1987 - P. Maurice Casey - General, Generic and Indefinite. The Use of The Term Son of Man' in Aramaic Sources and in The Teaching of Jesus

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General, Generic and Indefinite: the Use of the Term 'Son of Man' in Aramaic Sources and in the Teaching of Jesus
P. Maurice Casey Journal for the Study of the New Testament 1987 9: 21 DOI: 10.1177/0142064X8700902902 The online version of this article can be found at: http://jnt.sagepub.com/content/9/29/21.citation
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21-
GENERAL, GENERIC AND INDEFINITE: THE USE OF THE TERM SON OF MAN IN ARAMAIC SOURCES AND IN THE TEACHING OF JESUS
P. Maurice
Casey
Department of Theology, University of Nottingham University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD
Recent attempts to unravel Jesus use of the term son of man have largely concentrated on the Aramaic (m)v3m 7D. In particular, there have now been four attempts to describe an idiom by means of which an Aramaic speaker used (m)v3t4 7D as a reference to himself 1. In his seminal paper on the use of this term, Vermes argued that it was a simple substitute for the first person pronoun r. 2. The present author has argued that all the proposed examples of this idiom are in fact general statements, which were used by Aramaic speakers with reference to themselves, and that this idiom is the key to understanding Jesus use of the term son of man. 3. In an important book, Lindars has argued that the idiom was much more precise than this. He describes the idiomatic use of the generic article, in which the speaker refers to a class of persons, with whom he identifies himself... It is this idiom, properly requiring bar (e)nasha rather than bar (e)nash, which provides the best guidance to the use of the Son of Man in the sayings of Jesus. 4. In a recent article in this journal, reviewing Lindarss book, Bauckham has suggested that Jesus used bar enash (probably, rather than bar enasha) in the indefinite sense (a man, someone), which is itself a very common usage, but used it as a form of deliberately oblique or ambiguous self reference.1 The purpose of this article is to discuss the issues raised in this debate, and to clarify the nature and usage of this idiom in our Aramaic sources and in the teaching of Jesus.
1. Aramaic Sources and the Date
of This
Idiom
The
general
use
of
WIN 7D as an
ordinary
term
for man,
so
22 attested in later Aramaic, is quite sufficiently well attested in the very meagre Aramaic sources of the Second Temple period (lQapGen 21.13; llQTgJob 9.9 [Job 25.6]; 26.3 [Job 35.8]:b and in the plural Dan. 2.38; 5.21; 1 En. 7.3; 22.3; 77.3 [4QEnastrb 23]; 1 QapGen 19.15; 11 QTgJob 28.2 [Job 36.25]; cf. also Sefire 3.16; Dan. 7.13). It follows that general statements using the term VIN 13 were normal in Aramaic at the time of Jesus. Later Aramaic sources provide examples of people using such general statements rather than speaking of themselves directly. The circumstances in which they do so were correctly defined by Vermes: In most instances the sentence contains an allusion to humiliation, danger or death, but there are also examples where reference to the self in the third person is dictated by humility or modesty.2 If therefore we find that some son of man sayings attributed to Jesus emerge in Aramaic reconstructions as general statements referred by the speaker to himself in circumstances of this kind, we must conclude that these sayings are in accordance with normal Aramaic idiom, on analytical and empirical grounds. The analytical ground is the slightness of the shift from the use of general statements to the use of such statements by a speaker with special reference to himself Once the use of general statements is established in a social group of speakers of any given language, they may apply them to themselves at any time in much the same way as they may use proverbs. The empirical ground is that later Aramaic sources show that some Aramaic speakers in fact did so. The common assumption that there is no earlier example of this idiom is moreover misleading. More than 700 years before the time of Jesus, the king of Krt was the effective author of a treaty between himself and the king of Arpad After repeatedly mentioning himself, his son, grandson and descendants in lengthy formulae, he used a general statement with VIN 12 at the point where he contemplated the killing of himself or his descendants as a result of action taken by the king of Arpad or his descendants: If you think of killing me and you put forward such a plan, and if your sons son thinks of killing my sons son and puts forward such a plan, or if your descendants think of killing my descendants and put forward such a plan, and if the kings of Arpad think of it, in any case that a son of man dies (ty3M 13 nu:)~ ~t ~n55~), you have been false to all the gods of the treaty which is in this inscription (Sefire 3.14-17). Here the general statement covers the king and his descendants, and this is partly why it is used: it is nonetheless significant that it is a general statement,
abundantly
23
:1, used of a speaker to include himself with the humiliating event of his own death, similar circumstances to those indicated by Vermes in his study of later Aramaic. If therefore we find that straightforward retroversions of sayings of Jesus produce general statements which he evidently intended to apply to himself, we must conclude that the absence of this idiom from contemporary Aramaic sources is simply due to the small quantity of Aramaic surviving from our period. It should in any case be quite clear that so little Aramaic survives that such a conclusion is inevitable in the case of straightforward lexical items, let alone more subtle idioms. For instance, 7DD, which is frequently said to be the Aramaic behind nupaU)CJ,1t in the passion predictions, is not found in Aramaic documents of our period, nor is o5nt~t~ extant in the right dialect in the sense required behind zE7v,wou~av at Lk. 13.32. Scholars do not however conclude from these facts that the passion predictions are not authentic, nor should we do so. If we confine ourselves to words extant in the minuscule corpus of Aramaic literature of the right period, it is patently clear that we have too little of the language to express either day-to-day conversations in normal life or a broad range of serious religious teaching. Nor should we be deterred from reconstructing sayings of Jesus by too rigid a classification of Aramaic into different phases. While it is clear that some changes such as the dropping of t4 at the beginning of v3m and the decline of the use of the absolute state of the noun did take place, it is equally clear that the basic vocabulary and structure of the language did not alter over a period of centuries. The semantic area of common words such as ,0tC, :1tC and Dip continued to include all the basic uses attested in earlier Aramaic, and idiomatic features such as the construct state of the noun and the uses of participles as finite verbs are also found in many different dialects over a long period of time. Since the general use of v3m 7D is found before as well as after the time of Jesus, including an early example of a general statement used by an author of himself and his descendants, we should not refuse to interpret sayings of Jesus as general statements applied by the speaker to himself, if they emerge 3 like that from retroversion into Aramaic.3
using
the
term v3N
reference
to
2. General Statements in the Aramaic Sources
All
extant
examples
of this idiom
are
best described
as
general
24
by a speaker in order to say something about occasionally himself and a group of associates. By general statements I do not mean only statements which are true of all people, for general statements are widely used in many languages and cultures in a much less general and more subtle way. The pragmatic factors which lead people to want to speak indirectly take precedence over the surface logic of sentences as these might be literally interpreted, so that generalizations are frequently used which are not remotely true of everyone, still less of all people at all times and in all circumstances. In a previous article in this journal, I noted particularly the studies by Sacks and Wales of the English terms everyone, you, we and one.4 Sackss study ofeveryone is especially striking because of the evidence that a term whose surface logic in isolation necessarily does refer to all people is used in such a way that he can summarize its meaning as anyone in such a situation as I or anyone in such a situation where what that situation is is characterizable, a description which approximates to Lindarss description of the generic use of mr3m 7D as equivalent to a man in my position. What is so fruitful about investigations like those of Sacks and Wales is the complexity of their analytical mode. These scholars do not treat language as a closed logical system which can be fully described in terms of its surface logic, but as a mode of communication between human beings who normally and conventionally make statements for social and emotional reasons which would not be correct if they were analysed only in terms of their surface logic. We must analyse the idiomatic use of wiN 13 in this way because, as Vermes made clear in his first description of it, this is an idiom where pragmatic factors are fimdamental both in our Aramaic sources and in the teaching of Jesus, who used it in a number of extreme circumstances including predictions of his death. I shall therefore discuss three Aramaic examples in order to illustrate the variation in the degree of generality which may be found in this himself,
or
statements used
idiom. 1. At Gen. R. 79.6, we find R Simeon ben Yohai in a cave, wondering whether it was safe to come out. He saw some birds being hunted: some were captured, while others escaped, and the fate of all of them depended on the judgment of a heavenly voice which he heard. He declared:
t~m3n,n ~c5 Moty 7>bDD 71Li ~) 131 VLi ~M1 ?M 7fi
25
-A bird is not caught without the will of heaven: how much less the soul of a son of man. R Simeon then emerged from the cave. It follows that he intended to apply the statement to himself, but it does not follow that V3 13 is nothing more than a substitute for the first person pronoun. On the contrary, the first sentence, A bird is not caught without the will of heaven, is quite clearly a general statement: the second must be interpreted in the same way, because we already know that ~) 7D was a general term for man, and this ensures that how much less the soul of a son of man balances and follows from the general statement about birds. Further, it is quite clear from the content of this saying that it is intended to be true of everyone at all times. Indeed, the general level of meaning would have been accepted by everyone in R Simeons culture. It is therefore clear that in this idiom V3 13 is not a simple substitute for ,r. Both V03 and v3 13 are in the absolute state, so that the use of a general statement with reference to a speaker clearly does not depend on the generic use of the definite state. The reference of the saying to R Simeon is quite clear, so that the idiom should not be described as ambiguous.5 In this version of the story, R Simeon had his son with him. The saying therefore necessarily refers to him as welL This is always liable to happen simply because of the general level of meaning of sayings used in this idiom. In a practical situation this may be very functional, because anyone who recognizes the truth of the saying as applied to himself is more likely to accept that it is true of the speaker as welL We may compare Sefire 3.16, where we have seen a general statement deliberately used to include the authors descendants with himself, an analytically similar usage in somewhat different circumstances. 2. As an example of a saying which is true of a restricted social subgroup we may consider the saying of R Hiyya bar Adda at j. Ber. 2.8.5b. This is adduced to explain why he left his valuables to R Levi: iI&dquo;~~ iI&dquo;&dquo;,V m,nm t4v~ 7D7 7Dbn -The disciple of a son of man is as dear to him as his son. This cannot be interpreted as true of everyone, because most people do not have disciples and some do not have sons, but this is not relevant to the use of this idiom. This limitation to a social sub-group causes no trouble in comprehension because it is obvious from the context. All that is required for the success of the saying is that other rabbis felt that their ties with their disciples were strong enough for the general level of meaning to be plausible. Provided this is true, the statement is an acceptable way of
