Ben C. Smith wrote:Michael BG wrote:So when you write “dominical” sayings, what you mean are sayings that are attributed to being said by Jesus. There are other aspects of older treatments what we generally no longer use – the use of “St” before the name of an author, the use of "evangelist” now more commonly termed “author”.
Yes, there certainly are. What is your point? I explained my meaning, and I said I would try to avoid that terminology so as to avoid confusion.
There was no point, just chatting.
Ben C. Smith wrote:Michael BG wrote:Christians must have had a reason for seeing Jesus as the son of man and you suggested that they saw him as that “apocalyptic figure”, which implies the bringing of the end of times, while I am suggesting that it was because they saw Jesus Christ as a heavenly figure.
Actually, by "apocalyptic figure" I mean simply a figure who appears in an apocalypse. If I meant something to do with the end times, I would use the term which means exactly that: eschatological. That said, the figure in Daniel 7.13 is also eschatological, seeing as how he receives a kingdom which will never pass away: hence, the
last kingdom.
You are splitting hairs, though, for reasons unclear to me as yet.
The fault is partially mine and partially yours. The son of man is an eschatological figure – as he is concerned with the final events of history. However he is not really an apocalyptic figure as he is not revealing something hidden that figure is Daniel. Apocalyptic is often used to “refer to the coming of the world’s end” and I most often read it in this way, rather as the older more correct way “as being about a revelation about the future”. You are saying that Christians saw Jesus as the son of man because the son of man is in Daniel. I think this is highly improbable. There has to be a reason why they saw Jesus as the son of man. I mean they must have seen a characteristic of the son of man in Jesus. That characteristic I think is, that Jesus after his resurrection is a heavenly figure just like the son of man. I think it is important to be clear in what is being said.
Ben C. Smith wrote:Michael BG wrote:This is a difference of emphasis. Did the earliest Christians believe that Jesus would come again? (I think Paul is ambiguous – 1 Cor. 15 there is no coming Jesus Christ; 1 Thess. 4 those joining God meet Jesus Christ in the air.) They certainly believed he was a heavenly figure.
In 1 Thessalonians 4.15-16 he is also a coming, arriving, descending figure.
1 Thess. 4:14-17
[15] For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep.
[16] For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the archangel's call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first;
[17] then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord.
I think this is ambiguous the Lord comes out of heaven and those being made into angel like figures will “be caught in the clouds and will meet the Lord in the air.” The only link to Daniel 7:13-14 is the use of the word “clouds”. The cry of command and trumpet might refer to Dan 7:11 “I looked then because of the sound of the great words which the horn was speaking.” (but horns are part of the fourth beast.) However the lord is not given everlasting dominion over all the people or nations as in Dan 7:14. It is also possible that “the Lord” is God and not “the Lord Jesus” (verses 1 and 2). In verse 14 Paul has “Jesus” separate from the Lord. It is possible that the emphasis on the Lord himself (v 16) means Paul is referring to God not Jesus.
Ben C. Smith wrote:Michael BG wrote:Ben C. Smith wrote:That is what I am trying to explain, apparently unsuccessfully. I think that Jesus came to be called "Lord" because certain scriptures about the Lord were thought to apply to him. I think that Jesus came to be called "Christ" because certain scriptures about the Messiah were thought to have predicted him. And I think that Jesus came to be called Son of Man because Daniel 7.13 was thought to be about him.
I think I disagree with you, but in the past when I have written this you seem to only see a different emphasis. I think early Christians first believed that Jesus was the first of the resurrected (Paul’s first fruits) and saw Jesus in heaven with God. Then they equated Jesus with the heavenly son of man figure of Daniel because Jesus had seen a parallelism between himself on earth and the son of man in heaven ("… everyone who acknowledges me before men, the Son of man also will acknowledge before the angels of God; Lk 12:8 “For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of man also be ashamed, when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” Mk 8:38).
Those two sayings sound to me like the words of early prophets threatening those who are rejecting them: "You are rejecting me, but when the Son of Man comes, boy, will you be sorry!" Now, on your interpretation, the early prophet in question happens to be Jesus himself. Do you have an argument for why it must be Jesus himself and not someone else threatening retribution?
It is my understanding that Owen and Shepherd have shown that “the son of man” was not a common expression in Western Aramaic for man in the generic sense in the time of Jesus.
King and Messiah as Son of God Yarbro and John Collins (p 166
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=3hR ... an&f=false).
“the absence of the singular emphatic form (i.e. precisely the form required to explain the Greek) from any Middle Aramaic texts significantly undermines Casey’s argument that the expression was a common or idiomatic way of generically referring to a man in the Aramaic of Jesus’ time”
Who is this son of man? : The Latest Scholarship on a Puzzling Expression Ed. Larry W Hurtado and Paul L Owen (p 50
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=LPk ... en&f=false).
If Owen and Shepherd are correct then I think your point 2 falls even if you accept the Casey meaning rather than your first one.
How do you determine if something attributed to being said by Jesus in the gospels was said by Jesus?
According to Robert H Stein
The Method and Message of Jesus’ Teachings the Son of Man sayings meet the criteria of dissimilarity. (p 147
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=mRD ... an&f=false). He goes on to state that there is no evidence outside of the gospels of the term son of man as being a Christological title. He also states that the gospel writers did not assign the title Christ to Jesus in the gospels (7 times as a self-designation). He writes “the fact that the church did not read back the title ‘Christ’ into the Gospel traditions in this manner, even though it was their favorite title, argues strongly against their having done so with the title ‘Son of Man,’ which was not a favorite title of the early church” (p148).
Mk 8:38
[38] For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of man also be ashamed, when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels."
(Parellels
Lk 9:26
[26] For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.
