Amaleq13

The phrase "son of man" is commonly understood to be a generic reference to humanity. Jesus also uses it as an indirect reference to himself in this same sense (ie "a man").

Christians believe Jesus is the Son of God.

voodoomage

Small question for someone more familiar with ancient languages than myself:

In Genesis chapter 8, God floods the whole earth, supposedly.

In Daniel 2:39 in discussing Nebuchadnezzar's dream with the statue it comes to the 3rd kingdom (brass) which "shall bear rule over all the earth".

Im curious about what hebrew words for earth were used in these contexts. I had a pastor try to expain Daniel 2:39 as pertaining to the greek empire, yet the mayans and the chinese, among innumerable other peoples, would object to the idea that the greeks REALLY ruled over all the Earth. Instead, the pastor argued, "all the earth" pertained only to the known world.

If the same word was used in both contexts, then either the flood only covered PART of the earth, or the greeks ruled over the WHOLE earth.

Joan of Bark

No doubt the Hebrews believed the 'world' to be the near east. They could not have conceived of the rest of the world. This does not stop some bible-thumpers from proclaiming the book to be inerrant and perfect (word-for-word) however. I recommend using these passages when confronted with a fundamentalist.

robto

The question of what Jesus meant by "Son of Man" is much debated by NT scholars. On one hand there are those who think he meant himself, as Messiah. At the other end of the spectrum there are those who think he only ever used "son of man" as a phrase that simply meant "a human being", as in "Foxes have holes, and birds have nests, but the son of man has no place to rest."

Somewhere in between is your theory: Jesus used "Son of man" to refer to a savior who would come in the future, not himself. The gospels are ambiguous on this. As you point out, there are places where Jesus seems to mean someone else. But there are other places where he seems to mean himself. So the question is tied up with the difficult problem of "what did Jesus really say?"

There is some help to be found by going outside the NT. Other Jewish writings seem to refer to a heavenly "son of man" (the phrase is taken from Daniel 7:13) - the book of 1 Enoch is an example (see Chapter 46). So it certainly seems possible that Jesus, like other Jews of his time, believed in a Son of man who would come on the clouds of heaven to put things right on earth. Perhaps Christians later remembered him speaking about the Son of man and reinterpreted it to mean Jesus himself.

Amaleq13

This notion would certainly be strengthened had Paul used the phrase in reference to Jesus.

skinumb

Very, very basic getting up to speed questions.

What is the evidence for human Paul beyond the romance in Acts? Are there contemporary/near contemporary references that support his existence? Did any 'congregation' he write to keep a verifiable record of their reply? Did anyone keep a note that they'd received Paul's letter, or had a visit from him.

Given that there were Christ-follower sects in this period, would Paul's letters still make sense if Jesus was substituted by Christ?

thx
Rich

Doug Shaver

Half a dozen or so letters, almost certainly written prior to the Jewish War, whose author called himself Paul. You don't have to believe a word of Acts to infer that there was a Christian missionary, or some kind of preacher, by that name active sometime around the middle of the first century.

skinumb

That's fair enough, but I could also infer from the Gospels that there was a mighty preacher called Jesus active earlier too, and in the absence of extra-biblical evidence I'm far from convinced by that. Hence wondering if there is any extra-biblical evidence to Paul's existence, anything for instance that acknowledges one of his letters.

Julian

There is no extra-biblical references to Paul that I know about. It wasn't until long after his death that we hear about him and his letters. My personal opinion is that Paul sounds remarkably human, along with all of his not-so-charming quirks, that I feel much of the epistolary material is genuine. If someone wanted to write proganda it would have been much more smooth and uncontested. For an example of Pauline pseudepigraphical propaganda, check out the Acts of Paul (http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/actspaul.html). Or 2 Thessalonians and the Pastorals.

Julian

Mythra

When we talk of the Pauline epistles that are considered genuine, how can we be at all confident that the writings as we know them bear any resemblance at all to the originals? It seems odd to have prolonged discussions over a phrase such as "kata sarka", when we really have no idea if that was even present in the original autograph.