JFSNT 29 (1987) 21-56) : Department of Theology, University of Nottingham University Park, Nottingham Ng7 2Rd

\jfSNT 29 (1987) 21-56]
GENERAL, GENERIC AND INDEFINITE:

THE USE OF THE TERM "SON 0 F l^ANT ¿to
ARAMAIC SOURCES AND IN THE TEACHING OF JESUS
P. Maurice Casey
Department of Theology, University of Nottingham
University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD
Recent attempts to unravel Jesus' use of the term 'son of man' have
largely concentrated on the Aramaic (HftiH "Π. In particular, there
have now been four attempts to describe an idiom by means of which
an Aramaic speaker used (N)KON "O as a reference to himself 1. In his
seminal paper on the use of this term, Vermes argued that it was a
simple substitute for the first person pronoun T. 2. The present
author has argued that all the proposed examples of this idiom are in
fact general statements, which were used by Aramaic speakers with
reference to themselves, and that this idiom is the key to understand
ing Jesus' use of the term 'son of man'. 3. In an important book,
Lindars has argued that the idiom was much more precise than this.
He describes 'the idiomatic use of the generic article, in which the
speaker refers to a class of persons, with whom he identifies
himself... It is this idiom, properly requiring bar (e)nasha rather
than bar (e)nash, which provides the best guidance to the use of the
Son of Man in the sayings of Jesus.' 4. In a recent article in this
journal, reviewing Lindars's book, Bauckham has suggested that
'Jesus used bar enash (probably, rather than bar enasha) in the
indefinite sense ("a man', 'someone'), which is itself a very common
usage, but used it as a form of deliberately oblique or ambiguous self-
reference'.1 The purpose of this article is to discuss the issues raised
in this debate, and to clarify the nature and usage of this idiom in our
Aramaic sources and in the teaching of Jesus.
1. Aramaic Sources and the Date of This Idiom

The general use of mn Ό as an ordinary term for 'man', so
22 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 29 (1987)
abundantly attested in later Aramaic, is quite sufficiently well

attested in the very meagre Aramaic sources of the Second Temple
period (lQapGen 21.13; HQTgJob 9.9 [Job 25.6]; 26.3 [Job 35.8]:
and in the plural Dan. 2.38; 5.21; 1 En. 7.3; 22.3; 77.3 ^QEnastr*
23]; lQapGen 19.15; HQTgJob 28.2 [Job 36.25]; c£ also Sefire 3.16;
Dan. 7.13). It follows that general statements using the term mn Ί2
were normal in Aramaic at the time ofJesus. Later Aramaic sources
provide examples of people using such general statements rather
than speaking of themselves directly. The circumstances in which
they do so were correctly defined by Vermes: 'In most instances the
sentence contains an allusion to humiliation, danger or death, but
there are also examples where reference to the self in the third person
is dictated by humility or modesty'.2 If therefore we find that some
son of man sayings attributed to Jesus emerge in Aramaic reconstruc
tions as general statements referred by the speaker to himself in
circumstances of this kind, we must conclude that these sayings are
in accordance with normal Aramaic idiom, on analytical and empirical
grounds. The analytical ground is the slightness of the shiftfromthe
use of general statements to the use of such statements by a speaker
with special reference to himself Once the use of general statements
is established in a social group of speakers of any given language, they
may apply them to themselves at any time in much the same way as
they may use proverbs. The empirical ground is that later Aramaic
sources show that some Aramaic speakers in fact did so.
The common assumption that there is no earlier example of this
idiom is moreover misleading. More than 700 years before the time of
Jesus, the king of Krt was the effective author of a treaty between
himself and the king of Arpad. After repeatedly mentioning himselÇ
his son, grandson and descendants in lengthy formulae, he used a
general statement with BUN "D at the point where he contemplated
the killing of himself or his descendants as a result of action taken by
the king of Arpad or his descendants: 'If you think of killing me and
you put forward such a plan, and if your son's son thinks of killing
my son's son and puts forward such a plan, or if your descendants
think of killing my descendants and put forward such a plan, and if
the kings of Arpad think of it, in any case that a son of man dies
(V:H Ί3 niD- η nrtM), you have been false to all the gpds of the
treaty which is in this inscription' (Sefire 3.14-17). Here the general
statement covers the king and his descendants, and this is partly why
it is used: it is nonetheless significant that it is a general statement,
CASEY 'Son of Man'—General, Generic and Indefinite 23
using the term EHM Ί:Ι, used of a speaker to include himself with
reference to the humiliating event of his own death, similar circum
stances to those indicated by Vermes in his study of later Aramaic. If
therefore we find that straightforward retroversions of sayings of
Jesus produce general statements which he evidently intended to
apply to himself we must conclude that the absence of this idiom
from contemporary Aramaic sources is simply due to the small
quantity of Aramaic surviving from our period.
It should in any case be quite clear that so little Aramaic survives
that such a conclusion is. inevitable in the case of straightforward
lexical items, let alone more subtle idioms. For instance, ΊΟΟ, which
is frequently said to be the Aramaic behind παραδίδωμι in the
passion predictions, is not found in Aramaic documents of our
period, nor is D^nttN extant in therightdialect in the sense required
behind τελειοϋμαι at Lk. 13.32. Scholars do not however conclude
from these facts that the passion predictions are not authentic, nor
should we do so. If we confine ourselves to words extant in the
minuscule corpus of Aramaic literature of the right period, it is
patently clear that we have too little of the language to express either
day-to-day conversations in normal life or a broad range of serious
religious teaching. Nor should we be deterred from reconstructing
sayings ofJesus by toorigida classification of Aramaic into different
phases. While it is clear that some changes such as the dropping of κ
at the beginning ofKttN and the decline of the use of the absolute state
of the noun did take place, it is equally clear that the basic vocabulary
and structure of the language did not alter over a period of centuries.
The semantic area of common words such as IÛM, ¿Η and Dip
continued to include all the basic uses attested in earlier Aramaic,
and idiomatic features such as the construct state of the noun and the
uses of participles as finite verbs are also found in many different
dialects over a long period of time. Since the general use of EttH Ί2 is
found before as well as after the time of Jesus, including an early
example of a general statement used by an author of himself and his
descendants, we should not refuse to interpret sayings of Jesus as
general statements applied by the speaker to himself; if they emerge
like that from retroversion into Aramaic.3
2. General Statements in the Aramaic Sources

