Was the Enoch's Son of Man an anti-gnostic figure?

[Giuseppe]

15. And the righteous and elect shall have risen from the earth,
And ceased to be of downcast countenance.
And they shall have been clothed with garments of glory,
16. And these shall be the garments of life from the Lord of Spirits:
And your garments shall not grow old,
Nor your glory pass away before the Lord of Spirits.

(Enoch, 62:15-16)


The author knows the Gnostic interpretation of the first chapters of Genesis, with the Serpent as revealer and giver of the gnosis that is able to open the eyes of Adam end Eve.

In Genesis, Adam and Eve are clothed just after they realize their sin, but according to the author of Enoch, they will be clothed only at the End of World, at the general resurrection etc. Hence their status of blindness (for the Gnostics: a real knowledge) lasts until to the end of the world and is never ceased.

Hence he is introducing the Danielic Son of Man as an anti-Gnostic figure insofar he, and not the Jesus-Sabaoth, has to be the second god after the creator god.


(note that the his Christian enemies were in turn Judaizers themselves).

[Giuseppe]

That the Son of Man is used as an anti-gnostic construct is evident also from John 12:34:

The crowd spoke up, "We have heard from the Law that the Messiah will remain forever, so how can you say, 'The Son of Man must be lifted up'? Who is this 'Son of Man'?"

In this way, the Unknown One par excellence becomes the Son of Man, save the fact that this figure is perfectly known in the Jewish scriptures (Daniel), against the gnostics who assumed that the Unknown One par excellence was the Son of (the alien) God.


But in a next post I will add evidence of anti-Gnostic polemic in Enoch.

[Giuseppe]

In whiletime , I see that Matthew 16:13 has changed 'Son of Man' for 'I' in order that the Unknown One par excellence was perfectly known at least in Daniel:

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”

[Giuseppe]

And he said to them, "Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power."

(Mark 9:1)


'Matthew' insists again and again that who will be seen already in this generation is someone who was already known and predicted by Daniel:

Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom."

This is another example where the danielic 'Son of Man' is used to make known (at least by Daniel, as extrema ratio) who is otherwise a too much alien (and Gnostic) figure in the eyes of the Judaizers.