  EU ; Lk 9.58  EU ):

"The foxes have caves ... but the Son of Man has no place to bow his head and rest."

This does not describe Jesus himself, but the general situation of his followers. From Jesus' perspective, the human being is here without dwelling and restless on earth. The Gospel of Thomas thus indirectly supports the generic meaning of the title of the Son of Man in some NT passages.

In the late Gospel of Philip the term appears once as a secondary comment on an act of God: The Son of Man came as a dyer. (63.25–30) The coloration in white contradicts the actions of the world, which Jesus crucified and surrenders to darkness (63,24). It symbolizes the transformation of the world eclipse into the coming, heavenly way of existence.

Exegetical discussion

"Jesus is true God and true man at the same time" (Old Church)

In patristics , the title of the Son of Man was understood generically as part of the doctrine of two natures (see Council of Chalcedon (451)) as a reference to Jesus' true human nature. Not its interpretation was controversial, but that of the title "Son of God". Up to the 2nd Council of Nicea , the view prevailed: Jesus, as the eternal Son of God, who existed with God before all time and is identical in nature with him, represents the true God to mankind. By assuming human form and appearing, suffering and dying among people as a human being, this God also represents humanity towards God. Because he was the only person to exist sinlessly and bowing his will to God's will, he obtained our redemption from sin and death.

"Jesus describes himself as the representative of all people" (Reformation time)

The humanism of the 16th century created new translations of the Bible from Hebrew and Greek manuscripts that were known at the time and reflected the juxtaposition of the words of the I and the Son of Man in the Gospels. The latter was explained as a paraphrase of the personal pronoun "I" in the third person, which was common among Hebrews. The words of the appearing Son of Man, which were reminiscent of Daniel's vision and were difficult to explain as a paraphrasing of the first person, were hardly distinguishable from the descendant of Adam referred to in Genesis 3:15 and Psalm 8.

"Jesus was deified as the coming Son of Man" (liberal theology)

It was not until the enlightened criticism of the Bible that it began to examine the sovereign titles of the NT historically and critically and to illuminate their origins and their meaning in order to differentiate and explain Jesus' self-image from the early Christian faith. For many exegetes, the distribution of evidence in the NT justified the assumption that Jesus himself used the title of Son of Man and that the early Christians respected this by not adopting it in the form of expression.

The liberal theology retained the humanistic explanation of the I-description, but differed increasingly Jesus' own words of the Son of Man later that the early Christians had put in his mouth. The passages that allude to Daniel's vision were now often seen as post-Easter. Julius Wellhausen, for example, explained that Jesus only uses the title to describe his “I”. It was only after Paul, who did not use the title, that it was reinterpreted according to Dan 7.

Wilhelm Bousset , representative of the religious history school in NT science around 1900, favored the emergence of the apocalyptic Son of Man among the Palestinian early Christians, who expected the parousia (second coming) of the risen Christ and therefore identified him with the Son of Man coming to the final judgment. In doing so, they had also adopted other sovereign titles such as Kyrios from the Hellenistic environment and transferred them to Jesus in order to honor Jesus against parallel mystery cults.

In contrast, the studies by Johannes Weiß and Albert Schweitzer emphasized that Jesus' own proclamation of the Kingdom of God was strongly influenced by Jewish apocalyptic. Nevertheless, White assigned the words of the coming Son of Man to the early Christians and explained them as a mythological expression for the impression that Jesus' “religious personality” had left on them.

In 1901 William Wrede denied all the words of the Son of Man from the historical Jesus and assigned them to later, dogmatizing stages in the history of tradition. Today most New Testament scholars see a core of the Son of Man's words as authentic, but they determine and interpret it differently:

  • as a link to apocalyptic ideas circulating in Judaism at the time,
  • as generic statements about being human,
  • as statements of Jesus that cannot be derived from given traditions about his future expectations, his end-time role and his self-image. Today, overall hypotheses are no longer drawn up, but different assessments are made for each individual word.

"Jesus expected someone else" (Rudolf Bultmann)

In his theology of the New Testament, Rudolf Bultmann reversed the previously predominant view of the history of religion: He only considered the words of the future Son of Man to be the original words of Jesus. Jesus took over his expectation from the Jewish apocalyptic and with the title of Son of Man in the third person announced someone else as final judge and savior.

