Catholic Encyclopedia: Son of Man
In the Old Testament "son of man" is always translated in the Septuagint without the
article as <anthropou>.
It is employed (1) as a poetical synonym for man, or for the ideal man, e. g. "God is not
as a man, that he should lie nor as a son of man, that he should be changed" (Num.,
xxiii, 19). "Blessed is the man that doth this and the son of man that shall lay hold on
this" (Is., ivi, 2). "Let thy hand be upon the man of thy right hand: and upon the son of
man whom thou hast confirmed for thyself" (Ps. ixxix, 18).
(2) The Prophet Ezechiel is addressed by God as "son of man more than ninety times, e.
g. "Son of man, stand upon thy feet, and I will speak to thee" (Ezech., ii, 1). This usage
is confined to Ezechiel except one passage in Daniel, where Gabriel said: "Understand,
O son of man, for in the time of the end the vision shall be fulfilled" (Dan., viii, 17).
(3) In the great vision of Daniel after the appearance of the four beasts, we read: "I
beheld therefore in the vision of the night, and lo, one like a son of man came with the
clouds of heaven, and he came even to the Ancient of days: and they presented him
before him. And he gave him power, and glory, and a kingdom: and all peoples,
tribes, and tongues shall serve him: his power is an everlasting power that shall not be
taken away: and his kingdom shall not be destroyed" (vii, 13 sq.). The person who
appears here as son of man is interpreted by many non-Catholics as representing the
Messianic kingdom, but there is no thing to prevent the passage from being taken to
represent not only the Messianic kingdom, but <par excellence> the Messianic king. In
the explanation, verse 17, the four beasts are "four kings" R.V., not "four kingdoms" as
translated by D. V., though they appear to signify four kingdoms as well for the
characteristics of oriental kingdoms were identified with the characters of their kings.
So when it is said in verse 18: "But the saints of the most high God shall take the
kingdom: and they shall possess the kingdom for ever and ever", the king is no more
excluded here than in the case of the four beasts. The "son of man" here was early
interpreted of the Messias, in the Book of Henoch, where the expression is used almost
as a Messianic title, though there is a good deal in Drummond's argument that even
here it was not used as a Messianic title notwithstanding the fact that it was understood
of the Messias. It has to be added that in the time of Christ it was not very widely, if at
all, known as a Messianic title.
The employment of the expression in the Gospels is very remarkable. It is used to
designate Jesus Christ no fewer than eighty-one times -- thirty times in St. Matthew,
fourteen times in St. Mark, twenty-five times in St. Luke, and twelve times in St. John.
Contrary to what obtains in the Septuagint, it appears everywhere with the article, as
<ho huios tou anthropou>. Greek scholars are agreed that the correct translation of this
is "the son of man", not "the son of the man". The possible ambiguity may be one of the
reasons why it is seldom or never found in the early Greek Fathers as a title for Christ.
But the most remarkable thing connected with "the Son of Man" is that it is found only
in the mouth of Christ. It is never employed by the disciples or Evangelists, nor by the
early Christian writers. It is found once only in Acts, where St. Stephen exclaims:
"Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of
God" (vii, 55). The whole incident proves that it was a well-known expression of
Christ's. Though the saying was so frequently employed by Christ, the disciples
preferred some more honorific title and we do not find it at all in St. Paul nor in the
other Epistles. St. Paul perhaps uses something like an equivalent when he calls Christ
the second or last Adam. The writers of the Epistles, moreover, probably wished to
avoid the Greek ambiguity just alluded to.
The expression is Christ's, in spite of the futile attempts of some German Rationalist
and others to show that He could not have used it. It was not invented by the writers
of the Gospels to whom it did not appear to be a favourite title, as they never use it of
Christ themselves. lt was not derived by them from what is asserted was a false
interpretation of Daniel, because it appears in the early portions of the public ministry
where there is no reference to Daniel. The objection that Christ could not have used it
in Aramaic because the only similar expression was <bar-nasha>, which then meant
only "man" bar having by that time lost its meaning of "son", is not of much weight.
Only little is known of the Aramaic spoken in Palestine in the time of Christ and as
Drummond points out special meaning could be given to the word by the emphasis
with which it was pronounced, even if bar-nasha had lost its primary meaning in
Palestine, which is not at all proved. As the same writer shows, there were other
expressions in Aramaic which Christ could have employed for the purpose, and
Sanday suggests that He may have occasionally spoken in Greek. The early Fathers
were of the opinion that the expression was used out of humility and to show Christ's
human nature, and this is very probable considering the early rise of Docetism. This is
also the opinion of Cornelius a Lapide. Others, such as Knabenbauer, think that He
adopted a title which would not give umbrage to His enemies, and which, as time went
on, was capable of being applied so as to cover His Mesianic claims--to include
everything that had been foretold of the representative man, the second Adam, the
suffering servant of Jehovah, the Messianic king.
<Jesus Messie et Fils de Dieu> (Paris, 1906); ROSE, <Studies on the Gospels> (London,
1903), DRUMMOND, <The Jour. of Theol. Studies>, Il (1901), 350, 539; HARTL,
<Anfang und Ende des Titels "Menchensohn"> in <Bibl. Zeitschrift> (Freiburg, 1909),
342.
C. AHERNE
Transcribed by Scott Anthony Hibbs
Taken from the New Advent Web Page (www.knight.org/advent).
This article is part of the Catholic Encyclopedia Project, an effort aimed at placing the
entire Catholic Encyclopedia on the World Wide Web. The coordinator is Kevin Knight,
editor of the New Advent Catholic Website. If you would like to contribute to this
worthwhile project, you can contact him by e-mail at (
[email protected]). For
more information please download the file cathen.txt/.zip.
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