Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§17.5 Crucifixus sub Pontio Pilato
'a son of man' typically denoted the human condition in all its frailty (§16.3a
n. 85). Since, in the appended interpretation, the manlike figure represents 'the
saints of the Most High' in their vindication following the terrible suffering inflicted
on them by the fourth kingdom (Dan. 7.19-23, 25), the 'one like a son
of man' is a fitting symbol of Judah's frailty before the onslaught of Antiochus
Epiphanes. 212
In other words, we should not let the subsequent interpretation of Daniel's
vision, where a specific heavenly being is envisaged (but 'son of man' is not yet a
firm title), deflect us from recognizing the likelihood that a use of the idiomatic
'son of man' would quite naturally see Dan. 7.13 as an example of the same idiom.
That is to say, as soon as we recognize that an implication of suffering
frailty was part of Daniel's 'one like a son of man', it becomes equally easy to
see that a masal like that embedded in the second Passion prediction could quite
readily evoke also Daniel's vision.
Neither should we allow the traditional classification of the Son of Man
sayings in the Gospels into three categories (present activity, suffering, coming)
213 to confuse us into assuming that these were different usages requiring different
explanations. If Jesus did draw on Daniel's vision on at least some occasions
(§ 16.4c), then it was not simply to inform his hope of vindication (§ 16.5c),
but to instruct his sense that suffering prior to that vindication was unavoidable.
Here thought of the frailty of bar ' e nas meshes into the thought of the suffering
righteous. Daniel's vision is itself part of that substantial tradition in Jewish
thought: that the righteous of Israel ('the saints of the Most High') must expect to
suffer for their devotion to Yahweh.
Daniel's use of k e bar ' e nas as a way of speaking of the (suffering) righteous
of Israel raises one further possibility: that Jesus saw in Daniel's vision a prediction
of the sufferings he (Jesus) must suffer as representative of, on behalf of, Israel.
The thought does not come to expression in Daniel's vision, any more than
the martyr theology of 2 Maccabees 7 expressed thought of vicarious suffering.
But however inchoate, the thought is not far from the surface in Jesus' use of bar
' e nasa, and not just when that usage contained an allusion to Dan. 7.13. For if Jesus
did indeed refer to himself as 'the (son of) man', then in some degree he was
focusing what was generally true of humankind in his own condition. And if he
did find in Dan. 7.13 an image to inspire his own mission, then that inspiration
may well have included some sense that the 'one like a son of man' represented
Israel.
212. Cf. particularly Hooker, Son of Man 108-109.
213. Bultmann continues to be widely followed (Theology 1.30); e.g., Merklein, Jesu
Botschaft 153; Flusser, Jesus 126; Theissen and Merz, Historical Jesus 546-48; Strecker, Theology
257; Becker, Jesus 204.
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