Bultmann also held Luke 12.8 f. EU for authentic: Jesus demanded the decision for or against his own preaching and brought it into the closest relationship to the future decision of the Son of Man for or against the believer. Then it was obvious for the early church to equate Jesus with this coming Son of Man. All the formulas that herald the suffering and death of the Son of Man in the Gospels were only put into Jesus' mouth after Easter ( vaticinia ex eventu ). Although some of the words about the presently acting Son of Man in the mouth of Jesus could be real, they can then simply be translated as “man”.

This conception found many supporters among German Protestant New Testament scholars and had a schooling effect. You followed u. a. Herbert Braun , Günther Bornkamm , Heinz Eduard Tödt and Ferdinand Hahn . They tried to elucidate the tradition of the Son of Man's words of the NT in each individual case. The double determination of the Greek title was mostly taken as an indication that the Aramaic expression "this person", which is indefinite in itself, was already a firmly established term or sovereign title in Jesus' mouth , meant a certain eschatological mediator of salvation and was therefore reserved for his person after the Easter events could be.

"Jesus was identified with the coming Son of Man" (Bultmann student)

Tödt substantiated Bultmann's exegetical position as follows:

  • Jesus always speaks in the third person of the coming Son of man, while he openly identifies himself with him in the words of his earthly work and suffering. The former is a sure sign of Jesus' self-image as the forerunner of the Son of Man, the latter for secondary church formation.
  • All three groups of slogans have a different origin and tradition. The Logia source only knows words from the coming Son of Man, therefore these are older than the announcements of suffering and resurrection. In the words of the earthly work of the Son of Man, in turn, his transcendent nature and task are not taken into account. Although the title is transferred to Jesus, it is only filled by his actions.
  • In the synoptic word Lk 12.8 f. (par. Mk 8,38) let Jesus differ from the Son of Man. He promised the community of those who confess to him future confirmation through a similar community with the Son of Man in the kingdom of God. The fact that the Son of Man is used as guarantor for the earthly authority of Jesus precludes a direct identification of Jesus with him. Only the good of salvation - communion with God, here as communion with Jesus, there with the Son of man - is identical.
  • The death of Jesus on the cross radically called into question his right to power. Only through his resurrection did God confirm Jesus' claim for his followers. As a result, the identification of Jesus with the Son of Man became inevitable for them. The early community identified the giver of the salvific good with the gift and also transferred the title of Son of Man to the suffering and earthly work of Jesus.

This conception soon met with various contradictions. Joachim Jeremias , Carsten Colpe and Philipp Vielhauer denied that Luke 12.8 was more original than the Matthew 10.32 version in which Jesus said “I” both times. According to Colpe, Matthew never deleted the son of man title when he found it in his sources. According to Vielhauer, conversely, the I of Jesus was replaced by the title, e.g. B. in Mt 19:28; Mk 14.20 f .; Mk 14.41; Lk 22.68 f.

In 1957, Vielhauer also pointed out that all three groups of the Son of Man are always formulated in the 3rd person, nowhere do a direct equation and show no formal differences in this regard. But not a single word of Jesus about the kingdom of God mentions the title of the Son of Man. Both sets of ideas had already been distinguished in the Jewish tradition. In Jesus' expectation of the kingdom of God, the expectation of a Messiah or Son of Man had no place. From this he concluded in 1963:

“No son's word is authentic; Jesus did not preach the Son of Man - neither in such a way that he identified himself with him, nor in such a way that he expected someone else to be the Son of Man. "

The words were put into Jesus' mouth by early Christian prophets who spoke in his name and therefore chose the third person.

According to Hans Conzelmann , Luke 12: 8 can only be understood as the identification of Jesus with the Son of Man. Only then does the word make sense that makes the believer's decision about Jesus a condition for the decision of the Son of Man to be a believer. This identification could only be carried out by the early church, so that this Jesus word must have originated there.

According to this, however, the early Christians should have identified Jesus with the Son of Man against his own will. Vielhauer emphasized this contrast. Eduard Schweizer , too, asked from other premises why the death of a prophet would have shaken the Jewish followers of Jesus so much in their belief in the coming of the Son of Man that he had announced, instead of - as in the Jewish martyr tradition - affirming his role as his mere forerunner . Then the resurrection of Jesus would have moved them to trust his pre-Easter testimony about the coming Son of man rather than to force them to identify him with him.

