Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§ 16.3 How Did Jesus See His Own Role ?
But the absence of the Similitudes from the Dead Sea Scrolls despite the popularity
of the Enoch corpus at Qumran 105 leaves a question mark over the existence
of the Similitudes much before the destruction of Qumran in 68 CE. 106 So there is
a substantial possibility that both the Similitudes and 4 Ezra postdate Jesus' mission
by some decades. 107
Of course the ideas in both documents could predate the publication of
these documents by some decades. 108 In a study focused to such a degree on the
oral tradition prior to the written Gospels and their written sources, that possibility
is hardly to be excluded. However, both documents introduce their interpretation
of Daniel 7 as though they are offering a new interpretation and not referring
to something already familiar. 109 And the way they make use of Daniel's vision
ing a date sometime after 40-38 BCE, the Synoptic usage itself was taken as alluding to a belief
regarding the Son of Man like that in the Similitudes, and thus closed the circle of reasoning;
Caragounis continues round the same circle (Son of Man 89-93).
105. The point is ignored by Collins in his 'Son of Man' 451-52.
106. For discussion of the data see my Christology 76-77 with notes. The debate on the
dating of the Similitudes was summarized by J. H. Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha
and the New Testament (SNTSMS 54; Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1985)
108-10; see also Burkett, Son of Man Debate 70-73. More recent discussion has brought no advances
to the debate. Both Hengel, Studies 105, and Hampel, Menschensohn 41 n. 2, reflect the
indeterminacy of the data.
107. There is no dispute that 4 Ezra was written after the destruction of Jerusalem (70 CE).
108. This is the argument developed most fully in recent years by Horbury, 'Messianic
Association'; see also his Messianism 64-108.
109. See the quotations in nn. 100 and 101 above. So also Perrin, Rediscovering 165-66,
172-73. Pace Horbury, 'Messianic Association' 41, it is a tendentious interpretation to claim
that in these sources 'the messianic interpretation is assumed without argument'. Slater, 'One
like a Son of Man' 197-98, draws an equally confident conclusion (critiqued by Burkett, Son of
Man Debate 111-14). Collins expresses himself more carefully: 'The manner in which he is introduced
[in the Similitudes] does not presuppose that Son of Man is a well-known title'; 'they
offer no reason to think that this figure was known independently of Daniel'; 'the vision [of
4 Ezra] cannot be taken as evidence for a "Son of Man" concept independent of Daniel 7'; but
Collins finally concludes that the correspondences between 4 Ezra and the Similitudes 'point to
common assumptions about the interpretation of Daniel 7 in first century Judaism' ('Son of
Man' 452, 459, 462, 465-66; similarly Scepter and Star 177 and 185, contrasted with conclusions
on 182, 188). So both texts show that an allusion to Daniel's vision would have been
readily recognized; there is no evidence that Daniel's vision had already generated something
like a 'Son of Man' theology independent of the three texts in view; and yet we can deduce
'common assumptions about the interpretation of Daniel 7' prior to and independent of the Similitudes
and 4 Ezra. Hmmm! In Daniel 77-79 and Scepter and Star 154-72, Collins draws in
4Q246 (see above, n. 15) and suggests that 'the "Son of God" figure may well represent the earliest
interpretation, or reinterpretation, of the enigmatic "one like a son of man" in Daniel 7'
(Daniel 78; similarly Scepter and Star 167; cf. Kim above, n. 98); but it is hardly clear that 'the
son of God' in 4Q246 is a messianic figure (see again my response to Collins in n. 15 above).
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