Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

THE QUESTION OF JESUS' SELF-UNDERSTANDING §16.3
man like yourself and 'a son of man'; similarly Ps. 80.17 explains 'the man of
your right hand' as 'the son of man whom you made strong for yourself; and in
1QH 12[4].27-37 the speaker uses 'son of man' and 'sons of man' when clearly
thinking of his own weakness and imperfection. For Aramaic usage, an ancient
(eighth century BCE) inscription uses bar 'ns to refer to the speaker and his descendants
(Sefire 3.14-17). 91 And lQapGen 21.13 instances a case where br 'ns
is used of an individual, very similar to Dan. 7.13's 'one like br 'ns' . 92 These suggest
that bar ' e nas would have been quite capable of being used with reference to
an individual at the time of Jesus.
Fourth, and not least of importance, the Gospels themselves surely have to
count as evidence for first-century usage: the Synoptics were certainly written
within the first century and certainly draw on earlier tradition; and, as already
noted, the Greek phrase is certainly a translation of the Aramaic idiom. So the
question falls back into one of exegesis of the Jesus tradition itself. Should there
be sayings using the phrase which most obviously implied some kind of selfreference
or were understood as self-references, then that may constitute sufficient
evidence in itself that the phrase could have been so used by Jesus and understood
accordingly. Stated like that, of course, the argument is in danger of circularity.
All will depend on the credibility of any cases adduced.
One other feature cannot be ignored. It is the fact that the double articular
form (literally 'the son of the man') is absolutely consistent in the Jesus tradition,
whereas we lack examples of the articular form ben ha 'dam and of the definite
bar ' e nasa. The former is attested only in 1QS 10.20, where the definite article
appears to have been added (supralinear); the latter appears to be totally absent in
the Aramaic of the period. 93 There may however be no problem here. Casey
maintains that the articular Greek could be an appropriate translation of the indefinite
bar ' e nas as much as for the definite bar ' e nasa. 94 Alternatively, it may
equally be possible that the definite usage bar ' e nasa was a peculiarity of Jesus'
own style, a way of particularizing the more generic/general or indefinite sense
(in effect, 'that son of man'). 95
91. Casey, 'General, Generic and Indefinite' 22-23.
92. See further Casey, Aramaic Sources 36-38; Owen and Shepherd attempt to minimize
the sense and significance of these Aramaic examples ('Son of Man' 114-20).
93. Dalman, Words 238; Owen and Shepherd, 'Son of Man' 121.
94. Casey, 'General, Generic and Indefinite' 27-36; ; also 'Idiom and Translation: Some
Aspects of the Son of Man Problem', NTS 41 (1995) 164-82 (here 170-78); also Aramaic
Sources 118-21 (responding to D. Burkett, 'The Nontitular Son of Man: A History and Critique',
NTS 40 [1994] 504-21, slightly modified in his Son of Man Debate ch. 8).
95. In partial response to C. F. D. Moule, 'Neglected Features in the Problem of "the Son
of Man'", in J. Gnilka, ed., Neues Testament und Kirche, R. Schnackenburg FS (Freiburg:
Herder, 1974) 413-28; also The Origin of Christology (Cambridge: Cambridge University,
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