Therefore, in 1971 Bertold Klappert mainly asked whether and how the early church could subsequently “discover” (according to Tödt) in the sayings of Jesus about the coming Son of Man, that he had spoken of his own return there when Jesus was not talking about himself. August Strobel considered it “absurd, even fantastic, to assume that someone else's preacher had become someone else in the theological thinking of the oldest disciples' congregation”.

"Jesus identified himself with the coming Son of Man" (from around 1970)

In the 19th century Heinrich Holtzmann already advocated the thesis that Jesus used the title of the son of man in the sense of an apocalyptic judge figure to describe his own person and role in the divine plan of salvation. After this thesis was withdrawn for a long time, it has been reissued with many variants since the 1970s.

According to Wolfhart Pannenberg , Jesus claimed the title for himself and his work in order to legitimize it as an anticipation of the tasks of the Son of Man. He thus points to the coming confirmation through God's final revelation and remains dependent on it. He sees himself as the one to whom God will assign the office of the Son of Man World Judge.

For Angus JB Higgins (Studies of the Son of Man, 1965) the title in the mouth of Jesus does not denote a personal figure different from him, but the dignity that Jesus expected for himself: that of the world judge commissioned by God. According to Volker Hampel ( Son of Man and historical Jesus , JETh 7/1993), Jesus called himself the Son of Man in order to express his determination to be the Messiah, who lived hidden among people before God would reveal him to all.

It was difficult for the proverbs of the earthly work and suffering of the Son of Man to integrate these views. Because with the forgiveness of sins and the repeal of individual Torah commandments, Jesus was already claiming God's privileges in his presence, i.e. acting as a mortal person as the final judge who was authorized to do so expected. However, it is precisely these words that make the rejection that Jesus experienced in Judaism at that time historically plausible.

In addition, in the NT, unlike other sovereign titles (e.g. Mt 16:16 for Christ and “Son of God”, Mk 15:26 for “King of the Jews”, Phil 2:11 for “Lord”) no self-statement Jesus (“I am the Son of Man”), no confession (“You are the Son of Man”) and no missionary proclamation (“Jesus is the Son of Man”) can be found. If “Son of Man” were a fixed title that Jesus used for himself, then, according to the opinion of the critics, it would be expected that this title would be explicitly assigned to him or denied by his opponents.

"Jesus took up the tasks, not the identity of the Son of Man"

According to Carsten Colpe , Jesus only functionally equated himself with the coming Son of Man in his actions, without identifying himself directly with him. It was this dynamic expectation that awaited perfection that made the early community into a static identification that was perfected in Jesus' presence.

For Helmut Merklein , Jesus saw himself as an earthly doppelganger of the heavenly Son of Man, whom God would bring about. This left the right and meaning of the relationship between the two open and suggested a Gnosticism , according to which the human doppelganger, but not the eternal heavenly being, can and must endure suffering and death.

Joachim Gnilka ( The early Christians. Origins and Beginning of the Church ) and Jürgen Becker suspect that Jesus was not at all interested in the identity of the Son of Man, but only in the seriousness of the impending final judgment, in which man was according to his position towards Jesus and his mission being judged, wanted to affirm. Jesus does not see between himself and the Son of Man an “identity of persons”, but an “identity of the salvation community”.

However, these attempts at a solution presuppose an idea of ​​the Son of Man as a judge, which does not have to be given so uniformly either in the Jewish tradition or in the mouth of Jesus.

Exclusive self-reference

Some exegetes understand the use of the term “Son of Man” in the Synoptic Gospels purely from the Aramaic idiom, whereby they use primarily Son of Man words from group b). When Jesus says “Son of Man”, this is nothing more than a modest description of “I” (Vermes, Müller, Schwarz). The advantage of this hypothesis is that almost all Son of Man words can be made understandable. However, the question arises as to when Jesus says “I” and when he says “Son of man”. Is there a difference in meaning between the two forms of self-reference? In addition, it is precisely the Aramaists who put a question mark, because this usage is only attested in late Aramaic (Fitzmyer).

Generic use

Following the Aramaic usage (attested in texts from the time of Jesus), Jesus uses “Son of Man” idiomatically in the sense of “every human being” (Casey). This is also a form of self-reference, but in which all people are included in statements that apply to all people on a first level and to themselves on a second level. Not just Jesus himself, but every person is “Lord of the Sabbath”, this corresponds well to Jesus' concern in Mk 2,23-28. - Against this hypothesis speaks that only a few words of the Son of Man are really understandable against this background, and that it is difficult to explain how the early church could later exclusively speak of Jesus himself as the Son of Man, as is the case in the synoptic Gospels.

