Richard Bauckham, ‘Son of Man’. Volume One: Early Jewish Literature, (Eerdmans, 2023), pp. 433.
Without question, one of the leading and most learned Biblical scholars in my lifetime is Richard Bauckham. When he writes a new detailed study on a subject of relevance to the study of the Bible, it deserves the full attention of the Biblical Studies guild, but not only that also of educated laity, pastors, and religion scholars in general. And such a study is this first volume on the Son of Man, which covers all the relevant literature from early Judaism (and beyond) that might help us understand Daniel’s ‘one like a son of man’ (Dan. 7.13-14). This is no small task, and requires being able to handle all sorts of languages including Ethiopic (in the case of the Parables of Enoch), Syriac, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, and more. And since the Son of Man material has been an object of fascination and debate for many, many decades, treated by many and diverse scholars, it takes a certain amount of courage to dive into that big controversy and take a clear stand, backed up with a plethora of detailed exegetical analyses.
And when in the end Bauckham is prepared to conclude not only that Son of Man is not a title, nor a pre-existing concept in early Judaism (it simply means ‘a man’) and does not refer to a divine or quasi-divine figure such as an angel, nor in Dan. 7 is it a mere cipher for the Jewish saints or Israel as a whole, but rather refers to a human being who had existed on earth, was taken up into heaven, was authorized by the ancient of days to return to earth (on the clouds?) and judge the world either with a judicial verdict, or militarily on behalf of God’s people, well then he has thrown down the gauntlet, and in the process critiqued a whole host of theories, theses and detailed studies of the matter. Whether this figure is viewed as someone like Enoch, or Joshua, or David or one of his descendants, this figure is said by Bauckham not to stand apart from other OT and early Jewish messianic ideas, but rather is a sort of culmination or combination of various messianic ideas found in those sources. In short, this study is a bombshell thrown into a battlefield where many theories have already gone to die. If this study doesn’t wake up the SBL and AAR neighborhood (for example the ongoing Enoch seminar) then nothing will.
Methodologically, Richard wants us all to give a fair reading to the early Jewish and OT data without pre-judging the material on the basis of the Gospels use of the phrase Son of Man. I agree that this is only proper and fair. Further, he will argue that both the Parables of Enoch and 4 Ezra, for example come from late in the first century or early second century A.D. (and therefore could not have influenced the historical Jesus’ use of this phrase, nor for that matter the early Gospel traditions). The earliest exegesis of the material in Daniel comes from Qumran, but alas, it is very fragmentary and doesn’t help us much.
This book walks through all the relevant data, is clearly written, provides us with some charts to help us understand the implications of the data, interacts with much of the secondary literature, and is truly a tour de force. It even deals with Josephus’ handling of the Danielic material in a very helpful way and shows that while Josephus thinks that Vespasian was predicted in some of the material from Dan. 9, he certainly doesn’t see the Roman emperor as the messianic or savior figure mentioned in Dan. 7, and he also thinks that the fourth beastly empire, namely the Roman empire, will one day go down for the count, eclipsed in the end by the everlasting Kingdom of God.
I cannot praise this book sufficiently. It is a masterwork, whether you agree with Richard on all the particulars of his argument or not, and I do not. For example, I am doubtful that he is right that Dan. 7.13-14 does not refer to the worship of the Son of Man figure by all humankind. And nothing in Dan. 7 itself suggests that this person once existed on earth, died (or was ‘taken up’) and will later return to earth to judge the world (certainly in the Parables of Enoch we are not talking about someone who died and went to heaven). Richard thinks that even if worship is mentioned in Dan. 7 this is so only because God has invested him to be the plenipotentiary who judges the world. But it is the one like a Son of Man, and not merely his functions that is being worshipped in Dan. 7, and in any case as the Old Greek Daniel suggests in several places, this should be seen as worship, not merely obeisance to some august human figure.
Nevertheless, I along with all other serious readers of this book will have their minds teased into active thought, and will need to begin a process of re-evaluation of much of what we have thought before about Daniel’s ‘bar enosh’ . This book should be in every college and seminary library where Biblical religion is studied at all. And we should eagerly look forward to Volume 2 whenever it emerges. It is likely as well to be ground-breaking, if not putting the cat amongst a large flock of pigeons.
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