I - The Son of man and ancient Judaism

Summary

A majority of recent writers continue to support the view that there existed in pre-Christian apocalyptic Judaism a concept of the eschatological Son of man, a transcendent and pre-existent being whose primary function in the End-time would be that of a judge, delivering the righteous and punishing the wicked. Besides H. E. Tödt, E. Jüngel, and F. Hahn may be mentioned the following. D. E. Nineham accepts the hypothesis without discussion. R. H. Fuller thinks the most likely source of the Son of man concept used by Jesus and the early church to be a pre-Christian apocalyptic tradition of the Son of man ‘as the pre-existent divine agent of judgment and salvation’. C. K. Barrett supports the apocalyptic Son of man passages in the gospels, because ‘they have a readily ascertainable setting in the Judaism with which, we may suppose, Jesus was familiar’, and part of the evidence is provided in the Similitudes of Enoch. It is part of P. Vielhauer's different thesis (that it was not Jesus but the early church that spoke of him as the coming Son of man, and that Jesus did not use the term at all) that this concept and title were derived from apocalyptic Judaism. He is followed by H. Conzelmann. According to H. M. Teeple, who also denies to Jesus any Son of man sayings, the Son of man Christology began in Hellenistic Jewish Christianity, perhaps in Syria, and was derived from Jewish apocalyptic.