But exegetical help of this kind is not always to be got out of the Syriac versions. In cases of real difficulty we can often see that the translator is only struggling with the unknown meaning of the Greek, and that his rendering, for all its Semitic appearance, contains no element of originality. There is one very marked instance, which will serve to illustrate what I mean. No phrase in the Gospel is more characteristic or more obscure than the title ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, the Son of Man, used by our Lord of Himself in many very varied aspects of His mission. To seize the full meaning, or meanings, we must be able to retranslate the Greek words into the original Aramaic expression. It is well known that in some circumstances the Aramaic dialects use the phrase 'a son of man' for 'a human being '; moreover, there is an undoubted connexion of some kind between our Lord's use of 'The Son of Man' and the very similar phrase in Daniel's Vision[1] which itself was written in Aramaic. For many reasons, therefore, we turn to the Syriac
- ↑ Dan vii 13.
