"Son of Man" -- Richard Bauckham

If you study Jesus or the Gospels or New Testament christology, Son of Man is more than a big deal. There are number of books that summarize the history of scholarship on what Son of Man means, and why Jesus used it. And does it refer to Daniel 7? Or is it little more than “one” or “that man”? It takes courage to weigh in. On Son of Man, which as upper case is an interpretation itself for it could be “a son of man,” it seems everything has not only been said but it has been repeated in cycles of scholarship. I remember as a PhD student seeing an article “The Son of Man — One More Time,” or something like that. Delbert Burkett some twenty years ago published a 150 page monograph on the history of interpreting Son of Man. So, there you go: enter at your own risk.

Richard Bauckham, in “Son of Man”: 1: Early Jewish Literature, has done so and his work is lengthy enough that he will have a second volume. I want to summarize his first volume. I read the whole thing, but his summary is what I will summarize in eleven points. Scholars know Bauckham as a scholar’s scholar, and especially so when it comes to the interpretation of Scriptures in Jewish and Christian literature. This book will be a turning point in scholarship.

First, “the appeal of Daniel 7 was that it provided both the assurance that history is governed by the sovereignty of God and a scheme of world history within which the Jewish people could place themselves.”

Second, both Jewish apocalypses and Josephus found in Daniel 2 and 7 “the most important key to understanding their contemporary place in history from the perspective of Jewish belief in the sovereignty of the one God over all nations and their history, along with his special commitment to the Jewish people.”

Third, depending on the date of the writing, various Jewish texts understood the fourth empire of Daniel 7 as either the Hellenistic empire of Alexander and his successors or much more frequently, Rome.

Fourth, Daniel 7 was filled in with other images and texts, like Psalm 2, 72, or 2 Samuel 7. With some Isaiah, of course.

Fifth, in all the Jewish texts the figure of one like a son of man in Daniel 7 refers to an individual. It was not understood as a symbol for the holy ones, the saints, that is the holy ones of Israel. This is a major conclusion for those who study the Gospels.

Sixth,  the one like a son of man in Daniel was portrayed “either as a warrior who defeats the enemy in battle or as a judge who destroys the enemy by judicial sentence.”

Seventh, “In all this literature the one like a son of man… is unequivocally a man (a male human).” He can be a “a glorified human, [but] not an angel by nature.” There are at times traces of divine language used for the one like a son of man but Bauckham does not see deity/divinity in the son of man in Jewish literature. This counters recent scholarship both by Daniel Boyarin and Peter Schäfer. Instead, for Bauckham this divine-like language reflects “the office of the Messianic Figure who exercises judgment on God's behalf and rules over the Kingdom that belongs to God.”  And, “to speak of ‘functional divinity’ would be to make far too much of these isolated instances in just three of the sources. Throughout the sources we have studied, the ‘one like a son of man’ is treated as merely human, an eminent and exalted human, to be sure, but not an angel or a God.”

Eighth, here’s where he is then and this must be emphasized: “this figure is understood to be a human who had been born and lived on earth in the past and is now being preserved by God in paradise or heaven until the time of the end when he will fulfill the role of the Messiah described in Daniel 7 and other prophecies.” This man was identified by some of the writings: a descendant of David, King David himself, Enoch, and Joshua.

Ninth, here’s another major conclusion: “Daniel 7:13-14 was not, as has often been supposed, the source of a form of messianic expectation quite different from the Davidic hope.” Bauckham observes that this “is remarkably close to the way early Christians read Daniel 7, a comparison that will be explored” in his second volume.

Tenth, “there was no Son of Man tradition or Son of Man concept in Second Temple Judaism.” There were traditions of exegesis. Each view of the Messiah gathered texts from various prophecies and put them onto a singular figure. “In every case a Messiah … was expected to exercise judgment, authority, and rule on God's behalf, but on earth, as did King David and other agents of God in the Hebrew scriptures.” Which means, “His eternal Kingdom would be that of an earthly emperor.”

Finally, “It must be stressed that no Messianic Figure, even those whose portrayal relied most heavily on Daniel 7:13-14, was ever called “the Son of Man.” So he finishes the volume with “It is hard to believe that any one in late Second Temple times could have recognized the phrase “the Son of Man” as an illusion to Daniel 7:13.”