The Messianic Figure In The Parables Of Enoch

[This article is post #2 of a multiple-post review I am doing of Richard Bauckham’s book, “Son of Man”: Volume 1: Early Jewish Literature (Eerdmans, 2023). Click here to see post #1.]

In Richard Bauckham’s book “Son of Man”: Volume 1: Early Jewish Literature (2023), in his chapter on “The Messianic Figure … in the Parables of Enoch,” he informs that the renaissance of scholarly interest in the ancient Book of Enoch, which is more precisely identified as 1 Enoch, came to the forefront in the academy in 2005 with the creation of an international group of Enoch specialists steeped in the knowledge of ancient Judaism. And this ongoing group is called the Enoch Seminar.

Enoch’s Son of Man and Messianic Figure

We learned in post #1 of this review of Bauckham’s book that The Parables (of Enoch) are mostly about “the Son of Man,” an expression that occurs sixteen times therein. But The Parables also are about what Bauckham and other scholars call “the Messianic Figure.” The author of The Parables seems to equate these two figures as being a certain man who will appear in the future to conduct the final judgment at what the Bible’s book of Daniel calls “the end of days.” Bauckham says members of the Enoch Seminar are divided as to whether this Messianic Figure, this Son of Man, is “divine.” Bauckham informs (p. 23) that Professor Daniel Boyarin at UC Berkeley, California, who is a non-Christian, Jewish member of the Enoch Seminar, “For Boyarin, the ‘Son of Man’ in the Parables is unequivocally a divine figure.” Bauckham then quotes Boyarin, “This figure is part of God; as a second or junior divinity, he may even be considered a Son alongside the Ancient of Days.” Bauckham is a traditional Christian about this matter, being well known for coining the expression “the unique divine identity” which he applies to Jesus of Nazareth (p. 25), thus viewing him as a God-man.

Bauckham cites Trinitarian scholars like himself—Darrell Bock and James Charlesworth—as claiming that The Parables may have been written in Galilee and be “most likely contemporaneous with Jesus or slightly earlier” (p. 23).

Bauckham claims the author of The Parables draws on Psalm 2 in setting forth The Messianic Figure. This messianic, eschatological psalm declares, “The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD [=Yahweh] and his anointed [mashiach=Messiah]” (Psalm 2.2). Yahweh then declares concerning his anointed One, “‘I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill.’ I will tell of the decree of the LORD: He said to me, ‘You are my son’” (vv. 6-7). When Caiphas the high priest of the Sanhedrin demanded from Jesus, “Tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God” (Matthew 26.63), he seems to have alluded to this text.

Enoch’s Messiah Executes God’s Judgment

Bauckham then relates that for the author of The Parables (p. 29), the “Messianic Figure … executes God’s eschatological judgment on the powerful oppressors of the people of God.” Bauckham then asks, “How did the author of the Parables infer from Daniel 7 that the role of ‘the son of man’ was to execute eschatological judgment?” As I related in post #1 of this book review, I often have wondered that myself in my reading and study of The Parables of Enoch.

In considering this question, one must consider what comes right before Daniel 7.13-14. It is a vision which represents a prediction of a court scene in heaven, which I believe will happen at what Daniel calls “the end of days.” We read, “thrones were set in place, and an Ancient of Days took his throne” (v. 9), referring to God. The text does not say how many thrones are placed. Many interpreters of Daniel 7 have thought that only two thrones are placed—one for God and one for the Son of Man, who is mentioned shortly thereafter. This was the view of Rabbi Akiba who was involved in the Second Jewish Revolt of 132-135, which the Romans put down and brought about the Diaspora. But I have been convinced by Bauckham in his little commentary on the book of Revelation that the so-called “Two Powers in Heaven” is an incorrect interpretation.