All extant examples of this idiom are best described as general
statements used by a speaker in order to say something about

himself; or occasionally himself and a group of associates. By
'general' statements I do not mean only statements which are true of
all people, for general statements are widely used in many languages
and cultures in a much less general and more subtle way. The
pragmatic factors which lead people to want to speak indirectly take
precedence over the surface logic of sentences as these might be
literally interpreted, so that generalizations are frequently used
which are not remotely true of everyone, still less of all people at all
times and in all circumstances. In a previous article in this journal, I
noted particularly the studies by Sacks and Wales of the English
terms 'everyone', 'you', 'we' and 'one'.4 Sacks's study of'everyone' is
especially striking because of the evidence that a term whose surface
logic in isolation necessarily does refer to all people is used in such a
way that he can summarize its meaning as 'anyone in such a
situation as Γ or 'anyone in such a situation where what that
situation is is characterizable', a description which approximates to
Lindars's description of the generic use of HüSN *n as equivalent to 'a
man in my position'. What is so fruitful about investigations like
those of Sacks and Wales is the complexity of their analytical mode.
These scholars do not treat language as a closed logical system which
can be fully described in terms of its surface logic, but as a mode of
communication between human beings who normally and conven-
tionally make statements for social and emotional reasons which
would not be correct if they were analysed only in terms of their
surface logic. We must analyse the idiomatic use of tnn *u in this
way because, as Vermes made clear in hisfirstdescription of it, this is
an idiom where pragmatic factors are fundamental both in our
Aramaic sources and in the teaching of Jesus, who used it in a
number of extreme circumstances including predictions of his death.
I shall therefore discuss three Aramaic examples in order to illustrate
the variation in the degree of generality which may be found in this
idiom.
1. At Gen. R. 79.6, we find R. Simeon ben Yohai in a cave,
wondering whether it was safe to come out He saw some birds being
hunted: some were captured, while others escaped, and the fate of all
of them depended on the judgment of a heavenly voice which he
heard. He declared:
K-ran^D tò wow ntfno "w*
m ΊΠ ttW JODI }M m
—* A bird is not caught without the will of heaven: how much less the
spul of a son of man'. R. Simeon then emergedfromthe cave. It
follows that he intended to apply the statement to himselÇ but it does
notfollowthat w 12 is nothing more than a substituteforthe first
person pronoun. On the contrary, thefirstsentence, Ά bird is not
caught without the will of heaven', is quite clearly a general
statement the second must be interpreted in the same way, because
we already know that ttt *n was a general term for 'man', and this
ensures that 'how much less the soul of a son of man' balances and
followsfromthe general statement about birds. Further, it is quite
clearfromthe content of this saying that it is intended to be true of
everyone at all times. Indeed, the general level of meaning would
have been accepted by everyone in R. Simeon's culture. It is
therefore clear that in this idiom ν: Ί2 is not a simple substitute for
T. Both &&J and VI *n are in the absolute state, so that the use of a
general statement with reference to a speaker clearly does not depend
on the generic use of the definite state. The reference of the saying to
R. Simeon is quite clear, so that the idiom should not be described as
ambiguous.5 In this version of the story, R. Simeon had his son with
him. The saying therefore necessarily refers to him as welL This is
always liable to happen simply because of the general level of
meaning of sayings used in this idiom. In a practical situation this
may be very functional, because anyone who recognizes the truth of
the saying as applied to himself is more likely to accept that it is true
of the speaker as well We may compare Sefire 3.16, where we have
seen a general statement deliberately used to include the author's
descendants with himself an analytically similar usage in somewhat
different circumstances.
2. As an example of a saying which is true of a restricted social sub
group we may consider the saying of R. Hiyya bar Adda at/ Ber.
2.8.5b. This is adduced to explain why he left his valuables to R.
Levi: mas rtfw Μ Π MM Τ Η το^η—'The disciple of a son of man is
as dear to him as his son'. This cannot be interpreted as true of
everyone, because most people do not have disciples and some do not
have sons, but this is not relevant to the use of this idiom. This
limitation to a social sub-group causes no trouble in comprehension
because it is obvious from the context All that is required for the
success of the saying is that other rabbis felt that their ties with their
disciples were strong enough for the general level of meaning to be
plausible. Provided this is true, the statement is an acceptable way of
explaining how R. Hiyya bar Adda came to leave his valuables to R.