26
explaining how R Hiyya bar Adda came to leave his valuables to R Levi. Consequently, it should not be treated as ambiguous. 3. The minimum degree of generality necessary in the use of this idiom may be illustrated by the saying of R Zeira at j. Ber. 2.8.5c, which is a false generalization from his own experience. This saying occurs in one of a group of stories about rabbis who immigrated to Israel from Babylon, a situation in which anyone is liable to be unaware of local customs. R Zeira went to buy a pound of meat from a butcher. When he asked the price, he was told $0 minas and a
lash. He offered more and more money to get his pound of meat without suffering a lash, but when his offer of 100 minas was still refused, he gave in with the words, Do according to your custom (1.1iUO:J ~t~w). That evening he said to his colleagues:
Nmp7 H&dquo;&dquo;I~~&dquo;
~~ 13
brN Nb7 i1:Ji1, mnjo tU:1 onp 7n i1~&dquo;
i10
7~:1&dquo;
mnn 7>
how evil is the custom of this land, that a son of man pound of meat until they have given him a lash. His colleagues did not accept that this was the custom, but made enquiries as a result of which it emerged that the butcher was already dead. R Zeira refuted any idea that he was responsible for divine vengeance on his behalf by saying that he was not really angry with the butcher because I thought the custom was like that ()5 N>niD7 n.,:1o). It is clear from the reactions of R Zeiras colleagues, and from his own final admission, that he was in fact the only person who was lashed by the butcher when he bought his pound of meat, but even this does not justify Vermess view that v: 13 is a simple substitute for I. This is clear for two reasons. First, V3 13 is elsewhere a normal term for man and makes perfect sense like that here. In relating a humiliating incident, R Zeira used a general statement in order to avoid referring directly to himself Secondly, his three references to local custom show beyond doubt that he did not believe that he was the only person to be treated like this. Since however he was wrong about the custom in a place with which he was not familiar, it is clear that he felt able to use a general statement by generalizing from his own experience. This example is barely a successful use of the idiom because R Zeira was mistaken about local custom. We must conclude that, to be used successfully, the sentence containing a general statement with (m)v3(m) 13 must have a general level of meaning which appears plausible to the social sub-group of the
-Rabbis,
cannot eat a
27
speaker and his audience. Finally, it will be noted that in this example v~ 12 is in the absolute state. This again shows that (N)v3(m)
in this idiom may be in either the absolute or the definite state. One further point should be made about this idiom: the general level of meaning may be functional rather than substantive. This is clear in all these three examples. R Zeira is the extreme case, because he found his own personal experience so humiliating that he made up a generalization on the basis of it so that he could understand it and communicate it to his colleagues. Both R Simeon ben Yohai and R Hiyya bar Adda also have their general statements recorded because of the application to themselves rather than because of interest in the general statements. This is not essential, but it is likely to be normative in the lives of actual people rather than in literary sources. There are two or three examples in our Aramaic sources where some interest seems to be taken in the general level of meaning for its own sake. The most obvious is j. Kil. 9.6.32b (1/ j. Ket. 12.3.35a // Gen. R. 100.2), where Rabbi is recorded to have been buried wrapped in a single sheet on the ground of his saying.
12 l&dquo;W Nin
btN VIN 121 l~tl~5 ~
-It is not as a son of man goes that he will come again. This is one of a number of sayings about burial, and our sources show so great an interest in the general level of meaning that they contradict it: But the rabbis say, As a son of man goes, so will he come again. Such an interest is not however necessary, and appears to be absent from most of our Aramaic sources and from most of the sayings of Jesus. 3. Generic,
Indefinite and the
Articles
We must now consider Aramaic aspects of the proposals of Lindars and Bauckham, and the effects which they have on our understanding of the articles in the Gospel expression 6 uio5 zou av6pci~nou. First, some general points about the description of Aramaic nouns. They have three states, usually described in English as the definite or emphatic state, the absolute or indefinite state, and the construct state. Several definite and indefinite forms, including both the definite m. sg., and the indefinite sg., are characterized by their ending in some form of long a, so that the difference between these states is not as simple as the presence or absence of an independent article. The difference between the definite and indefinite states
28
gradually broke down, and this breakdown took the form of increasing of the definite state. This process had evidently begun before the time of Jesus, but we do not know how far it had gone by that time, still less how far it had gone in the Galilean dialect, of which we have
use
contemporary evidence at all. The definite state in Aramaic should thus be clearly distinguished from the Hebrew article, which was distinctively sounded before the noun and has never lost its force, and from the independent definite article in Greek. Consequently, information about Hebrew usage, though it may be useful because it comes from the same culture and may be more generally illuminating like comparative material from any other language, cannot be considered as evidence of Aramaic usage. Nor should we rely on the formulated grammatical rules of nineteenth-century grammarians, which are frequently too complex and too subject to the influence of modern cultural assumptions to be accurate descriptions of the habits of ancient speakers.6 This means that Lindarss description of this idiom, learned and ingenious though it be, is without real foundation in the primary sources. We may not infer the use, let alone the interpretation, of the definite state in this idiom from the use of the definite state in expressions like ~c~5~5 7 M1tM:J
no
(Dan. 2.19).
The crucial factor is therefore the empirical data: do examples of this idiom use the definite state or not? The answer to this question was clearly laid out by Vermes in his original paper some examples do have the definite state mv3 7D while others have the indefinite Wi 12 (WIN 13 at Sefire 3.16). The fact that some examples have the indefinite state is sufficient to show that Lindarss description of the idiom is unsatisfactory. The simplest example is the saying of R Zeira at j. Ber. 2.8.5c, discussed above. A second example is found at Gen. R. 7.2 (// Num. R. 19.3 // Pes. 4.30), where Jacob of Kefar Niburayya, ordered by R Haggai to come and be beaten for ruling that fish should be ritually slaughtered, replied
toCi1t:)ntoC
~~5
NnuiN7 ~5~0 ~nrr V3 13
-A son of man who interprets the word of Torah is beaten! I am amazed. Lindars tries to explain the use of the indefinite state here: In this case bar nash is defined by the relative clause, and the anarthrous form is required to denote a single member of the class so specified.~ This is not consistent with Lindarss usual description of this idiom, in accordance with which we should have the generic
29
denote a particular member of the class, and he offers no justification for his opinion that the anarthrous form could be required in Aramaic of this period. It is of course true that V3 7D is defined by the relative clause. In a situation of implied humiliation, Jacob identified himself with a group of people by describing himself as a son of man who interprets the word of Torah. In his environment, this was not the sort of person who ought to be humiliated The idiom works because there was a group of people who interpreted the Law and who were highly thought of for the reason: it does not need the definite state of (t4)v3 in. A further example, with the same son of man saying, follows in the same
to
sources.
article
A fourth example of the use of the indefinite state in this idiom is found in a Geniza fragment of a Targum to Gen. 4.14, where one of Cains statements about himself is replaced with a general statement which refers to him equally clearly:
n7DiDb V17Db 7wLN rn5 17N 10i 10
-and from before you, Lord, it is not possible for a son of man to hide. We have already noted a fifth example at Gen. R. 79.6, where R Simeon emerged from his cave after declaring, A bird is not caught without the will of heaven; how much less the soul of a son of man (v3 7D7 vn3). Lindarss comments on this example are not wholly clear, but he appears to believe that the versions of Gen. R. 79.6 and Eccl. R. 10.8 deliberately have a general statement referring to both R Simeon and his son. At j. Sheb. 9.1.38d, which reads xv3 7D, the generic article singles out a particular man who might find himself in the same situation as the birds. Seeing that what is said can be taken to be a general ruling, some texts take it as such (e.g. Gen. R. 79.6). But the use of the generic article adds to the comment the sense of discovery, true in every case, no doubt, but true in his own case too. 8 Then final sentence of this description goes far beyond the verifiable use of the definite state, but the real faults are more fundamental First, the differentiation between the versions with the definite and indefinite state is quite arbitrary and not properly related to the use of these states elsewhere. Secondly, the general ruling of Gen. R. 79.6 // Eccl. R. 10.8 still refers to the speaker. If therefore Lindarss description of the version at j. Sheb. 9.1.38d were admitted, it would mean that there were in fact two types of the idiom, one corresponding to my description and the
30 other corresponding to his. This is not very likely when the differentiation between the use of the definite and indefinite states was breaking down. This is presumably why Lindars believes that the version ofj. Sheb. 9.1.38d best explains the variants, but we have no reason to believe that it was the original form, not least because the transmission of rabbinical literature is at this level too unreliable for us to have any confidence in the originality of any reading. Thirdly, Lindars regards the use of the generic article in this idiom as the reason for the presence of the articles in the Gospel expression 6 v16g rox v8pcmou. If this were right, and if the reason for the use of the indefinite state at Gen. R. 79.6 // Eccl. R. 10.8 were the use of a general statement referring to both Simeon and Eleazar his son, we should have vio5 av6pwnov without the articles in sayings of Jesus, such as Mk 10.45 and Mt. 8.20 // Lk 9.58, where the general level of meaning originally applied to other people in the audience as well as
