I don't always manage to understand everything that Terry, Narkissos, or Leolaia are saying.
I am going to bow out of this thread and stick with the above statement.
Simple question: JESUS WAS THE SON OF (which?) MAN
by Terry 42 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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OnTheWayOut
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Leolaia
Real simple: the phrase "Son of Man" has (at least) two different meanings in the gospels, only one of which is influenced (directly) by Daniel.
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Awakened07
Rom. 1:3, 4 (KJV)"Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; | And declared [to be] the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead:"
So - "according to the flesh" he was a descendant of David, but "according to the spirit" he was the Son of God (because he was resurrected, if I get that right). So, was he 'fleshly' a descendant of David?
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OnTheWayOut
But when we read the English version of the Gospels (in pretty much any translation),
it is not ordinarily expected that the reader passes over the phrase "son of man" and
would process it in thought to mean "humble ordinary man; myself"Don't try to help me. Help the thread-starter if you must, but I am still spinning over
"circumlocutionary and apocalyptic uses of the expression." -
Leolaia
But when we read the English version of the Gospels (in pretty much any translation),
it is not ordinarily expected that the reader passes over the phrase "son of man" and
would process it in thought to mean "humble ordinary man; myself"But that is the sense of the idiom in Hebrew and Aramaic. And if you were to read a literal translation of the Hebrew Bible, as, oh, I don't know, maybe the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, you will find "son of man" with the same sense in English:
(Job 25:4-6) 4 So how can mortal man be in the right before God, Or how can one born of a woman be clean? 5 Look! There is even the moon, and it is not bright; And the stars themselves have not proved clean in his eyes. 6 How much less so mortal man, who is a maggot, And a son of man, who is a worm!"
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JosephMalik
Son of Man is simply used to identify a specific individual human, usually a prophet or someone of importance. Even someone plagued with problems such as Job was. The OT texts are full of such examples. In the NT it generally applies to our Lord as he was both an important man and a prophet.
The hypostatic union of our Lord came later after His resurrection and is not something that is offered to us in the resurrection and/or the Kingdom. Our hope in Christ is to attain the glory that He had after his transfiguration as the Son of man which was human immortality. Some see the Son of Man as deity but this word does not include or enforce identity as it can apply to more than one being or object real or imagined. It is the humanity of this Son of Man and not the hypostatic nature he now has that we are waiting for. This human nature will return to earth once again to rule in a Kingdom that will consist of resurrected and/or changed human beings. We do not have to concern ourselves with DNA as our Lord had human DNA traceable all the way back to Adam. He also had life that is traceable all the way back to the Word who was without sin. This is what made the difference that eluded and perplexed Job. So we now have a human life without sin and sacrificed for us as our hope. It is this life that made our Lord a Son of God and it is this life that we hope to receive as well.
Joseph
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Narkissos
OTWO,
Matthew 8:20 nicely illustrates the ambiguity of the phrase: "son of man" can be understood both in a rather "everyday" sense (man, as opposed to foxes and birds) as well as in the mythical sense (the paradoxical situation of the heavenly Saviour figure on earth -- which of course implies a "Christian" reworking of the Jewish apocalyptical figure).
(Btw this second sense may be secondary to the sayings about the "Son of Man coming on the clouds," where, closer to the original apocalyptical background, the earthly Jesus doesn't formally identify himself with the heavenly Son of Man.)
The same ambiguity is perceptible in the other texts you quote, especially Mark 2:27f, since "the Son of Man" both appears as an authority figure and is connected to a general superiority of "man" over the law.
But the "humanistic" part is not necessarily earlier (or "more original") than the "mythical" one: cf. v. 10: "the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins", which the Matthean parallel secondarily transposes into a more general saying: "they glorified God, who had given such authority to human beings."
More generally, and contrary to the popular opinion, I would suggest that in the development of most Gospel stories the "divinity" (in a broad sense) comes first, and then "humanity" is increasingly added into the narratives, either to give them historical consistency, or with a specific anti-docetic agenda (which is apparent in Luke).
Btw the "Son of Man" has little to do with the "Son of David" motif, which reflects but one of the different types of messianism attested in 1st-century Judaism, and is either claimed or dismissed for Jesus depending on the Gospel pericopes.
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OnTheWayOut
I said I was bowing out, yet I keep getting dragged in. I am just speaking as a common
man with my common man understanding. (I could have said I am speaking as a "son of man.")...that is the sense of the idiom in Hebrew and Aramaic.
I am simply speaking of the usage of the term in the Gospels translated into English.
Not Hebrew, not Aramaic, not OT. When a person who has been Christianized reads the
Gospels, his mind ordinarily replaces "son of man" with "Jesus" to smooth his understanding.
The term is in Daniel (and elsewhere in the OT), so the Christianized reader assumes that
the term, regardless of it's meaning there, points to Jesus.I said, "Don't try to help me." I am getting further from being able to follow this. I try, but I am
just a high-school dropout. -
Terry
Why give the geneology of Joseph, then?
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Narkissos
The (conflicting) genealogies found in Matthew and Luke (both through Joseph, btw) probably emerged in Christian circles claiming that Jesus was a Davidic Messiah (Son of David, not Son of Man). The Lukan context slightly modifies this perspective by (1) choosing a different royal bloodline than that of the actual kings and (2) tracing the ascent back to Adam (possible pro-Roman agenda: Jesus is not a political / nationalistic Jewish Messiah and his mission interests all mankind). Anyway, both genealogies definitely made better sense without the virgin birth story, although they can be reconciled with it (as centuries of Christian harmonising interpretation attest).