Joan of Bark

You make a good case, Jay, but I still think GJohn is a bit of a thorn in your argument, specifically this passage:


Jesus doesn't seem to be contradicting the (blasphemous?) title Son of God which is ascribed to him.

Juststeve

Spam:

Son of Man is used roughly 90 times in Ezekiel, often when God addresses the prophet himself , and hundreds of times throughout the Hebrew Bible. The Jewish understanding of the meaning of the term comes from considering all the times its used, in all contexts, and drawing a judgment from that. It is consistent with what I have written. If you doubt me avail yourself of a Jewish source.

Steve

Toto

Jewish Encyclopeia "Son of Man" is quite adamant that son of man just means simple human, but it doesn't mention Daniel.

New Advent goes into more possibilities.

This more evangelical site asserts Take your pick.

Juststeve

Toto:

My comment at #3 was directed at what Jews mean by the term Son of Man. Of the three sites you provided only one is remotely Jewish and it agrees with me. On this I am not surprised.

One difficulty with discussing Judaism with Gentiles is that most Gentiles get their understanding of Judaism only after Judaism has been filtered through Christians sources. This is unfortunate because Christians have for 2000 years been distorting Judaism to try to squeeze Jesus in. A square peg round hole problem. There is no doubt that if you look at Christians sources son of man has been given an exalted status.

Why is this the case? It appears to me that there must have existed such a strong tradition that Jesus had referred to himself as the son of man that it couldn’t really be excluded from the Gospels. Christians were, as it were, stuck with that datum. Since after a while they could not live with the fact that Jesus proclaim himself to be an ordinary man, they contrived a fanciful meaning for a phrase that meant just a man. In time they proclaimed this son of man to be God even though the Hebrew Bible clearly says that God is not a son of man. How they can convince anyone of that would be a subject for another discussion.

Steve

Toto

I have my doubts about any such tradition, or whether any tradition was so strong that it could not be ignored or reshaped.

It seems much more likely that Christians read Daniel and picked up the phrase from that Jewish text, even if the rabbis did not agree with their reading. There is no need to invent a shadowy "tradition" to explain this.

Juststeve

Toto:

Actually your case is better with respect to Daniel than you know. Rashi interprets the man in Daniel 7:13-14 as the Messiah. Who am I to disagree with Rashi although others do? Please keep in mind however that in Jewish thinking the Messiah is an ordinary man used by God to do extraordinary things. He is not divine, or a son of God in any sense that we are not all sons of god. In other words, even in Daniel the son of man is an ordinary man, but according to Rashi one particular man.

That son of man might be equated with Messiah in this single context doesn’t really explain the many times Jesus refers to himself as the son of man in the Gospels. Were there no tradition constraining the author about what Jesus actually said, there would be nothing to prevent the authors from representing Jesus as proclaiming himself as the Messiah unambiguously, yet he is never so represented. Why is that? If the Gospel writers wanted to assert that Jesus was the Messiah, why not just have him say so?

Steve

Toto

You are asking about the literary nature of the gospels. It appears to most commentators that the gospels are not based on fixed traditions and do not go back to any eyewitnesses of Jesus. If the authors did not represent Jesus as proclaiming himself the Messiah, note that they also represent him as hiding his true nature until after his death and resurrection, and as being much more that the Jewish Messiah.

The idea that there was some tradition going back to Jesus that could not be altered is the least probable explanation of this theological construct.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Joan of Bark,

It depends on the subtext, on how the characters say their lines. If we see Nathanael as being sarcastic, there is no problem.

Nathaniel: Rabbi, you are the Son of God. You are the King of Israel. (subtext: Dude, you saw me standing under a fig tree so what's that supposed to mean? Does that mean you're better than me? Does that make you are king of the whole freaking world?)

Jesus: Because I said to you, "I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe?"
(Okay, saying I saw you under a fig tree was kind of a stupid, but just because I asked you to believe in me after I said something stupid, you don't have to be so damn sarcastic.)

You shall see greater things than these. Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man. (Just wait until I do my angel trick, then you'll be sorry).

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

PhilosopherJay

Hi Steve,

"Son of Man" is used in Ezekiel 94 times out of 109 times in the Hebrew Scriptures.

That means that over 90% of times it is used, it refers to Ezekiel. Anybody who had read and reread the Hebrew Scriptures for years would have been most likely to get an image of Ezekiel in their mind, although they might have been unsure about the exact meaning of the phrase. In the same way that when someone says the term "Frankenstein," I get an image of Boris Karloff in the "Frankenstein" movies that he did in the 1930's. There are lots of different movie versions and many images associated with Frankenstein, but that is the dominant one.

However, I agree with you that in the Gospel of John, the term as used in Daniel is probably to the closest one to the author's viewpoint. I discuss this in my new Blog:
Christianity is Based on Misunderstanding and Taking a Poetical Metaphor Literally

Your raising this question really inspired me to research and understand it better. Thanks.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Juststeve

Toto wrote:

"You are asking about the literary nature of the gospels. It appears to most commentators that the gospels are not based on fixed traditions and do not go back to any eyewitnesses of Jesus. If the authors did not represent Jesus as proclaiming himself the Messiah, note that they also represent him as hiding his true nature until after his death and resurrection, and as being much more that the Jewish Messiah."

I really need to take issue whith almost everything in this paragraph.

First, I seriously doubt that "It appears to most commentators that the gospels are not based on fixed traditions and do not go back to any eyewitnesses of Jesus". Can you provide some documentation for this claim about most commentators?

Second, the Gospel writers do not represent Jesus as having made the claim that he is the Messiah. Its not a matter of if, it is something to be explained by anyone who thinks they took the son of man title from Daniel as a subtle way of having him make a messianic claim. Why so subtle?

Third, the gospels do not all represent Jesus as concealing his true identity, Mark does, John quite the opposite. Not even in John though does Jesus claim to be the Messiah, only the son of man.

Steve