to
clearly in Lindarss longest discussion of a form, the saying of Rabbi at j. KiL 9.6-32b Ket. 12.3-35a Gen. R. // (// j. 100.2): Inm H~i1 5~it~ vi,t4 131 7n5 t~5It is not as a son of man goes that he will come again. Lindars begins from the version of j. Ket. 12.3-35a, where he reads NVi 12 and suggests that this is a proverb, or proverbial type of sentence, and that the indefinite ~J 7D in other texts turns it into a general rule, as in the opinion of the rabbis which follows: As a son of man (v3 13) saying extant in more than one
goes, so will he come again!9 However, Lindars offers no evidence that Rabbis statement is a proverb. He does not show that the use of the generic article is appropriate to a proverbial type of sentence, it is difficult to envisage a situation in which proverbs and general rulings would use different states of the noun, and proverbs and general rulings do not follow such a distinction. Finally, if this saying were a proverb, it occurs in other texts with vi 7D in the absolute state, which shows empirically that this sentence in its context does not require the definite state. Thus Lindarss distinction between proverbial sentence and general ruling is too artificiaL He also ignores the textual question. The two talmudic versions of this saying effectively come from two textually insecure copies of the same lengthy passage, and variants at this level are so frequent that no text is reliable (the Wilna edn of j. Ket. 12.3-35a in fact reads Wi :1). We must therefore conclude on the ground of the empirical data that examples of this idiom may use (t4)vi(t4) 13 in either the definite
Jesus himself These faults appear more
31
indefinite state. From the theoretical point of view, there are two points to make. First, general statements are intelligible, and are found, with the indefinite state (e.g. Zaire 3.16). The gradual spread of the definite state means that they may also use the definite state. This idiom is likely to have been one of the first in which variation occurred, because such variation could not affect the meaning and use of the idiom. Secondly, Lindarss comments should highlight for us the fact that in many examples (m)v3 13 is used in such a general way that the definite state might be used in a generic sense as this is normally understood, that is, as a reference to mankind as such. The significant point about this usage is that it too was optional. For example, Daniels first beast was given the heart of a man (v3m, Dan. 7.4), but the little hom had eyes like the eyes of a man (mv3m, Dan. 7.8). This gives us a second theoretical reason for my original contention that the variation in state found in examples of this idiom in our Aramaic sources will also have been found in examples at the time of Jesus. Thus, while we have no access to his idiolect, it is very probable that some examples in the teaching of Jesus had (m)v3t4 :1 in the definite state, while others had the indefinite state. How then do we explain the consistency with which all our Gospel writers put both articles in the expression 6 v16g rob dv0pknov? Lindars effectively argues that this must be due to consistent use of the definite state in the underlying Aramaic and to this extent he aligns himself with traditional scholarship. This point has however caused a lot of trouble, leading our most outstanding scholars to make some quite extraordinary conjectures. Thus Hengel deduced from it a fixed place for the translation of the Jesus tradition, a conjecture which Lindars regards as probable. For the same reason Moule was led to conjecture xuD>7 n7D or some equally hair-raising Syriac translationese as the expression used by Jesus, though the term could exist in natural Aramaic only if there were a particular Hi:1,., for Jesus to be in some clear sense the son of, it cannot in itself carry a reference to Dan. 7.13, and 6 ui rou v8pW7TOU is not a feasible translation of it.l We have moreover already seen that Lindarss view cannot in fact explain the use of the articles because there are several examples of the Aramaic idiom which use the indefinite state. I have however already supplied a more sophisticated explanation of the presence of the articles in 6 uio5 rou 6v0pknov which takes account of the predictable variation in state of the underlying (m)v3(t4) 12. Lindars attacks this not merely as unnecessary
or
32 of his proposed Aramaic substratum but as in itself so it must now be restated and defended.ll The translators had very little choice. Any given translator must have been bilingual and on general grounds he is very likely to have done more than one passage. It is therefore certain that he was aware that the definite state might be used in this idiom, and probable that he had to translate examples with NVI(N) 7D, so in some cases the articles result merely from a literal rendering. At least some translators will however have been faced with examples of the idiom using ~~(t~) 13 in the absolute state, and here any translator naturally used the articles, as he knew he did in other examples, to make clear that a particular person was referred to. The reference to Jesus will have been important to him as a Christian, and unlike people who are not bilingual or well-informed about Aramaic idiom he will still have been able to read his native idiom in the translation which he produced, because the Greek article, like the emphatic state in Aramaic, could be used generically. The second article in 6 ui6~q rou av9pci~nou is an example of this, and the translator will have treated the first in the same way. He could not have done better. Further, it is in fact probable on general grounds that the number of sources of translated sayings was limited, and we know that the evangelists edited them. If, for example, Luke were faced with a source which read <t>Li1llan u!6v b.v9pci~nou napa616wg (cm Lk. 22.48), it is likely that he would edit it to conform with the title he used so often, just as he edited psrd rpsig 1i~pa and removed pappL Sayings which originated in Greek necessarily use the same title that Greekspeaking Christians found in the tradition. Thus the consistency of our Gospels is the result of a process in several stages: the first stage, the translation of our idiom, would normally produce 6 v16g zou dLvOp6)nou, and the subsequent stages would go for consistency on the same model. Lindarss first objection is that it is doubtful if ho huios tou anthropou would be recognized as generic in Greek, so that all the gospel sayings do in fact treat it as an exclusive circumlocution for the first person. This is misleading because it proceeds from our finished Gospels rather than from the situation faced by the translators. Nothing a translator could do would enable him to produce a version which accurately and literally represented the text without being liable to some degree of misinterpretation, because natural Greek did not have the expression (6) uioS rou 6v0p<bnov still less this
in the
light improbable,
33 idiomatic use of it. Many Gospel sayings are irrelevant because they are not derived from this idiom, while those which are could be seen as an example of this idiom by the bilingual people who our translators must have been. Whether our evangelists knew this cannot be deduced from our Gospels. The fact that 6 v16g rou v9p<mou appears to be a title in passages such as Mk 13.26; 14.62 simply does not tell us whether Mark translated passages such as 2.10, 28; 14.21 himself or knew from a bilingual translator what the force of the original idiom was. If he did, there was not much he could do about it, and no convinced Christian would feel overwhelmingly motivated to remove the possible impression that Jesus actually said he was the most important man on earth. The impression that Jesus meant the saying to refer to himself was correct, and correctly transmitted, and the impression that the saying was also generic was perceptible to the translator and the well-informed. We should not then analyse the problem as if the Gospels were wholly original creations rather than partly translated texts. Lindarss second objection is that t~~c 13 may have stood in the underlying text in cases where it has been otherwise rendered, with the result that we cannot detect any individual example of free translation. This true fact should not be considered an objection to my hypothesis. There do not appear to be any genuinely relevant cases in the Gospel of the generic use of 6 dv0pwnog. At Mk 2.27, Lindarss conjecture should be rejected because it arbitrarily makes the translator of Mk 2.27-28 unaccountably capricious.l2 At Mt. 12.43 // Lk. 11.24 rou av9pwrrov might represent MtlJM ,:1 or MV3t4, and in either case it renders the sense of the underlying Aramaic with such accuracy that the translator had good reason to be satisfied with his version. How often t4v3t4 12 was so rendered we do not know. Aramaic usage suggests that there should have been examples, but the actual number is unknown, and in Gospels which are habitually written in better Greek than the LXX, it is reasonable that t~t~~t~ 13 should be rendered literally only when a translation problem was perceived (as with the plural, perceived in the collective but difficult mv3s 13 and rendered roig uiol iwv dv0pa)n(ov at Mk 3.28, but translated v9pWTTOl anywhere that it may have occurred). An alternative translation of the generic (t4)v3m :1 with ty6) can be verified only at Mt. 10.32-33, and this shows no more than that the considerations advanced for predicting the translation 6 ui6,~ zou dv0p(bnou carry very strong probability rather than absolute certainty
34 for every individual case. Lindars makes the further point that the translators may have been guided by the LXX and thus provided an interpretative translation which makes deliberate reference to Dan. 7.13. Like more traditional scholarship, this suggestion fails to take seriously the mundane nature of the bare expression VIN 1:1. This expression and its literal rendering v16g av6pwrrou were not specific enough for this reference to be carried merely by the article. Translators and members of an audience who knew their LXX would require contextual indicators to direct their attention to Dan. 7.13, and this requirement is satisfied by, for example, Mk 14.62 but not by Mt. 11.19 // Lk. 7.34. In his reply to Bauckham, Lindars goes even further, arguing that 6 ui zov av6pwnou as a rendering of the absolute t~t 1:1 is inconceivable, as bar enash is always translated huios anthropou in the few places where we have both Aramaic and Greek version. There are in fact only two examples, Dan. 7.13 LXX and Theod. The Hebrew D7N 1:1 more obviously lacks an article, but even so the plural DIM ~J:1 may be rendered with oi uioi zw v8pcmffiv (e.g. Pss 11.4; 12.2, 9) or oi dv0p(onot (Isa. 52.14; Prov. 15.11), and even anarthrous D7N may be rendered oi dv0pwnoi (Hab. 1.14; Ps. 17.4). Lindarss argument is thus too crude. The translators of Gospel sayings had in this case to render an idiom, not just a word for man, and in rendering examples with the indefinite vi 12 with 6 v16g iou dvOp6)nou they went no further away from the most literal rendering possible than translators of D7N >>5 (and even DIM) sometimes did in contexts where the expression was equally generic, as that term is usually understood. This was necessary to make clear the reference to Jesus, a contextual factor absent from all LXX examples but consistently present in NT examples and forming the reason for the largely consistent behaviour of Gospel translators. Lindarss criticisms should therefore be rejected. The articles in 6 ui rob 6v0pknov arose so naturally from the translation process that independent translators are likely to have reached the same solution to the problem of rendering an idiom which did not have an exact equivalent in Greek. The generic use of the Greek article means that bilinguals will have been able to perceive the Aramaic idiom in Greek, and the development of NT Christology provides the cultural context in which the production of a perceived title by the translation process will not have been unwelcome among Greekspeaking Christians. We must now turn to Aramaic aspects of Bauckhams proposal,
