spin

The distinction you are making here exists only in English and that only under certain conditions. The Greek for the as/like is WS (omega sigma) and its normal translation is "as", "like" or "as if". The Greek should be translated into English the same as the Hebrew.


This is not sustainable from the text. The narrator is the one who did not already know the one like a son of man.

The Daniel text is using a story which is also found amongst the Ugaritic texts as the basis of the narrative, namely the battle between Baal and Yamm (the sea). The strange beasts like ones the narrator could recognize came out of Yamm. In the Ugaritic account of 1500 years earlier tells of the battle which Baal eventually won and from which he returned to the home of the gods riding on the clouds of heaven (Baal is the cloud-rider). The ancient of days is the great god El and Baal ascends to retake his rightful position. Our author has simply sublimated some of the material for theological purposes. At least the author would have known the original story and therefore couldn't have had the notion in mind that you want him to have.

As the one like a son of man was coming to the presence of the ancient of days, it was clearly going up to "heaven". Those who knew the original story would know that the one like a son of man first left "heaven" to deal with Yamm and then returned. (Clearly the story didn't get borrowed by the Jews from Ugarit: the best development to my mind is that it was part of the Jewish ethos until late.)

However, when was the book of Daniel translated into Greek to be available to the hellenistic Jews? Obviously before the late 2nd century of this era (ie the time of the translation of Theodotion), but I don't think you can make any more assumptions as to when it was available to them.

Still further, what do Jews directly have to do with the co-opting of the Daniel text for later xian messianic speculation?

I'm not sure that you're correct here. If John's gospel, that closest to Jewish thought, talks of Jesus being the word, then the author clearly has a pre-existent Being in mind, for the word is the word of God which was present at the creation.

I don't think, though, that a pre-existent Jesus is particularly relevant to my original "query". In Jewish literature of the era, "son of man" is never used in the titular manner (and that has nothing to do with capital letters) that it is in xian literature. (Ezekiel being deprecated by being called "son of man" merely shows the insignificant mortal nature of Ezekiel.) So, when was it first "son of man" was used as a title? This is an important question as it is a basic concept in all the gospels, ie in the earliest layers of their development, yet the titular use only appears in the fathers in Justin's works. No SoM before Justin basically means no gospels before him either.


spin

Bernard Muller

spin wrote:
The distinction you are making here exists only in English and that only under certain conditions. The Greek for the as/like is WS (omega sigma) and its normal translation is "as", "like" or "as if". The Greek should be translated into English the same as the Hebrew.

Ya, I see your point, and Amaleq13's also. 'as' & 'like' are the same. I missed the "as" in the LXX traduction.

spin wrote:
This is not sustainable from the text. The narrator is the one who did not already know the one like a son of man.

It seems God did not know that "son". That's my impression I have by reading the text. The passage is obscure, and it's hard to think how a Jew in antiquity would see it. I do not understand your comment about the narrator.

About your comments involving Baal and El, it looks Baal is going up to heaven from earth anyway, riding on the clouds of heaven. My question to you: is Baal like a man in this Ugaritic tale?
Anyway, the Jewish author might have been inspired by that story, but that does not mean he would be thinking about a very close parallel. After all, elsewhere in the OT, "son of man" means human mortal, and mortals like Enoch & Elijah got into the heavens (as a precedent).
"like" or "as" likely signify what the alleged author thought he saw (at a distance!) in the alleged vision, someone who looks like a mortal man.

spin wrote:
As the one like a son of man was coming to the presence of the ancient of days, it was clearly going up to "heaven".

I agree with that. Always did.

spin wrote:
those who knew the original story would know that the one like a son of man first left "heaven" to deal with Yamm and then returned.

I think you are assuming a lot here. That the author was expecting his Jewish readers to make a parallel with a pagan story involving Baal, if they ever knew about it, is quite a stretch.

spin wrote:
However, when was the book of Daniel translated into Greek to be available to the hellenistic Jews? Obviously before the late 2nd century of this era (ie the time of the translation of Theodotion), but I don't think you can make any more assumptions as to when it was available to them.

I also cannot make assumptions it was not available in the 1st century. I'll try to find something tomorrow morning. And we saw already the translation in Greek does not change anything.

spin wrote:
Still further, what do Jews directly have to do with the co-opting of the Daniel text for later xian messianic speculation?