Mt 16:27
[27] For the Son of man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay every man for what he has done. )
I am happy to see behind the Marcan version a sayings of Jesus and it is possible that the same saying is behind the Q version:
Lk 12:8-9
[8] "And I tell you, every one who acknowledges me before men, the Son of man also will acknowledge before the angels of God;
[9] but he who denies me before men will be denied before the angels of God.
I think Matthew has changed the Q version from son of man to Jesus himself (me, I)
Mt 10:32-33
[32] So every one who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven;
[33] but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.
Dennis R MacDonald writes in
Two Shipwrecked Gospels “In some respects Mark’s version seems to be the more primitive. Its reference to the Son of Man surely is more original than Matthew’s ‘I’ and ‘Father in heaven’ is typically Matthean”. He sees “the balanced phrases” as being prior to Mark’s “only negative consequences” (possibly c. p. 105).
It seems that Jesus expected people to make a response to him:
Q Mt 7:24 / Lk 6:47
"Every one then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house upon the rock;”
Q Mt 12:41 /Lk 11:32
“The men of Nin'eveh will arise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.”
Possibly Q Mt 11:20-24 Lk 10:13-15 Woes to Chorazin , Bethgsaida and Capernaum and Mark’s bridegroom (Mk 2:19).
If Jesus did believe that the end of times was coming and people had their last chance to respond positively to him and his message and a positive response meant that the person would be “saved” but a negative response meant that the person would not be “saved” then it is possible that Jesus would say that those who responded positively to him the son of man would recognise in heaven and those who failed to make the right response the son of man would not recognise. Unfortunately I have no idea what Aramaic word is being translated as αρνησαμενος homologéō (which can mean “agreement”) or αρνησαμενος arneomai (which can mean “not accept”).
I found this on the internet – “As Casey affirms, “[t]here should be no doubt that, in two or three sayings, Jesus declared that people’s attitude to him during the historic ministry would condition their fate at the last judgement” (Son of Man, p. 193)” (
https://remnantofgiants.wordpress.com/tag/son-of-man/). I couldn’t access the book
Son of Man : The Interpretation and Influence of Daniel 7, which I assume is being quoted.
Maurice Casey believes that the use of εν after each use of the word ομολογησει is a “clear and undisputed Aramaism” (p 179
The Solution to the ‘Son of Man’ Problem https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=m7z ... 93&f=false). He believes that the saying could have been:
“everyone who confesses me before (the sons of) men, a/the son of man will confess him (her) before the angels of God
And whoever denies me before (the son of) men, a/the son of man will deny him (her) before the angels of God.”
I wonder if Jesus did use the phrase “the sons of men” as you suggested when discussing Mk 3:28. If so then it is possible where the gospels have “the son of man” the original was “the sons of men” when the meaning is humankind.
Yarbro Collins in “The Origin of the Designation of the Son of Man by Jesus” (
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1509427?se ... b_contents p 402) states that “Vielhauer discussed a number of apocalyptic Son of Man sayings … including Luke 12:8-9, ... This saying makes the clearest distinction between the Son of Man and Jesus as distinct beings, yet links the activities of the two closely together. It has been argued in the past that followers of Jesus would not have formulated a saying after Easter which distinguished between the two figures.41 Vielhauer demonstrated that this saying probably does not go back to Jesus. He pointed out that the saying reflects a legal situation in which followers of Jesus were required to make a statement about their allegiance to Jesus. Such a social setting is far more plausible after the crucifixion than before it. 42
(Note) 41 Rudolf Otto …
The Kingdom of God and the Son of Man 9… 1943) …
(Note) 42 Vielhauer “Gottereich and Menshensohn,” 76-79; … that it (this saying) originated in the early Christian Church. Kaseman classifies it as an early Christian prophetic saying; specifically, a correlative saying of eschatological judgment (“Sentences of Holy Law in the New Testament” …77-78).”
I couldn’t check the article by Vielhauser on the internet. It seems that the author of Q has linked the saying (Lk 12:8-9) with Christians being brought before authorities (Lk 12:10-11), but this does not mean it should have been.
Ben C. Smith wrote:Overall, you have a lot more faith than I do that these sayings go back to Jesus. I am deliberately avoiding making that assumption. What leads you to make it so often? To my mind you need to mount the argument for each and every saying.
I think each individual saying has to be considered and a case made for each one, rather than an all embracing theory applied universally.
Mt 10:23
”When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next; for truly, I say to you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel, before the Son of man comes.”
This is most likely a “M” saying that Matthew has placed in his sending out of the disciples, an amalgamation of both Mark (6:7-11), Q (Lk 10:1-12) and Mk 13:9-13. I think it is unlikely that Matthew created the saying as it is likely to have been untrue when the gospel was written c 85 CE. By then it is likely that Christian preachers would have gone to every town in “Israel”. Matthew has the twelve disciples only go out to Israel (10:6) not the Gentiles or the Samaritans (10:5). However at the end of his gospel he has Jesus command the disciples (and this command would also apply to Matthew’s Christian community) “Go and make disciples of all the nations”
(28:19). Therefore Matthew has his Jesus say preach to all nations (28:19) and that the disciples could not preach to all of Israel before the Son of Man comes. These are mutually exclusive. Lots of scholars believe that Matthew’s gospel was written at Antioch where we know from Galatians there were Jewish and Gentile Christians. If Matthew’s gospel was written at Antioch then it seems logical that the Christians community would accept the idea that they should preach to both Jews and Gentiles as in Mt 28:19. The Antioch Christians community would have no reason to create a saying of Jesus’ that states that the disciples would not be able to preach in all the towns of Israel before the son of man came and ended time. Therefore it is probable that Matthew or his community created the saying in Mt 28:19-20 but not the one in Mt 10:23. It is probable that the saying in Mt 10:23 goes back to Jesus.