35 that
Jesus
used bar enash
(probably,
rather than bar
enasha)
in the
indefinite
sense
(a man, someone), which is itself a very
common
usage, but used it as a form of deliberately oblique or ambiguous self reference. Bauckham believes that this proposal cannot appeal to parallels in later Jewish Aramaic.13 This might at first sight appear to be a simple weakness, but it is complicated because several Aramaic examples of this idiom can to some extent be described as Bauckham describes sayings of Jesus. Some examples use v~ 13 in the indefinite sense, they are deliberately oblique, but they are not ambiguous. We must recall again R Simeon ben Yohai at Gen. R. 79.6: A bird is not caught without the will of heaven: how much less the soul of a son of man (v3 7D7 s~~~). This is clearly indefinite, so there is no difficulty in finding an example of the grammatically indefinite use of vi ,:1 referring to the speaker. Secondly, we have noted R Zeiras saying at j. Ber. 2.8.Sc, a son of man cannot eat a pound of meat until they have given him a lash. Here again, at the opposite end of the spectrum of generalization found in this idiom, v3 13 is quite indefinite but it easily and naturally refers to a definite, though unidentified person, namely R Zeira, and it does so much more easily than someone in English. It should be clear that all examples of this idiom which use the indefinite state also necessarily use it in an indefinite sense (a man, someone). However, in no case does this idiom refer to one person only. Further, all the Aramaic examples are oblique but they are mostly not ambiguous. There is one example of deliberate ambiguity, and it is instructive. At j. Ber. 2.8.5c R Kahana, to ask R Johanan whether he should return from Israel to Babylon, asked him the quite obscure question:
:75 ~1&dquo;
J~5 nb mpio
Trotyl 1nnI~il
nb n7DDD nDN7 V)
12
son of man whose mother despises him, and a wife of his father honours him, where shall he go? This really is a deceptive statement, and the ambiguity is produced by the allegorical concealment of Israel by mother, and of Babylon by a wife of his father, rather than by the use ofson of man. The result is quite different from the result of any son of man statement spoken in the Gospels. R Johanan answered the question at the level of a purely general statement, and when R Kahana acted by applying this to himself and going to Babylon, Johanan made it clear that he did not understand why he had gone. Johanans disciples then explained the self-reference to him. This is the necessary result of the kind of ambiguous sentence
-A
36
that this idiom can be used to produce, and it is not a reaction found in the Gospels. It is the only ambiguous example so far known in our Aramaic sources and we shall see that the Gospel evidence also does not imply ambiguity in the usage of Jesus, which therefore does correspond to normal Aramaic usage. 4.
Sayings of Jesus
Gospel sayings which use the term 6 vioS iov vePW1TOU, but do not correspond to any Aramaic idiom, cannot be authentic Son of man sayings spoken by the historical Jesus. In theory, this does not mean that only examples of this particular idiom may be authentic, but in practice there are very few examples of Son of man sayings which use this term in a satisfactory way but are not examples of this idiom, and
of these can be shown to be inauthentic on other grounds.14 As examples of sayings which must be considered inauthentic because their use of son of man does not correspond to any use of the Aramaic Vi 7D, we may cite Lk. 17.22, Mt 24.27 // Lk. 17.24, Mt 24.37 // Lk. 17.26, Mt. 24.39, Lk. 17.30. This group of sayings have an excellent Sitz im Leben in the early church. There is abundant evidence from Acts, the Epistles and Revelation that the early Christians did believe that Jesus would shortly return and that many of them regarded that belief as of fundamental importance. Further, this belief slots neatly into the culture of Second Temple Jews, some of whom hoped to be delivered by a messianic figure of some kind. The coincidence of these criteria is significant because they are quite independent of each other, and that makes them a very strong combination. Finally, it is to be noted that it is a helpful consequence of my understanding of this idiom that it can be used to distinguish authentic from inauthentic sayings in this way, as Vermess understanding of it cannot. We may now proceed to authentic sayings of Jesus which do use this idiom. A full discussion would require a further monograph: I propose therefore to do no more than illustrate the different levels of generality which are to be found in examples of this idiom in the sayings of Jesus, to deal with the passion predictions and to try to clarify those aspects of this hypothesis which have caused the most misunderstanding. We may begin with Mt. 12.32 // Lk. 12.10 (c Mk 3.28-29), which illustrates the most general level of meaning. The following reconstruction may be suggested:
most
37
n7 p~n~
NWIN
1~~ n7o
.n? i&dquo;:1MrI&dquo; H? NV71p7 rcrnn5 n70
11t -I nnc~ n
~~1 -31
Everyone who speaks a word against a son of man, it shall be forgiven him, and everyone who speaks a word against the spirit of holiness, it shall not be forgiven him. The first part of this saying declares forgiveness for everyone who speaks against another person: this general statement is intended to refer particularly to Jesus hhnselfi and to concede that opposition to him personally is forgivable. This then sets up the second h4 in which opposition to his divinely inspired ministry by scribes and Pharisees from Jerusalem, who spoke against the Holy Spirit by suggesting for example that he cast out demons by Beelzebub, is said to be an unforgivable sin. The general statement, used because of the humiliating situation in which Jesus found himself of being opposed by such important Jews and because of the implication that it was all right to speak against him, has the broadest possible general level of meaning. In accordance with Jesus preaching of forgiveness to the repentant sinner, it is being assumed that all men at all times and in all circumstances who speak against their fellow men will be forgiven (that they repent is a cultural assumption which need not be expounded in the saying
itself).15s
Somewhat less general is Mt. 8.20 // Lk. 9.58, discussed in detail in previous article in this joumal&dquo; The following reconstruction was suggested:
a
r~5run
wnw
.n:1 n~rn
n~y5> >n~n pn5 MH H?lM? T)OD1 JH n7 nc~ c~ r~~r~ 13)
jackals have holes and the birds of the air have roosts, and a son has nowhere to lay his head. It was shown that we can perceive a very general level of meaning in this saying, at which the divine provision of resting-places for jackals and birds is contrasted with the lack of such provision for men, who have to build houses to have anywhere to stay. However, I also noted that this perception was not inevitable, not least because all men are not usually on the move, and consequently the lack of divine provision of resting-places for them is not usually relevant to their needs. This was not however relevant to the function of the saying in its original context, just as the fact that most people do not have disciples is not relevant to the effectiveness of R Hiyya bar Addas saying at j. Ber. 2.8.5b. Since the saying was spoken in a context in which the point was that neither
The
of
man
38
Jesus nor his disciples could expect reasonable accommodation during a migratory ministry, the contrast with jackals and birds will have operated at the level of their social sub-group, and the most general level of meaning need not have occurred to most, or even
any, of his audience. A more serious restriction of the social group to which the general level of meaning refers is found at Mk 2.28. This saying is closely related to Mk 2.27, which is important partly because it guarantees the general level of meaning in 2.28. The two verses may be
reconstructed
as
follows:
,Mn:1t ~:1 rcvr~rc ~c5~ n~wn~c ~cvr~t~ ~:1 Mn:1r/ ,7M ~n~ci .Mn:1r/:1 rM r~~rc 13 Kin MJ n~5~r
And he said to them, &dquo;The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. So, you see, a son of man is master of the Sabbath too. 29 1~ This was the main defence of disciples who had been going along (:11, misread ,:11 and rendered literally 7TOlEtV) a path and plucking grain on the Sabbath, an action to be expected 6f poor and hungry people taking Peah. The first point made is the divine purpose in creating the Sabbath for the beisefit of man. From this is deduced mans lordship over the Sabbath, a deduction which must be seen in the context of mans lordship over creation as a whole (cf. Gen. 1.26, 28; Ps. 8.6; 2 Bar. 14.18; 4 Ezr. 6.54). It follows that Jesus has the authority to ward off unwanted Pharisaic halakhah which would have prevented poor and hungry people from taking Peah to feed themselves on the Sabbath, so the general statement does apply to the speaker. It also applies to the disciples, who were entitled to take advantage of the Laws provisions for the poor on the day which God had made for them to rest on and be joyful on. The sayings general level of meaning might appear to apply to everyone, and in a sense it does, for creation was for the benefit of all people. However, lordship over the creation is dependent on obedience to God: by and large, it was Jews who obeyed the Law and Jews who observed the Sabbath. In practice, therefore, only pious and faithful Jews are masters over the Sabbath. This was not however relevant to the effectiveness of the idiom because it was not relevant to the situational context, for Jesus and the people criticized pass Jesus standards for being masters of the Sabbath, and there were no Gentiles present, nor any Jews who wanted deliberately to disobey the divine commandment.
39
We
move near to
the limits of the
use
of the idiom
at
Lk. 22.48,
though even this is more effective than the saying of R Zeira (j. Ber. 2.8.5c). The following reconstruction may be suggested: ~:1&dquo; pv3 ,7~rt~~ nrDDm WIN. This might be rendered literally: Judah, kissing a son of man and you betray him! Mark records the historical fact of the kiss (Mk 14.45): it is not probable that Lukes saying is secondary when it
conforms both to historical fact and to an Aramaic idiom unknown in the native Greek of this Gentile author. It also provides one of the two genuine sayings from which 7DD/napa616wpi entered passion predictions from which it was originally absent. The use of vim ,:1 is indefinite, as we have seen it to be in some Aramaic examples of the idiom, but this does not mean that it is not generalized or that it is in any way ambiguous. Like R Zeira, Jesus generalized from his own experience in this saying, but unlike him he got the custom right. The feeling that one should not betray ones friends and colleagues is virtually universal and it is this that the general level of meaning relies on. The point of using !y3K 12 rather than ~ or nv,~~&dquo; is to speak indirectly in a very fraught situation, and this is achieved by the generalized level of meaning. For the saying to function properly,
