‘Son of Man’– The Dialogue: Part Thirteen

‘Son of Man’– The Dialogue: Part Thirteen

Q. Richard help my readers understand why it is important to understand the way Dan. 7 is interpreted in the Parables of Enoch, especially if the latter is too late to have influenced Jesus or his early followers? How would you sum up the importance of the Enochian material for the study of the Son of Man issue in the NT especially if in Enoch the phrase ‘Son of man’ is not a title for some messianic figure?

 

A. Even if the Parables is earlier than I have argued, the most important point is that there is no title “the Son of Man: in the book. The phrase “that son of man” is fraed in order to refer back to a figure already encountered in the visions, and so it cannot be taken out of its literary context and used as a recognizable title for a known figure. This conclusion should be taken along with the fact that no other Jewish literature ever calls the figure in Dan 7:13 “the son of man.” (4 Ezra has “that man” [Latin] – just like the Parables’ “that son of man”.) So we have to explain Jesus’s usage in some other way.


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