the combat over the title Son of Man was the question whether Jesus was the Messiah or no, and that Dalman, by his proof of its linguistic possibility, had saved the Messiahship of Jesus. [1]
But what kind of Messiahship? Is it any other kind than the future Messiahship of the apocalyptic Son of Man which Johannes Weiss had asserted? Did Jesus mean anything different by the Son of Man from that which was meant by the apocalyptic writers? To put it otherwise: behind the Son-of-Man problem there lies the general question whether Jesus can have described Himself as a present Messiah; for the fundamental difficulty is that He, a man upon earth, should give Himself out to be the Son of Man, and at the same time apparently give to that title a quite different sense from that which it previously possessed.
The champion of the linguistic possibility of this self-designation made the last serious attempt to render the transformation of the conception historically conceivable. He argues that Jesus cannot have used it as a mere meaningless expression, a periphrasis for the simple I. [2] On the other hand, the term cannot have been understood by the disciples as an exalted title, or at least only in the sense that the title indicative of exaltation is paradoxically connected with the title indicative of humility. "We shall be justified in saying, that, for the Synoptic Evangelists, 'Man's Son' was no title of honour for the Messiah, but-as it must necessarily appear to a Hellenist-a veiling of His Messiahship under a name which emphasises the humanity of its bearer." For them it was not the references to the sufferings of "Man's Son" that were paradoxical, but the references to His exaltation: that "Man's Son" should be put to death is not wonderful; what is wonderful is His "coming again upon the clouds of heaven."
If Jesus called Himself the Son of Man, the only conclusion which could be drawn by those that heard Him was, "that for some reason or other He desired to describe Himself as a Man par excellence." There is no reason to think of the Heavenly Son of Man of the Similitudes of Enoch and Fourth Ezra; that conception could hardly be present to the minds of His auditors. "
- ↑ Dalman's reputation as an authority upon Jewish Aramaic is so deservedly high that it is necessary to point out that his solution did not, as Dr. Schweitzer seems to say, entirely dispose of the linguistic difficulties raised by Lietzmann as to the meaning and use of barnash and barnasha in Aramaic. The English reader will find the linguistic facts well put in sections 4 and 32 of N. Schmidt's article "Son of Man" in Encyclopedia Biblica (cols. 4708, 4723), or he may consult Prof. Bevan's review of Dalman's Worte Jesu in the Critical Review for 1899, p. 148 ff. The main point is that o anqrwpoV and o uioV tou anqrwpou are equally legitimate translations of barnasha. Thus the contrast in the Greek between o anqrwpoV and o uioV tou anqrwpou in Mark ii. 27 and 28, or again in Mark viii. 36 and 38, disappears on retranslation into the dialect spoken by Jesus. Whether this linguistic fact makes the sayings in which o uioV tou anqrwpou occurs unhistorical is a further question upon which scholars can take, and have taken, opposite opinions.-F. C. B.
- ↑ See Worte Jesu, 1898, p. 191 ff. ( = E. T. p. 234 ff.).