there do not have to be lots of people betrayed by Judas with a kiss: it is enough that the thought of kissing any person and thereby betraying them should be generally repugnant. With the limits of the idiom set out in the sayings of Jesus in approximately the same way as in our Aramaic sources, we can now reconsider Mt. 11.19 // Lk. 7.34, where Lindarss exegesis has been seriously misrepresented and vigorously criticized, though in my view it is on the right hnes.18 The most important part of the passage for present purposes may be reconstructed as follows:
,7~~N
,7~~N nnv xbi 55rc Nb 7)n~ nnN nnvl 5~c~ v~t4 ,:1 nnN .75 n,t4 Mity .7~t:)n&dquo; 7~C;:~&dquo; :1n ,N:1C 7~it v3t4 Nun
John came not eating or drinking, and they say, &dquo;He has a demon.&dquo; A son of man comes eating and drinking and they say, &dquo;Look! A glutton and a drunkard, an associate of tax-collectors and sinners.&dquo; The context makes it quite clear that at one level Jesus classified himself and John the Baptist together as prophets sent from God (cf. Mk 1.9-11; 9.11-13; 11.27-33; Mt. 11.7-10 // Lk. 7.24-27): he then criticized his contemporaries for rejecting the message of both of
40
as we know that the conservative wing of Judaism and the authorities did. The image of children who will not join in dancing or wailing is drawn out by reference to the baptists known asceticism and Jesus more normal social habits, so that at this level the two prophetic figures are contrasted with each other. The sentence about John the Baptist is quite straightforward: mentioning him by name makes for clarity and there was no reason to do otherwise. Jesus then avoided both a direct claim to prophetic authority and the direct humiliation of saying how he had been criticized by using the generalizing expression v3m 12. For its plausibility, this saying depends on there being people (not non-ascetic evangelists) who also ate and drank among tax-collectors and sinners, but that is so obvious that we could deduce it from the general level of the saying against the background of Jesus ministry as a whole (cf e.g. Mk 2.1517). Further, it depends on the condemnation of such people by conservative Jews being a perceptibly normal event. This again should not be in doubt, because there was from OT times a tradition of condemnation of being a glutton and a drunkard (cf. Deut. 21.20; Prov. 23.20, 21; T. Jud. 14; Philo, De Spec. Leg. 4.97-104; De Ebr. 206-24; Jos. Contra Ap. 2.195). This gives us a cultural background against which Jesus generalization from his own experience of being criticized by conservative Jews will have made excellent sense among a social sub-group of people accustomed to similar criticism from the
them,
same
quarters.
5. The Passion Predictions
The passion predictions have caused difficulties for many different views of Jesus use of the term son of man. Lindars argues for brief original sayings behind Mk 10.45; 14.21a, and from Mk 8.31; 9.31; 10.33; 14.21b; 14.44 he reconstructs one partial prediction -... t&oelig;JH 12 7DDnN-which he translates, A man may be delivered up ... 19 This prediction is however too incomplete to be useful; the modal may is a feature of his translation, not of the Aramaic: and the argument in its favour depends too much on the use of other NT texts which do not contain the term son of man, and which, if given real force, would rather show that the predictions had their Sitz im Leben in the early church, a radical view which cannot explain the presence of the term son of man in them. We may begin with Mk 14.21, a prediction which should be regarded as wholly genuine:
41 ~~ov 3&dquo;n3 ~~~ 5rt~ VIN 12 n7D 7DDnD Vim 7D7 Min mv3m~ IN .~c m3j ~~5~ M? 1n n~ sn
A son of man goes as it is written of him. Woe to that man by whose hand a son of man is betrayed! It would have been good for that man if he had not been born! In the first son of man saying here, 5tt~ is a euphemism for death. At its most general level, therefore, the saying involves scriptural justification for the mere fact of death. At this level, there are many OT passages that could be in mind-among the more obvious are Gen. 2.17; 3.19; Isa. 40.6-8; Eccl. 12.5-7. This level of meaning should not be dismissed as banal.2 Its function is to make the saying obviously true, and when the saying is obviously true it becomes difficult to disagree with its application to the speaker. This does not however exhaust the obviousness of the general level of meaning. It also makes perfect sense as a reference to the differing fates of the righteous and the wicked written in Scripture. Again, many passages could be called upon. For example, after the Last Supper, Jesus and the disciples sang, Glorious in the eyes of the Lord is the death of his pious ones (Ps. 116.15), and it is at this level that he might have had in mind part of Isa. 52-53. 21 Equally, the fate of the wicked might be found e.g. at Isa. 66.24, or Dan. 12.2. This further refinement ensures that the saying is obviously true, and it is in no way inconsistent with Jesus seeing his own death especially referred to in general passages of Scripture or very precisely foretold in others. For example, he might have seen Gods support and vindication of him in this understanding of the Hebrew text of Ps. 118.14-17: The Lord is my strength and song, and he is for me, for Jesus ... The right hand of the Lord raises up ... I shall not die because I shall live. That could readily be applied directly to the speaker of Mk 14.21a when it was sung after the Last Supper. These different ways of understanding Mk 14.21a mean in practice that the general level of meaning and the application to the speaker will both have been obvious when he said it. It was a natural moment to use this idiom because he was in the humiliating situation of being about to be betrayed by one of the inner circle of twelve disciples, and he believed that he held the exalted function of being the final harbinger of the kingdom of God which God would be enabled by his atoning death to bring. The second line of Mk 14.21 is another son of man saying with a good general level of meaning, true of a sort of social sub-group,
42
namely traitors. At a general level it condemns traitors, and declares that they will have a very unpleasant fate. The idiom was functional because this sentiment is virtually universaL The obviousness of the general level of meaning will have combined with the disciples belief that anyone who betrayed Jesus was indeed exceptionally wicked to ensure that the saying was remembered in its original form. We now certainly have a genuine prediction containing 7DDnD vit4 :1, and if
the above reconstruction is correct in all details, we also have a line in which the collective understanding of n7D t~t~c could lead to the translation Ei XFIpaq dv9pMn<Dv (Mk 9.31) and the interpretative
...
rendering Ei5 xsipag Tdbv /lap&dquo;Cwfuv (Mk 14.41). Before discussing other son of man predictions, we must note that there are several other predictions of Jesus death in the Gospels: cf.
Lk. 12.50; 13.32; 13.33; Mk 10.38; 14.36. All of these have in common that they predict his death indirectly, but all will have been clear in their original contexts, as most of them are now.22 One of them, Mk 10.38, comes in a context in which Jesus future glory has already been made clear and it was necessary to point out to those who wanted too high a status in it that the way to it involved immediate suffering. Jesus himself intended to lead the way, but the context of this discussion as well as his own humiliation led him to use our idiom in a saying where the general level of meaning was of more direct relevance than in most of his sayings. Mk 10.45 may be reconstructed as follows:
rnyontyn7 MUM M7 NVIN 13 nNi l~c~~atv h5n t~5 ivm jniDbi r~o~7 ~M
-And so a son of man does not come to be served but to serve and to give himself as a ransom for many. At the general level of meaning, this saying was not intended to be true of all men at all times and in all circumstances, but, as we have seen in several instances, this does not affect the operation of idioms of this kind. To appreciate the general level of meaning, we must view the saying in its context. Jesus had been asked by Jacob and John, two of his inner circle of twelve, that they should sit on his right and left in his glory. He replied with indirectly expressed but contextually clear reference to his forthcoming death. He obtained from them an undertaking that they would share his fate, and he told them, again indirectly but surely with perfect clarity, that they would share his death but that so exalted a position in the kingdom was not his to give. When the
43
other members of the inner circle were annoyed with Jacob and John, Jesus gave very straightforward teaching on the need for service. Mk 10.45 summarizes both these aspects of teaching, and puts forward Jesus himself as an example. The requirement of service follows very straightforwardly from the teaching to all twelve: the need for people to give their lives for others is directly appropriate to the social subgroup of the inner circle of the disciples, two of whom had just
accepted his challenge to die with him. Woe may find the general level of meaning a bit much, but it is perfectly good Aramaic and has a perfectly good Sitz im Leben in Jesus teaching of the twelve. In this instance therefore, we have two reasons for Jesus use of this idiom: he needed to give the general teaching about service to the point of death, as well as to speak indirectly of his own fate. We may compare Sefire 3.16, where the king of Krt needed to lay down the serious effects of action by subsequent kings of Arpad against his descendants, as well as to speak indirectly of the possibility that he might himself die as a result of such action against him Thus the Gospels contain several predictions of Jesus death, and four genuine Son of man sayings which deal with aspects of it (Mk 10.45; 14.21 bis; Lk. 22.48). With these in mind, we can deal with Mk 8.31. This cannot be authentic in its present form because it cannot be reconstructed in feasible Aramaic in such a way that it has a general level of meaning. On the other hand, Jesus rebuke of Peter has no satisfactory Sitz im Leben in the early church, but it makes excellent sense as it stands. Peters attempt to dissuade Jesus from martyrdom is as natural as it is clear, and could follow only from a prediction of his death. In Mark as it stands, the impression is given that the prediction was immediately comprehensible. The problem for us is therefore to see whether we can reconstruct from Mk 8.31 a genuine prediction which conforms to Aramaic idiom and has a satisfactory Sitz im Leben in the teaching of Jesus. I have suggested something on the following lines:
:nip, 7~C~ ~n5n 7nDi wiN 13 mD
A son of man will die, and after three days he will rise. A previous version of this suggestion has been severely criticized: I propose to defend 1t.23 First, this reconstruction makes an excellent general statement. It is certainly and obviously true that all people die, and the general resurrection of the dead was a belief sufficiently widely held by some
44