(Reduced) including self-reference

When Jesus said “Son of Man” he meant himself, but not exclusively: he also meant every person who is like him, who follows him, who shares his fate. Son of man means something like “a person like me” (Lindars) or in good German “ours”. “We have nothing where to lay our head” (Lk 9:58) - this applies to Jesus, but also to those who follow him, but not to all people. - The criticism that can be made of the hypothesis of generic use applies here as well.

literature

Older German-language exegesis

  • Hans Lietzmann: The Son of Man , Freiburg 1896
  • HJ Holtzmann: The messianic consciousness of Jesus . Tubingen 1907
  • Rudolf Otto: Kingdom of God and Son of Man , 1940
  • Erik Sjöberg: The Hidden Son of Man in the Gospels , 1955
  • Philip Vielhauer: God's Kingdom and Son of Man , 1957, in: Essays on the New Testament 1965, pp. 55–91
  • Heinz Eduard Tödt: The Son of Man in the Synoptic Tradition , Gütersloh 1959
  • Eduard Schweizer: Der Menschensohn , magazine for New Testament science (ZNW) 50/1959
  • Ferdinand Hahn : Christological Highness Title , 1962
  • Carsten Colpe: Article o uios tou anthropou , in: Theological Dictionary for the New Testament VIII, 1969, pp. 403–481

Newer German-language exegesis

  • Helmut Merklein: Jesus' message about the rule of God . Verlag Katholisches Bibelwerk, Stuttgart 1983 (SBS 111)
  • Mogens Müller: The expression “Son of Man” in the Gospels . EJ Brill, Leiden 1984
  • Otto Betz: Jesus and the Daniel Book. The Son of Man's Words of Jesus and Paul's expectation of the future (Daniel 7: 13-14) (ANTJ 6), Frankfurt am Main / Bern / New York 1985, ISBN 3-8204-5543-4
  • Günther Schwarz: Jesus "the Son of Man" - Aramaistic investigations into the synoptic words of the Son of Man , Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1986 (BWANT 119)
  • Volker Hampel: Son of man and historical Jesus. A riddle as the key to Jesus' messianic self-understanding . Neukirchen-Vluyn 1990
  • Géza Vermès: Jesus the Jew . Neukirchen-Vluyn 1993
  • Joachim Gnilka: Jesus of Nazareth . Herder, Freiburg i. Br. 1994
  • Anton Vögtle: The “crucial question” of the Son of Man problem . Herder, Freiburg 1994 (QD 152) ISBN 3-451-02152-8
  • Martin Karrer: Der Menschensohn , in: Jesus Christ in the New Testament , Göttingen 1998, ISBN 3-525-51380-1 , pp. 287-306. Preview
  • Lukas Bormann : The Son of Man and the Origin of Christology. In: Lukas Bormann (ed.): New Testament. Central themes. Neukirchener, Neukirchen-Vluyn 2014, pp. 111–128.

English-language exegesis

  • Maurice Casey: Son of Man. the interpretation and influence of Daniel 7. London 1979
  • Angus John Brockhurst Higgins: The Son of Man in the Teaching of Jesus. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1980
  • Barnabas Lindars: Jesus Son of Man. Oxford 1983
  • JJ Collins: The Son of Man in First Century Judaism , NTS 38, 1992
  • Larry W. Hurtado: Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity. William B Eerdman Co, 2005, ISBN 0-8028-3167-2

Popular literature

  • Rudolf Augstein: Jesus Son of Man . 1971

Web links

Wiktionary: Son of man  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Single receipts

  1. ↑ The meaning of the composition of both nouns, bar nasha does not literally mean “son of man” but generally “man”.
  2. ↑ Rudolf Bultmann, Theologie des Neuen Testament , p. 29 ff. Preview 9 1984
  3. ↑ a b Martin Karrer: Jesus Christ in the New Testament. 1998, p. 290 f.
  4. ^ William Wrede: The Messiah's Secret in the Gospels , 1901, p. 130
  5. ↑ Philipp Vielhauer : Jesus and the Son of Man ZThK 60, p. 170
  6. ↑ Hans Conzelmann, Theology of the New Testament, p. 155 f.
  7. ↑ Bertold Klappert, The Resurrection of the Crucified, p. 111
  8. ↑ August Strobel, Kerygma and Apokalyptik 1967, p. 149