I do not know what you are talking about.

spin wrote:
If John's gospel, that closest to Jewish thought, talks of Jesus being the word, then the author clearly has a pre-existent Being in mind, for the word is the word of God which was present at the creation.

The other gospels do not have any pre-existence. Jewish Christians resisted pre-existence. It was also a no-no for the Ebionites. Many post-Pauline epistles do not mention pre-existence.

spin wrote:
So, when was it first "son of man" was used as a title? This is an important question as it is a basic concept in all the gospels, ie in the earliest layers of their development, yet the titular use only appears in the fathers in Justin's works. No SoM before Justin basically means no gospels before him either.

"son of man" shows many times in Justin's 'Trypho', with reference to 'Daniel' and also to gospel passages.
But, prior to that, as commonly accepted,
"son of man" also appears in 'Hebrews' (as Jesus according to the context) to whom "he has subjected the world to come" (2:50), as for the "son of man" of 'Daniel'. 'Hebrews' is considered by many as written before 70 (as for Doherty and myself).
"son of man" also appears in Revelation (written around 95) twice, and the first time as the resurrected glorious Jesus for sure.
"son of man" also appears in 'Barnabas' as a title that the author was opposed to.
"son of man" also appears in one Ignatian letter, 'to the Ephesians':
20:1 "Jesus Christ, who after the flesh was of
David's race, who is Son of Man and Son of God,"

You would have to date those later as commonly accepted in order to enable your theory.

Best regards, Bernard

yalla

Spin,from my reading of Geza Vermes' "The Changing Faces of Jesus"it seems to me that the use of "son of Man"in the gospels does suggest a post 70ce dating.Vermes says on p.39 "From the the completion of the book of Daniel in the 160s BC to the time of the destruction of Jerusalem in AD70 there is no attestation in extant Jewish literature of the use of SOM as describing a religious function.However in the decades following the first Jewish war against Rome which ended in AD70,that is during the period of the composition of the Gospels ,we possess independent literary evidence in which such a man-like figure is portrayed as a heavenly Messiah[4Ezra13], or a superterrestrial final judge[Parables of Enoch,or 1Enoch37-71]."Previously,on page 33 , he states [in reference to the title "Son of God"] that "No biblical or post-biblical Jewish writer ever depicted a human being literally as divine,nor did Jewish religious culture agree to accommadate the Hellenistic notions of "son of God" and "divine man". It seems to me that Vermes thinks that the divine titles "son of Man" and "son of God" were introduced by the gospel writers,via an amalgamation of pre 70sCE Judaism and Hellinism , sometime after 70CE.

spin

You seem merely to be repeating what you claimed previously. I think you need to defend the claim, especially in the context

of the literary tradition it clearly belongs to (ie that seen much earlier at Ugarit).

I don't think it is obscure. It is complex, because of the traditions it adheres to.

My comment about the narrator at this juncture regarded his use of "super" beings which were like animals to represent

nations. The one like a human being naturally enough was the representative of the Jewish nation as against the one like a

lion, another like a bear, another like a leopard, and yet another like a Greek elephant (though the beast was unstated and

there is no evidence that the Hebrew word for elephant was in use at that stage). The four nations trope was a Greek development to deal with history and the narrator has happily incorporated it into the beginning of the passage and developed on it by melding it with the Baal/Yamm tradition, thus yielding an apocalyptic story, turning the four kingdoms into the beast that Yamm puts forward to battle Baal and the one like a son of man putting an end to this history in some unstated manner.

Although Baal was seen mostly as a human figure, the son of man idea comes not from that source, but is a logical consequence of the figures representing the nations, the one shaped like a human as the representative of the Jewish nation.

I have a general problem that we all need to face: what of the Semitic traditions of the times of (say) Ugarit was passed down through the millennium or so and reached the Jews as part of their tradition history. We have traces of Baal in this literature, traces of Baal and Asherah in Kings, even traces of Mot in other Hebrew literature. Doesn't this indicate a long duration of Semitic polytheism?

I think you can't make the assumptions that you do here. (See above.)

(However, you are assuming that it was.)

Shame. The Jewish term is nice and clear for the whole period: "son of man" indicates "mere mortal". It is not until xian times and traditions that "son of man" dramatically changes significance. No longer used as a simile in its context in Daniel, it becomes a title -- as I have said already. Daniel's son of man has been co-opted as the title of a/the messiah.