Jews, including Jesus and his disciples, for the reference to it to function equally effectively in a general statement. The reference to resurrection is essential for a combination of emotional, linguistic and theological reasons. From Jesus point of view, his first attempt to explain to his disciples that he would have to die was not only difficult enough to require an indirect idiom, but also made less difficult to contemplate by the immediate mention of divine vindication. From a linguistic point of view, the removal of reference to the resurrection makes the proposed original saying too short, and the fact that the most important of the secondary additions conforms to the original idiom would be extraordinarily coincidentaL From the theological point of view, Jesus death would be meaningfiil if and only if it was part of Gods purpose, and this is affirmed with clarity (though again indirectly) by reference to the resurrection by which Jesus would be vindicated. The interpretation ofroi&dquo; nnbn 1n:J may be deduced from evidence of midrashic sayings which declare that Israel, or the righteous, will not be left in distress for more than three days, a view buttressed with several passages of scripture (including Jonah 2.1; Hos. 6.2).24 One such occasion is the last days, when deliverance will be by means of the resurrection. If three days be taken in a metaphorical sense like this, the general resurrection could be expected after three days. We have three other sayings of Jesus in which the three-day interval is used in a similar metaphorical sense: two of these (Lk. 13.32, 33) should certainly be regarded as genuine, and the third (Mk 14.58; c Mt. 26.60-60; Mk 15.29 // Mt. 27.40) probably reflects a genuine saying which used the three-day interval with reference to eschatological events. We must conclude that the proposed reconstruction would be understood to mean that the resurrection, in which Jesus would be vindicated, would take place after a short intervaL Further, these words do not have a satisfactory Sitz im Leben in the early church. They must belong to the Aramaic layer of the tradition, because psrd -rpg fi ppag appears to contradict the stories of the resurrection of Jesus. The Aramaic-speaking church will not have been motivated to develop an existing reference to the general resurrection of the dead, but the addition of a phrase referring to Jesus alone would be difficult in Aramaic because of the generalizing effect of WIN &dquo;0. If it were done, taking v3m 12 as a reference to an undefined single individual to give us a possible sentence whose potential obscurity would be removed by the contextual knowledge of the social sub-group producing it, then in Aramaic
45
in Greek someone adding in freely a precise reference to the resurrection of Jesus would have done so precisely, not using a phrase which could be naturally translated psrd rpsig hptpaq. The most common criticism of this suggested original has been that it is banal, but the whole saying is not in the least banal because resurrection from the dead is a powerful symbol of divine vindication. To make the saying banal it has to be chopped in half, an inadequate critical mode far too common in NT scholarship. That the opening of the saying is obvious is an advantage of it, because it makes it so difficult to disagree with. Lindarss criticisms are more specific. He first objects to the anarthrous v3m 13. We have seen that this is in accord with our Aramaic sources, not least vim 7D ritd, at Sefire 3.16, though it is certainly true that Jesus may have said NVIN 13. Lindars then argues that a general statement of this kind is extremely improbable, because it has left no trace on the rest of the New Testament. The idea is never applied to anyone except Jesus himself This true fact should not be held against my reconstruction. The general statement in this instance was functional rather than substantive, and the early church had good reason to remember Jesus predictions of his own death and resurrection, but very little reason to recall in purely generalized form the precise metaphors he used for this purpose. None of the other predictions of his death survived elsewhere either, even though the assumptions on which they were based did survive (cf Lk. 13.33 with 1 Thess. 2.15: at this level 1 Cor. 15.51-52 supplies the resurrection of all men used at Mk 8.31 and precludes their death only because of the expectation of the parousia). More generally, few of Jesus sayings have left traces elsewhere in the NT, and this one was not likely to survive in its original form in the Gospels precisely because it was developed into a prediction of the death and resurrection of Jesus alone. Lindars goes on to argue that the reconstructed saying does not make a convincing statement on the part of Jesus. It remains a floating item, with no known context. For, of course, if the saying is a general statement it loses the ironical reference to the situation of Jesus himsel The saying has however a very firm context as the cause of the incident related in Mk 8.32-33, and from this context it should not be removed. We have seen that the Aramaic evidence shows that general statements are as a matter of fact used with reference to the speaker, and the situation at R4k 8.31 is so extreme, with the speaker predicting his own death, that the need for an indirect mode of
as
46 is exceptionally great. Lindars further objects to the use of the ground that 1TOevtlcrKElv does not occur in any of the passion predictions. This objection is too rigid. When me is applied to someone who will be put to death, a translator may render it with a verb meaning kill, as in the Lxx with both 1TOK-cElVC (e.g. Deut. 22.22, 25) and Oava-u6w (e.g. Exod. 21.14; 1 Sam. 14.45). These examples illustrate not only the same shift of meaning in translation, but also the use ofnin of someone who is in fact to be killed, the same usage as is found with reference to deliberate killing at Sefire 3.16, which illustrates how easy it was in Aramaic to slip from the general level of meaning in the proposed original saying behind Mk 8.31 to the specific application to Jesus. These criticisms of the proposed original saying should therefore be rejected. We cannot of course be certain that it represents the ipsissima verba of Jesus. It is possible that 8Ei really translated 7n> or zlri, or that 1TOM 1TueElv... Ypanuarecov is an interpretative expansion of a phrase which we can no longer recover, perhaps because it might be taken in a sense unwelcome to the early church (cf. Mk 3.28). It is not difficult to make up conceivable sayings, and it may be useful to illustrate this:
speech
nity on
:mp, 7~Q~ ~n5n ~nt~t
nin,1 oxnnx7 xwix
7rb 7,v
It is decreed concerning a son of man that he is rejected and will die and after three days he will rise. The general level of meaning refers to the fall of man (c Gen. 3.19; 4 E,zr. 3.7; 7.11-16, 78): the application to Jesus is conceivable as an explanation of the divine decision to require his death before the kingdom came, and Dxnnx is uncomfortable enough to be one cause of the safe interpretative expansion now found at Mk 8.31. This is however extremely conjectural. All we can be sure of is that Jesus predicted his death and resurrection with a saying on the proposed lines, a general statement including a reference to the general resurrection after three days. This saying was expanded from the tradition of the events which took place, possibly with the help of scripture. This process might reasonably be expected from the way in which the traditions of the OT prophets were expanded, and more generally from the clarifying expansions frequent in Targum and midrash. This same process is verifiable in the editing of the central 1 predictions by Matthew and Luke, and it is to be found at Mk 9.31 and 10.33-34. At Mk 9.31, 6 ui6~ rob ~,v9pc~rrou napa6i6o-cat comes
47
from the
verse
genuine loono
VIN 13
of Mk 14.21
(c
also Lk
22.48), EiS
xsipag av9pwnwv is probably from the same source, and most of the
is another version of the prediction underlying Mk 8.31. Mk 10.33-34 is a further expansion. For dvapaivopEv sig IspoJ6Xvpa~ cf. Lk. 13.33; 6 oi6~ zou dv0p(bnou 7Tapa.&>eT,crE&dquo;tat renders 7 DDnD v3t4 13 (Mk 14.21; cf Lk. 22.48); zois PXlPEcrtV Kat ioiS ypapparsbJw roig 8vEcrtV may be perceived as interpretations of 1&dquo;1~:J ... mv3m 6noKrsvobJw Kai uerd &dquo;tpEi (Mk 14.21); 6 v16g rou Uv0p&nov hptpaq 6Lva(Y-c~(YE-c(xt is again a version of the prediction behind Mk 8.31. The prediction has also been expanded with many details from the actual events. Similar comments apply to Mk 14.41, where napa8i8o-cat 6 v16g rob dv9p(bnou is from 14.21, and sig rUg XE!Paq iwv <lflap&dquo;twiv is probably to be understood as an interpretation of n7D NVIN in the same verse; and at Mk 9.9 6 v16q rob v8p<mou K VEKP6)V dvaorft is a developed version of Dlp ... vim fi2 from 8.31. There are further editorial developments at Mt. 25.2 and Lk. 24.7, while at Lk. 17.25 the process has gone so far that we can only just perceive that the same sayings are being developed. Finally, it is to be noted that the posited process of midrashic development has an excellent Sitz im Leben in the early church. When Jesus was crucified, the possible basic interpretations were that he was condemned by God or that his death was part of salvation history. The earliest Christians were those who took the second view, a view prepared by Jesus predictions, and to some extent his interpretation, of his death (cf. Mk 10.45; 14.22-25). They were bound to consider further the meaning of his death, and Acts and the Epistles show abundantly that they did so. At this point we must consider again the view that this group of passion predictions were ambiguous and had an enigmatic or riddling character. We have already seen that Aramaic examples of this idiom may be indefinite, are always oblique but were not inherently ambiguous. We have noted one deliberately ambiguous example (R Kahana at j. Ber. 2.8.5c), which provoked discussion and explanation. This is the natural result of ambiguity, and it is significant that Peters reaction to Mk 8.31 was quite the opposite: he understood it only too well. The only Son of man saying that is said in the synoptic Gospels to have been confusing is Mk 9.31, and this is instructive both for its exceptional nature and for its actual contents. What happens if we try to reconstruct an original Aramaic?
...
...
...
48
1~rt~H 7b 7DDnD VIN 13 nn~n in2 nonoi n3i!TO!n .c1~ 1~e~
This is not an enigmatic saying in which Jesus avoided claims, but invited people to think for themselves about the implications of the undeniable facts of his ministry: it is mundanely incoherent. Kai TT01crEVOcrlV a6r6v Kai tnoKrav0sig is comprehensible on linguistic grounds only as the work of a Greek-speaking editor. We must remove nnnn because it is unsatisfactory Aramaic, but the insertion of Kai tnoKrav0sig does not have a good Sitz im Leben in the work of someone who was translating literally an authentic prediction (it may readily be explained in work of a bilingual person composing midrashically). The rest of the saying is certainly obscure enough to be incomprehensible, but not much else can be said for its authenticity as it stands in its present context. It does use VIN 12 indefinitely with reference to an unidentified person, and the result is an obscure sentence. We then have to suppose that Jesus, having predicted his death clearly enough for Peter to object, rebuked Peter equally clearly for opposing his intentions (Mk 8.31-33), but made a second prediction which is partly similar to the first yet so obscure that the disciples could not understand it (9.31-32). He followed it up with a third prediction (10.33-34) in which the situational context and circumstantial details are so clear that only he could be subjectJacob and John understood his intentions in the very next pericope (10.39)-but the use of v3m 7D is nonetheless contrary to normal Aramaic usage so that people could think for themselves about the implications of his ministry. This makes 8.31 both enigmatic and clear, and entails an internally incoherent view of 10.33. The proposed understanding of 9.31 is perhaps not inconceivable, but it is most improbable and if it were right, Mk 9.31 would be an exceptionally unsuccessful use of the idiom, not typical of a group of son of man sayings. We must conclude that Bauckhams suggestions for Jesus unique use ofviN 12 belong to a theological and exegetical tradition which is on the wrong trajectory: the posited unique use of V38 12 does not leave room for faith, it makes incoherent nonsense of sentences whose origin can be otherwise explained as secondary developments, partly of authentic predictions. Mk 9.32, like 9.30, is best regarded as the work of an editor, perhaps the evangelist himself. Luke continued to develop his comment (Lk. 9.45; 18.34). We must therefore conclude that the genuine son of man predictions of Jesus death are Mk 10.45,14.21 and a saying which can be at