God’s Heavenly Council of Twenty-Four Elders

Bauckham says in his commentary on Revelation (p. 34) concerning the “twenty-four elders” in heaven that are mentioned in Revelation 4.4, 10; 5.6, 8, 14; 19.4, “The twenty-four elders—a political, rather than cultic term—are the angelic beings who compose the divine council (cf. Isa. 24:23; Dan. 7:9; 2 Enoch 4:1; T. Levi 3:8). As their own thrones and crowns indicate (4:4), they are themselves rulers. They rule the heavenly world on God’s behalf.”

I am amazed that in writing this recent book, “Son of Man: Volume 1, Bauckham treats the thrones in Daniel 7.9 as being two thrones and therefore seems to have forgotten that in his little commentary on Revelation, he includes Dan. 7:9 as evidence of the twenty-four elders and their twenty-four thrones in heaven. That is, Bauckham then meant that the “thrones” mentioned in Dan 7.9 belonged to the twenty-four elders of heaven, in which they constitute God’s royal council.

The Son of Man in The Parables Is Not Divine

The Son of Man is first introduced in The Parables in 46.1-3. In James H. Charlesworth’s standard The Old Testament Pseudepigraph (Volume 1) it reads, “I saw the One to whom belongs the time before time. And he head was white like wool, and there was with him another individual, whose face was like that of a human being…. And I asked … ‘Who is this, and from whence is he who is going as the prototype of the Before-Time?’ And he answered me and said to me, ‘This is the Son of Man, to whom belongs righteousness, and with whom righteousness dwells’”

Trinitarian Bauckham says of this introduction of the Son of Man in The Parables (p. 36), “There is nothing in the description in 46:1 to suggest that the figure is ‘divine,’ and therefore there is no reason why Enoch’s phrase ‘that son of man’ should be thought to carry any greater significance than the straightforward meaning ‘that man.’” Bauckham relates (p. 39) concerning Daniel 7.13 and The Parables that some scholars “have considered the ‘concept’ of the Son of Man a particular kind of messianic expectation: a ‘transcendent’ figure, of heavenly rather than human origin. But the Parables of Enoch cannot be used to support the existence of such a concept.”

Daniel’s Court Scene and Coronation Ceremony

Bauckham informs (p 45), “Most early readers of Daniel evidently took this scene of judgment in Daniel 7:9-10 to be set on earth, but, as we shall see below, the author of the Parables understood it to be located in heaven,” which I think is correct. The main reason is that this court scene in heaven, in Daniel 7.9-10, seems to represent one of God’s royal council meetings he conducts regularly at set times in heaven (cf. 1 Kings 22.19-23; Job 1—2). The council then passes judgment against “the beast” on earth, headed by the final Antichrist (v. 11), and the coronation ceremony in heaven occurs soon after it in vv. 13-14, in which God gives the Son of Man a kingdom, making him a king, and this kingdom consists of human beings.

Because of an emphasis on thrones in The Parables and other ancient Jewish literature, Bauckham focuses extensively on whether the Son of Man has a throne or if he shares God’s throne, and if the Son of Man has his own throne is it in heaven or only on earth. Bauckham concludes concerning thrones in The Parables (p. 50), “There are two thrones. The Messianic Figure does not sit on God’s throne; still less is he ‘divine.'”

Jesus Will Return on Clouds, Sitting on a Throne

I won’t get into all of this except to say that according to the Bible, I believe that in heaven the Son of Man, who is also the anointed one (Messianic Figure) in Psalm 110.1, only shares God’s throne and therefore does not have a heavenly throne. But when he is crowned king and given his kingdom, in Daniel 7.13-14, he then descends from heaven to earth with his glorious kingdom, sitting on his throne. Though the text does not say this, I believe this is rightly assumed (cf. Luke 19.12-15). For, at Jesus’ interrogation by Sanhedrin during the night before he was crucified, he answered Caiphas the high priest as to whether he was the Messiah, the Son of God, by saying, “You have said so. But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven” (Matthew 26.64). That is why, for the front cover of my book Warrior from Heaven, which is about the Jesus’ second coming, I had a graphics artist make this picture I imagined of Jesus sitting on a throne and riding on bright, white clouds that form into the shape of a cross.