You missed the Jewish notion of the word of God, ie that which passed through the mouth of God at creation, anthropomorphised in all the wisdom literature (Proverbs, Ben Sira, Wisdom of Solomon, etc). But it is not important for my original posting.

If you go back to my original message, I cited (though didn't quote) all of these.

As to the Hebrews quote, please, please read it again. This is a normal Hebrew use of the phrase even down to the parallel

with "man", not strangely so, because it is a direct quote from Psalm 8:4-6. There is no title "son of man" to be found here. Therefore it is not relevant.

Revelation alludes twice to the Daniel passage and gets it right, "one like a son of man". Again irrelevant. Then again, we have two texts now which expressly know "son of man" but not as a title for Jesus, so they testify against the title, both adhering to strict Hebrew usage.

Barnabus also negates the "son of man" title. That leaves us with Ignatius and Justin. Justin is the first I can date to the middle of the second century.

Ignatius as you should know is harder to date and we don't know the relation between the person and the letters attributed to him.


spin

spin

My problem with Vermes is that he doesn't justify his datings.

The Enochic Parables are rather late, if we can accept Josef Milik's analysis of the Dead Sea Scrolls copies of Enoch, amongst which there were no copies of the Parables.

I've been trying to chase up a Latin copy of 2(4) Esdras to see exactly what the text says, though it apparently is straight Jewish in its one in the figure of a man (13:3).

As the stuff I've put together earlier in this thread seems to stand, I see no problem with my mid-2nd century dating for the start of the substance of the gospel tradition. (Perhaps even Marcion with his so-called perversion of Luke's gospel was responsible for giving it form.)


spin

Yuri Kuchinsky

Please explain this. What's wrong with my thesis?

Quote:

(He/she is right about one thing: "son of man" is not a "Jewish-Christian" title; it is a thoroughly Jewish title!

I think that spin already dealt with this quite well...

Yours,

Yuri.

CJD

Hi Yuri.

Well, it directly contradicts what I wrote in my very first post (I wrote the "earlier posted material" by the way; I forgot to mention that). We can't both be right, and spin hardly dealt sufficiently with the nature of the son of man title as Greekish; Milik's analysis might support this, but it seems arbitrary on this point to me. I mentioned that some question the pre-Christian origin of the Similitudes, but plenty others do not. Besides, Enoch notwithstanding, what about the Tanak? Is there not ample reason therein to see the son of man title as an organic outgrowth of early Jewish literature?

Regards,

CJD

Yuri Kuchinsky

Yes, Bernard, you're right about this. Justin did cite this title a few times, usually in its Messianic context. But his usage of "son of man" still remain the earliest undisputed use of this title.

Regards,

Yuri.

Bernard Muller

spin wrote:
As to the Hebrews quote, please, please read it again. This is a normal Hebrew use of the phrase even down to the parallel

I agree that psalm 8, as quoted in Heb2:6-8, has the "son of man" as strictly a mortal human, generally speaking. But the overall context, that is Heb2:5-9, identifies that "son of man" as Jesus. And in 'Hebrews', Jesus was not just an ordinary human (2:14), but is also the pre-existent Word (1:3), Son of God (1:2-3), heir of all things (1:2). De facto, the "son of man" of psalm 8 is assigned to Jesus, and Ps8:6-8 allegorically interpreted as justifying claims about him (and more so his future rule to come).
And in the process, the author of 'Hebrews' does not feature the "son of man" as a normal "mortal", but as a quasi-title for Jesus.

Heb 2:5-9 "For He has not put the world to come, of which we speak, in subjection to angels. But one testified in a certain place, saying:

"What is man that You are mindful of him,
Or the son of man that You take care of him?
7You have made him a little lower than the angels;
You have crowned him with glory and honor,
And set him over the works of Your hands.
You have put all things in subjection under his feet."

For in that He put all in subjection under him, He left nothing that is not put under him. But now we do not yet see all things put under him. But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that He, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone."

Best regards, Bernard

Amaleq13

Maybe I missed it in the subsequent flurry of scholarship but is there agreement that Daniel's "son of man" is not to be understood as a title but as a reference to the human appearance of the figure?