49
least partly reconstructed from Mk 8.31. All these sayings were indirect but clear. Lk. 22.48 is also a genuine saying from the moment of Jesus betrayal. Mk 9.9, 9.31, 10.33-34, and 14.41 are all midrashic developments of genuine sayings: the developmental process is characteristic of Jewish culture, and the process and the need for it have an excellent Sitz im Leben in the early church. The original sayings belong to a larger group of genuine predictions: the other ones were also indirectly expressed 6. Some Overall Aspects
of the Son of Man
Problem
We must consider finally some of the overall features of the kind of solution to this problem proposed by Lindars, Bauckham and myself One of the crucial questions is whether the proposed number of authentic sayings is large enough to explain the genesis of inauthentic sayings. Lindarss version of the theory is in serious trouble at this point because, of the nine posited sayings, two (Lk. 11.30 and his proposed passion prediction behind Mk 8.31 et al. ) are not true of anyone except Jesus himself, and cannot therefore be regarded as satisfactory examples of the idiom: the passion sayings are especially important at this point because if the proposed original of Mk 8.31, etc., be unsatisfactory, Lindarss view that it produced a development of other sayings cannot be accepted either. Seven sayings are surely too few for the authentic core. This article has stated the main reason why I believe that there are about a dozen straightforwardly authentic sayings, and a penumbra of midrashic developments of two of the passion predictions. This means that a large majority of sayings in our oldest sources (Mark and Q) are either authentic as they stand, or consist of perceptible developments of authentic sayings. Further, both the secondary developments of the passion predictions and the large group of inauthentic sayings have a perfect Sitz im Leben in the early church, which vigorously interpreted Jesus death and fervently hoped for his return. The secondary parousia predictions contain a whole group which are demonstrably dependent on Dan. 7.13.25 Bauckham, after arguing that the proposals of Lindars and myself lead to too small a number of authentic sayings, makes his proposal that Jesus used bar enash (probably, rather than bar enasha) in the indefinite sense (a man, someone) ... but used it as a form of deliberately oblique or ambiguous self reference. Bauckham includes here sayings such as Mk 14.62 which refer directly to Dan. 7.13. He
50
argues that the usage cannot appeal to parallels in later Jewish Aramaic, and suggests that the degree of ambiguity will have varied, including cases where the saying has a somewhat enigmatic or riddling character (Lk. 11.30; the passion predictions), and cases where some hearers might easily assume Jesus reference to be to a figure other than himself. I have discussed some of the reasons why this proposal should not be accepted, and all the main points may be drawn together here. First, it is misleading to claim that there are no parallels in later Jewish Aramaic. As we have seen, some Aramaic examples of this idiom can easily be classified as indefinite, and the self reference may be perfectly clear when it is oblique. There are however no examples where the reference might be to some other person, and the only ambiguous example is instructive because it leads to discussion and explanation, a reaction not found in the synoptic Gospels. Lk. 11.30 passes without interruption, the first passion prediction of Mk 8.31 provoked an immediate reaction from Peter which shows that he understood it with perfect clarity, and the high priest is portrayed as reacting to Mk 14.62 equally without hesitation. We have seen that the only Son of man saying that is said to have puzzled the disciples is genuinely puzzling only in so far as it is a secondary development in the wrong context (the original parts at Mk 8.31, and 14.21, are not puzzling). Nor should we accept the suggestion that sayings referring to Dan. 7.13, such as Mk 14.62, should be accepted as authentic. Bauckham comments, There seems no reason why Jesus should not have exploited the coincidence between his accustomed form of oblique self reference and the language of Dan. 7.13, so that bar enash in a saying alluding to Dan. 7.13 becomes the same kind of veiled hint of his own status as other authentic Son of Man sayings convey. I have attempted to refute this view elsewhere: if the arguments put forward are incorrect, they should be disproved.26 One more overall feature of my proposed solution to the Son of Man problem must be dealt with. I have noted elsewhere that it is an advantage of this hypothesis that it explains why these sayings appear in the synoptic Gospels on the lips of Jesus himself the pattern breaks down in subsequent literature, beginning with Jn 12.34. The reason for this is that Jesus is the only person in the Gospels who talks about himself to any extent. This explanation has been vigorously attacked by Moloney: why are the Son of man sayings found uniquely on the lips of Jesus? This century-old
51
is lamely solved in the following fashion ... Scene after in the Gospels finds people talking about themselves and their concerns: Scribes and Pharisees, people seeking cures, disciples,
question
scene
Pilate(!), or some of the great characters from the Fourth Gospel: the Mother of Jesus in the Cana story, Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman, the man bom blind, and so on. Never do they speak of themselves as &dquo;the son of man&dquo;. 27 This is a most unsatisfactory list. Mary and the Samaritan woman must both be removed because they were not sons of men, but women: Pilate is not likely to have known this or any other Aramaic idiom. More fundamentally, my explanation has been removed from its context, where it was intended to explain why Son of man sayings are confined to the lips of Jesus in the bottom layer of the tradition. Most of Moloneys characters speak in the Gospel attributed to St John, a Gospel most of whose discourse material is so far removed from the Jesus of history that it has no examples of this idiom in his sayings either. If we look at the synoptic Gospels, where I have suggested about twelve simply authentic examples of this idiom and some further developments of these sayings, it is in fact the case that other people speak so much less than Jesus that 12:0 is a perfectly reasonable proportion of occurrences, well comparable with something in the region of 50:1 for probably authentic uses of veP)7TD. Other people talk little about themselves, and there are very few occasions when this optional idiom is even feasible, even fewer where the circumstances are as dramatically exalted or humiliating as the situation of Jesus. When we come to secondary developments, we find that the synoptic Gospels met the churchs needs by attributing fundamental teaching to Jesus himself, a habit culturally endemic among Jewish people who pseudonymously attributed much of their Law, prophecy, wisdom, psalms and apocalyptic to the fountain-heads of their traditions. The fourth Gospel was however partly written like a Hellenistic revelatory discourse. These are frequently carried forward by some not very bright questions, and the first occurrence of son of man on someone elses lips in the Gospels is found in such a question at Jn 12.34. The pattern broke down further in apocryphal documents. The explanation which I proposed must therefore be allowed to stand. It is fundamental to the solution to the Son of Man problem which I have proposed that it permits the solution of the classic problems of Son of Man research in this way.
52
Conclusions
The following conclusions may therefore be suggested Our Aramaic sources give us sufficient evidence of the existence of an idiom in accordance with which any Aramaic speaker might use the term (N)VIN ::1, in either the definite or indefinite state, in a general statement in order to say something about himself, or sometimes himself and a group of associates. He would normally do so in order to avoid sounding exceptionally exalted or feeling exceptionally humiliated A core of authentic Son of man sayings in the synoptic Gospels turn out when reconstructed to be examples of this idiom. They should be accepted as authentic sayings of Jesus, because the idiom in itself, and these sayings in particular, have an excellent Sitz im Leben in the ministry of Jesus and most of them have no Sitz im Leben in the early church or in the creative work of the evangelists. The genuine statements about Jesus death, most of them predictions, were then further developed in the light of the circumstances in which he died This process also has an excellent Sitz im Leben in the early church. Inauthentic son of man statements were then developed on the basis of the term, and the return of Jesus, being found in scripture at Dan. 7.13. Once this process was under way, further son of man sayings about the parousia of Jesus were generated without reference to this text. Both this process and belief in the return of Jesus have also a verifiable Sitz im Leben in the early church. Unhappily we cannot add that work on this problem is complete. The following tasks remain. The Aramaic sources must be reworked to see if further examples of the idiom can be found The idiom must then be fitted into the more general background of indirect ways used by Aramaic speakers to express themselves. These features in their turn may be illuminated by the much more detailed knowledge which we have of modem people expressing themselves indirectly in awkward circumstances. Further, if this theory is right, several other theories must be wrong, and these must be disproved The exegesis of individual examples of the idiom will require further exposition. The traditional exegesis of authentic sayings as authoritative statements containing a Christological title is ingrained in our culture and difficult to shift by means of the discussion of the assumptions of Second Temple Judaism, the evidence for which is often fragmentary and difficult to reconstruct. Finally, the generation of inauthentic
53 which has already been seen to have an excellent Sitz im Leben in the early church, must be seen against the background of a more general theory which will explain the development of NT
sayings,
Christology. 28
NOTES
1. G. Vermes, The Use of in Jewish Aramaic, Appendix E in M. Black, An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts (Oxford: OUP, 1967), pp. 310-28, reprinted in G. Vermes, Post-Biblical Jewish Studies 3 (Leiden: Brill, 1975), pp. 147-65; P.M. Casey, The Son of Man Problem, 67 (1976), pp. 147-54; G. Vermes, The Present State of the "Son of ZNW Man" Debate, JJS 29 (1978), pp. 123-34; P.M. Casey, Son of Man: The Interpretation and Influence of Daniel 7 (London: SPCK,1980), esp. ch. 9; B. Lindars, The New Look on the Son of Man, BJRL 63 (1981), pp. 437-62,
