stephan huller

The “Son of Man”, is deliberately ambiguous. In Aramaic of the time (as Bar Nasha) and in literary Hebrew (Ben Adam) it could just mean “the one under discussion” or “the person”. As an allusion to Daniel 11, it meant a heavenly figure who acts to bring the will of God to earth. Period. There is no other explanation.

stephan huller

On the Son of Man as a heavenly being see Clement of Alexandria's citation of his gospel:

I don't understand how you can be so obtuse. Clearly the Son of Man is a heavenly figure in Daniel 11, Mark's citation of that chapter in his gospel and here. I sometimes think these position people on the historical Jesus border on a new faith - a neo-evangelic faith even for atheists.

stephan huller

I went through ALL the references to the concept of 'Son of Man' in Clement's Stromata. They all support the idea he was a divine figure. Look here in book one:

When is this going to be settled for you? The most ancient interpretation of the terminology contradicts your assumptions.

stephan huller

Perhaps this will make it clearer:

stephan huller

Notice the variant in Clement's Instructor Book Two:

with Luke 7:34:

What is missing? The fact that a phantom doesn't eat and drink.

And that is all the references to 'Son of Man' and 'Son of God' in the twelve surviving books of Clement of Alexandria.

stephan huller

I have to go but the point is that we can never prove what was or wasn't true outside of the literary intentions of the original gospel writer. But as it stands all evidence points to Mark in his original gospel preserved originally in Alexandria and now lost - a kind of meta-gospel which featured stories which are now found in Matthew, Luke and John - the literary intention was to show Jesus as a God.

Diogenes the Cynic

What is your basis for this claim? It has no such use in the Hebrew Bible or any other Jewish writing that I'm aware of.

Diogenes the Cynic

I didn't say "son of man" = "messiah." I said "son of God" = messiah.

Mark uses "son of man" as an allusion to the Messiah by way of Daniel, and there is clearly a sayings tradition of Jesus using the phrase, but Mark didn't necessarily understand it the same way (or misunderstood it) as it was originally intended by the original author of the sayings. I think it's plausible, for instance, that the sayings may have originally only referred to people (e.g. "The sabbath was made for the son of man, the son of man is the lord of the sabbath,") and misunderstood it as a titular word for the Messiah, or it could have even been a coded word for the Messiah by some group. I read once that some groups, especially revolutionary groups, used OT references as an esoteric code.

In any case, neither "son of man," or "son of God" ever denoted either personal divinity or literal divine descendancy. Those were (and are) both theologically impossible ideas for Judaism.

Diogenes the Cynic

what Clement thought "son of man" meant has no bearing on what Mark thought it meant, and even less on what the pre-Markan author (or authors) thought it meant.

I think it should be emphasized that the extant literary corpus of early Christianity was constructed (aside from Paul) by people who did not know anybody from the original movement, or have any access to what they truly believed. Everything we're told about the original apostles (well almost everything) comes from later Gentile sources who never met any disciples.

Paul claims to have met a few of them, and tells us that they still follow Jewish law (which tells us ipso facto that they did not think Jesus was a redeemer of sins), but really nothing else.

So you have an original movement in Jerusalem (ostensibly having started in Galilee), then you have an idiosyncratic missionary going out to Gentiles and preaching a message he claims he got mostly from the voices in his head, the destruction of Jerusalem and loss of the original movement there, and then a bunnch of Greek converts trying to recover a historical Jesus from the pages of a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible.

The mythicists are right that the narratives of the Gospels were mostly fabricated by making pictures from clouds in Hebrew scripture, and tossing in some pagan boilerplate mystery cult stuff, but the evidence is still strong that some original, unlucky bastard really got crucified and remained fixated on, for some reason, by religious followers after his death.

I might even argue that the Canonical Gospels are the real "first quest." .

Luke, for instance, was essentially a "scholar" (in the context of his era) researching sources and compiling his own "definitive history. That is what the author himself claims to be doing, and in fact, that is what he does a decent job at. He makes things up, of course, but he knows how to anchor his musings to some kind of quasi-historical event or source (like linking his Nativity to the census of Quirinius, for instance).

steve_bnk

The problem is we do not know what the metaphors were in general usage when the gosples were written.

Today bad can mean good sick can mean awesome depending on context. If you try to inteprret using a literal dictionary it will be a mystery.

What was Hebrew colloquial for a dumb shit 2000 years ago? I doubt anyone knows. What was the Yiddish of the day? Add to thyat goiung from tyhe Jeoish based stories to the gospels by writers not Jewish and removed fom the events in time. You get what we have as the NT. Not a literary work, put a popular work intended for Christians not Jews selling the ressurection. Jews missed tge boat.

The flood mytrh can be traced form its origins as it is adopted by succesive cultures adapted for different cultures.

For us non believers Judaism is based on a myth, and for me Chritianity is a modifcation and adaptation of the Jewish myths for a nob Jewish culture. From that perspective in the context of known human history, the rise of Christianity based on Jewish lore should not be mystifying.

That us why per the NT Chistianity should be called Jewish Paulism. Acording to his writings, he modified Jewish tradtiion for the greater gentile population. Jesus in the NT appeared to keep kosher so to speak.