Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

a. A Philological Root
THE QUESTION OF JESUS' SELF-UNDERSTANDING §16.3
No one disagrees that ho huios tou anthröpou is inelegant Greek, without parallel
elsewhere in Greek of the time. Few if any now dispute that the phrase must have
entered Greek as a literal translation of the Hebrew ben 'adam or the Aramaic
bar * e nascfi l or that the Hebrew/Aramaic phrase denotes simply 'man'. In Hebrew
'sons of men' is a familiar phrase to denote (a) human community, 82 with
'son of man' (singular) used on a number of occasions of an individual or typical
individual within that community. 83 The last case gives the classic examples, Ps.
8.4 ('what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care
for him?') and the regular address to Ezekiel as 'son of man'. 84 Significant is the
fact that 'sons of men/son of man' often has the connotation of frailty, in contrast
to God. 85 This range of usage, no doubt as familiar as the Scriptures were for
most devout Jews, is bound to form an important part of the context of meaning
within which the Aramaic phrase in the Jesus tradition would have first been
heard. So how would the phrase bar ' e nasa have been heard at the time of Jesus?
When Geza Vermes reinvigorated the moribund discussion in the 1960s, it
was by arguing from later rabbinic usage that bar nasa (lacking the initial aleph)
was used not only for 'a human being' and as an indefinite pronoun, but also, and
most important for Vermes, as a circumlocution for 'I'. 86 Maurice Casey, who has
established himself as the most authoritative voice among the present generation
of NT specialists on the Aramaic behind the Jesus tradition, took up from Vermes
but disagreed with him regarding this crucial third category: the Aramaic idiom
81. 'The writers of the gospels must have had some particular reason for translating it
with an almost wooden literalness' (Dodd, Founder 111). Discussion in D. R. A. Hare, The Son
of Man Tradition (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990) 231-35.
82. b e ne 'adam in Deut. 32.8; Pss. 11.4; 12.2, 9 [1, 8]; 14.2; 31.20[19]; 36.8[7]; 45.3[2];
49.3[2]; 53.3[2]; 57.5[4]; 58.2[1]; 62.10[9]; 66.5; 89.48[47]; 107.8, 15, 21, 31; 115.16; Prov.
15.11; Eccl. 1.13; Jer. 32.19; Ezek. 31.14; Dan. 10.16; Joel 1.12; 1QS 11.6, 15; 1QH 10[2].24-
25; 12[4].32; 14[6].ll; 19[11].6; 4Q181 1.1; CD 12.4, etc.; Vne 'ism Pss. 4.3[2]; 49.3[2];
62.10[9]; Lam. 3.33; 1QS 3.13; 4.15, 20, 26; 1QM 11.14; 4Q184 1.17; b e ne '«nasa in Dan.
2.38; 5.21 (Haag, TDOT 2.151, 161).
83. Num. 23.19; Job. 25.6; 35.8; Pss. 80.18[17]; 146.3; Isa. 51.12; 56.2; Jer. 49.18, 33;
50.40; 51.43; 1QS 11.20; 1QH 12[4].3O.
84. 93 occurrences, starting at 2.1; also Dan. 8.17; i En. 60.10. One is tempted to parallel
the still current form of address 'Hey man', or even the more common 'Hey you!'.
85. See, e.g., Job 25.6; Pss. 8.4; 36.7; 53.2; 62.9; 89.47; Prov. 15.11; Eccl. 1.13; Isa.
51.12; Lam. 3.33; Ezek. 31.14; Dan. 5.21; Joel 1.12; 1QS 11.20; in Ezekiel its usage gives 'an
increased emphasis on the distance separating God and man' (Haag, TDOT 2.163); see also
C. C. Caragounis, The Son of Man (WUNT 38; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1986) 55-57.
86. G. Vermes, The Use of bar nash/bar nasha in Jewish Aramaic', in Black, Aramaic
Approach 310-28; also in abridged version in Jesus the Jew 163-68, 188-91.
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