reprinted separately (Manchester: The John Rylands Library of Manchester, 1981); B. Lindars, Jesus Son of Man (London: SPCK, 1983)—my quotation is from p. 24; P.M. Casey, The Jackals and the Son of Man (Matt. 8.20 // Luke 9.58), JSNT 23 (1985), pp. 3-22; R Bauckham, The Son of Man: "A Man in my Position" or "Someone"?, JSNT 23 (1985), pp. 23-33 (my quotation is from p. 29); B. Lindars, Response to Richard Bauckham: The Idiomatic Use of Bar Enash, JSNT 23 (1985), pp. 35-41; cf. also M. Müller, The Expression "the Son of Man" as Used by Jesus, Stud Theol 38 (1984), pp. 47-64. This approach has been rejected by F.J. Moloney, The End of the Son of Man?, Downside Review 98 (1980), pp. 280-90; M. Black, Aramaic Barnasha and the "Son of Man", ExpT 95 (1983-84), pp. 200-206; cf. P.M. Casey, Aramaic Idiom and Son of Man Sayings, ExpT 96 (1984-85), , cf. R. pp. 233-36. For alternative understandings of the term zur I-III Kearns, Vorfragen Christologie, (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1978-82); G. Gerleman, Der Menschensohn (Leiden: Brill, 1983). For different approaches to the problem, cf. V. Hampel, Menschensohn und historischer Jesus (Diss., Tübingen, 1982); S. Kim, The Son of Man as the Son of God (WUNT, 30; Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1983); W.O. Walker, The Son of Man: Some Recent Developments, CBQ 45 (1983), pp. 584-607. More generally, M. Müller, Der Menschensohn in den Evangelien (Leiden: Brill, 1984). A full discussion of the whole problem cannot be attempted here. I am grateful to those who have recently discussed it with me, especially Dr A.T. Lincoln, Dr J.B. Muddiman, Dr S.H. Travis and other members of the postgraduate NT seminar at Nottingham, Professor R Leivestad, Professor W.O. Walker and
above all Professor B. Lindars. None of them is
comments.
responsible
for any of my
2. Vermes, op. cit., p. 327. 3. For Aramaic literature from the time of Jesus, cf.
J.A. Fitzmyer
and
54
D.J. Harrington, A Manual of Palestinian Aramaic Texts (BibOr, 34; Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1978); K. Beyer, Die aramäischen Texte vom Toten Meer (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1984). For the classification of Aramaic into phases, J.A. Fitzmyer, The Phases of the Aramaic Language, in J.A. Fitzmyer, A Wandering Aramean (SBLMS, 25; Missoula: Scholars, 1979), pp. 57-84. For the use of such classification to date this idiom later than the time of Jesus, see J.A. Fitzmyer, Methodology in the Study of the Aramaic Substratum of Jesus Sayings in the New Testament, in J. Dupont (ed.), Jéus aux origines de la christologie (BEThL, 40; Gembloux: Duculot, 1975), pp. 73-102, rev. edn in Fitzmyer, A Wandering Aramean, pp. 143-60; J.A. Fitzmyer, Another View of the "Son of Man" Debate, JSNT 4 (1979), JJS 29 (1978), pp. 123-34; Casey, Son of Man, p. 227; pp. 58-68; cf. Vermes, and for a careful statement of appropriate method, G. Vermes, JTS 31 ). It is to be (1980), pp. 580-82 (reviewing Fitzmyer and Harrington, op. cit. noted that Fitzmyers original criticism was a reaction to Vermess interpretation of the idiomatic use of as a simple substitute for I, a very large from known otherwise change usage of this term, and an interpretation which excludes Sefire 3.16 from serious consideration as an example. If all examples are seen as general statements, and Sefire 3.16 is taken into account, the shift is very small, and one of the examples is early: this makes a considerable difference to the consideration of this point. Cf. J.A. Fitzmyer, CBQ 43 (1981), p. 477, I personally think that Jesus did use bar ena&scaron; of himself, in a generic indefinite sense ... . 4. Casey, JSNT 23 (1985), pp. 10-12, referring to H. Sacks, Everyone has to lie, in Sociocultural dimensions of language use, ed. M. Sanches and B.G. Blount (New York: Academic Press, 1975), pp. 57-59; K Wales, "Personal" and "Indefinite" Reference: The uses of the Pronoun ONE in Present-day English, Nottingham linguistic circular 9 (1980), pp. 93-117; K Wales, Exophora re-examined; the uses of the personal pronoun WE in present-day English, UEA Papers in Linguistics 12 (1980), pp. 12-44. 5. For further discussion of this issue, see Casey, JSNT 23 (1985), p. 7 and nn 14-15. 6. Lindars, JSNT 23 (1985), pp. 35-36, expressly bases his definition of the generic article on Gesenius Hebrew Grammar, ed. E. Kautzsch, rev. A.E. Cowley (Oxford: OUP; 2nd edn, 1909), pp. 407-408, paras. 126q ff., but his use of this description goes beyond what can be safely inferred from this source or from the evidence cited. The use of the Hebrew article in passages like Amos 5.19 shows that Hebrew differs from English in its use of the article, so that we may not draw up formulations which assume an English (or German) meaning for the article, and then go on to use that formulation to refer to further examples which might also be classified under the same head. The article at Amos 5.19 barely denotes a particular lion. To put it another way, the level of specification is quite low: all we know about this
55
lion is that it is one. The level is much higher in Aramaic examples of this idiom, as Lindars interprets them, referring not just to a single example of the class man, but for instance to a class of those who have disciples ( op. cit., p. 37, on the saying of R. Hiyya bar Adda at j. Ber. 2.8.5b), and the single member of the class is extremely well known, being the speaker himself. The group gets narrower as Lindars moves to the sayings ofJesus, some of which are true of him alone. This results partly from the overliteral use of a definition which should never have been drawn up. 7. Lindars, Jesus Son of Man, p. 196. 8. Lindars, JSNT 23 (1985), pp. 37-38; cf. Jesus Son of Man, pp. 22-23. 9. Lindars, Jesus Son of Man, p. 21; JSNT 23 (1985), p. 37. 10. M. Hengel, ZTK 72 (1985), pp. 202-203; ET: M. Hengel, Between Jesus and Paul (London: SPCK, 1983), pp. 27-28; followed by Lindars, Jesus Son of Man, p. 24; C.F.D. Moule, Neues Testament und Kirche (for Rudolf Schnackenburg), ed. J. Gnilka (Freiburg: Herder, 1974), pp. 413-28. Cf. Casey, Son of Man, pp. 205-206; Lindars, Jesus Son of Man, pp. 24-25. 11. Casey, ZNW 67 (1976), pp. 149-50; Son of Man, pp. 230-31; JSNT 23 (1985), pp. 14-15; Lindars, Jesus Son of Man, pp. 25-26; JSNT 23 (1985), p. 40. 12. Lindars, Jesus Son of Man, pp. 102-106, treats Mk 2.28 as a Markan addition, but this is equally arbitrary and, like his treatment of Lk. 22.38, it involves the supposition that secondary examples of this Aramaic idiom were produced by Greek evangelists who did not know it. I hope to publish in the near future a full study of Mk 2.23-28, arguing that it is a literal translation of an Aramaic source written by a Jew from Israel and giving a perfectly accurate but abbreviated account of an incident which really took
place.
13. Bauckham, op. cit., pp. 28 and 30. 14. E.g. Mk 14.62. Cf. Casey, Son of Man, pp. 178-84, 201-19. 15. For more detailed exegesis of this saying, cf. Lindars, Jesus Son of Man, pp. 34-38, 178-81. It will be evident that I have not accepted some of the main contentions of E.P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (London: SCM, 1985), but a full answer to his work requires a fresh analysis of Second Temple Judaism, and this cannot be attempted here. 16. Casey, JSNT 23 (1985), pp. 3-22. 17. Full justification of this reconstruction must be attempted elsewhere (cf. n. 12). It may be noted here that the Aramaic behind &OHacgr;στϵ is quite rather than is merely very probable. uncertain, and 18. Lindars, Jesus Son of Man, pp. 31-34, 174-76, misrepresented both by Bauckham, op. cit., pp. 25-26, and by Black, op. cit. 19. Jesus Son of Man, pp. 60-84, 184-87; JSNT 23 (1985), pp. 39-40. 67 (1976), p. 149 and Son of 20. For this kind of reaction to Casey, ZNW Man, pp. 229-30, cf. M.D. Hooker in Text and Interpretation. Studies in the New Testament presented to Matthew Black, ed. E. Best and R McL. Wilson
56
(Cambridge: CUP, 1979), pp. 157-58; F.J. Moloney, (1980), p. 280; Bauckham, op. cit., p. 28.
Downside Review 98
21. That is, as one of several passages about faithful and suffering Jews, among whom he was included. Barrett and Hooker have disproved the traditional view that it was a fundamental text for him, interpreted individually of him alone. Cf. C.K Barrett, The Background of Mark 10.45, in New Testament Essays: Studies in Memory of T. W. Manson, ed. A.J.B. Higgins (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1959), pp. 1-18; M.D. Hooker, Jesus and the Servant (London: SPCK, 1959); C.K. Barrett, Mark 10.45: a Ransom for Many, New Testament Essays (London: SPCK, 1972), pp. 20-26. 22. A full discussion cannot be attempted here. The most helpful known to me is J. Jeremias, New Testament Theology, I (London: SCM,1971), pp. 17699 ; and on Mark 10.45, Barrett, op. cit. 23. Casey, ZNW 67 (1976), p. 151; Son of Man, p. 232. For criticism, cf.
cit., p. 288, even more unlikely; Hooker, op. cit., p. 158, so be trite; Lindars, BJRL 63 (1981), pp. 447-8; idem, Jesus Son of Man, pp. 66-67. 24. Cf. H.K McArthur, On the Third Day, NTS 18 (1971), pp. 81-86. Schaberg has recently suggested that the phrase is derived from Dan. 7.25, but a time, times and half a time is too different from after three days for this to be plausible, and it would be surprising that this unusual interpretation left no verifiable trace on the Christian exegetical tradition. Schabergs criteria seem to me to be too loose to demonstrate anything, but this matter cannot be dealt with here. Cf. J. Schaberg, Daniel 7,12 and the New Testament Passion-Resurrection Predictions, NTS 31 (1985), pp. 208-22. 25. Casey, Son of Man, with Table 5 (p. 236) laying out the basic pattern of development. 26. Bauckham, op. cit., pp. 29-30; Casey, Son of Man, ch. 8. 27. Moloney, op. cit., p. 287, replying to Casey, Son of Man, p. 234; followed by Kümmel, ThR 47 (1982), p. 375. 28. I have now adumbrated such a theory in the Cadbury lectures, delivered at the University of Birmingham in the autumn of 1985, under the title From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God. The Origins and Development of New Testament Christology.
Moloney,
obvious
op.
as to

1987 - P. Maurice Casey - General, Generic and Indefinite. The Use of The Term Son of Man' in Aramaic Sources and in The Teaching of Jesus

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1987 - P. Maurice Casey - General, Generic and Indefinite. The Use of The Term Son of Man' in Aramaic Sources and in The Teaching of Jesus

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Journal for the Study of the New Testament http://jnt.sagepub.

>> Version of Record - Jan 1, 1987 What is This?

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Department of Theology, University of Nottingham University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD

1. Aramaic Sources and the Date

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2. General Statements in the Aramaic Sources

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Indefinite and the

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Jesus himself These faults appear more

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used bar enash

rather than bar

(a man, someone), which is itself a very

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the limits of the

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of the Son of Man

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