9 - Son of Man in apocalyptic and rabbinic texts

Summary

In the first half of the twentieth century, scholars had reached a consensus that Jewish sources presented a unified conception of an apocalyptic “Son of Man.” One of Norman Perrin's contributions to the Son of Man debate was to challenge this view (Perrin 1974: 23–40). He argued that the Similitudes of Enoch, 4 Ezra 13, and the midrashic literature reflect independent exegeses of Daniel 7.13, not a common tradition concerning an eschatological Redeemer with well-defined attributes and functions. These sources interpreted the manlike figure in Daniel 7.13 as the Messiah, but developed the figure in various ways.

Perrin's thesis has gained widespread acceptance. As Raymond Brown indicates,

probably the majority view among scholars is that Jesus or his followers were responsible for the specification of the Son-of-Man concept, for there was no established Jewish portrait or expectation of that figure.

(Brown 1994: 1.512)

While the majority of scholars may take this view, others have argued for a greater unity in the apocalyptic “Son of Man” material than Perrin found there. As Brown further notes:

another vein of scholarship, which now seems to be reviving, has argued that there was a 1st-cent. Jewish expectation that God would make victorious and enthrone over Israel's enemies a specific human figure who would be the instrument of divine judgment – a figure who could be appropriately designated “the Son of Man.”

(Brown 1994: 1.508)

Before examining the works of scholars seeking to revive this view, we will examine afresh the apocalyptic texts that allude to Daniel 7.13. These include 1 Enoch 37–70, 1 Enoch 71, and 4 Ezra 13, all of which are now generally dated to the first century CE.