Levi Consequently, it should not be treated as ambiguous.
3. The minimum degree of generality necessary in the use of this
idiom may be illustrated by the saying of R. Ze'ira at/ Ber. 2.8.5c,
which is a false generalizationfromhis own experience. This saying
occurs in one of a group of stories about rabbis who immigrated to
Israel from Babylon, a situation in which anyone is liable to be
unaware of local customs. R. Ze'ira went to buy a pound of meat
from a butcher. When he asked the price, he was told '50 minas and a
lash'. He offered more and more money to get his pound of meat
without suffering a lash, but when his offer of 100 minas was still
refused, he gave in with the words, 'Do according to your custom
(*pruoD τη?)'. That evening he said to his colleagues:
HBÌpn « Ί Ο ^ m "Π 'TON Η Τ Ι ΓΟΓΠ WWD ÎFO ΠΟ Ρ3Ί
CTlip ΊΠ ΓΤ^ ΊΠΟΊ ΠΡ
—'Rabbis, how evil is the custom of this land, that a son of man
cannot eat a pound of meat until they have given him a lash'. His
colleagues did not accept that this was the custom, but made
enquiries as a result of which it emerged that the butcher was already
dead. R. Ze'ira refuted any idea that he was responsible for divine
vengeance on his behalf by saying that he was not really angry with the
butcher because Ί thought the custom was like that (p nanaon rmo)'.
It is clear from the reactions of Κ Ze'ira's colleagues, and from his
own final admission, that he was in fact the only person who was
lashed by the butcher when he bought his pound of meat, but even
this does not justify Vermes's view that m "O is a simple substitute
for T. This is clear for two reasons. First,fctt"Π is elsewhere a normal
term for 'man' and makes perfect sense like that here. In relating a
humiliating incident, R. Ze'ira used a general statement in order to
avoid referring directly to himself Secondly, his three references to
local custom show beyond doubt that he did not believe that he was
the only person to be treated like this. Since however he was wrong
about the custom in a place with which he was not familiar, it is clear
that he felt able to use a general statement by generalizingfromhis
own experience. This example is barely a successful use of the idiom
because R. Ze'ira was mistaken about local custom. We must
conclude that, to be used successfully, the sentence containing a
general statement with (N)KU(K) Ί3 must have a general level of
meaning which appears plausible to the social sub-group of the
speaker and his audience. Finally, it will be noted that in this

example m Ί3 is in the absolute state. This again shows that (K)eo(K)
*u in this idiom may be in either the absolute or the definite state.
One further point should be made about this idiom: the general
level of meaning may be functional rather than substantive. This is
clear in all these three examples. R. Ze'ira is the extreme case,
because he found his own personal experience so humiliating that he
made up a generalization on the basis of it so that he could
understand it and communicate it to his colleagues. Both R. Simeon
ben Yohai and R. Hiyya bar Adda also have their general statements
recorded because of the application to themselves rather than
because of interest in the general statements. This is not essential,
but it is likely to be normative in the Uves of actual people rather than
in literary sources. There are two or three examples in our Aramaic
sources where some interest seems to be taken in the general level of
meaning for its own sake. The most obvious is/ Kil 9.6.32b (///.
Ket. 12.3.35a // Gen. R. 100.2), where Rabbi is recorded to have beai
buried wrapped in a single sheet on the ground of his saying:
TIN Ν1Π »7TN WH Ί Π HDD IÖ
—'It is not as a son of man goes that he will come again'. This is one
of a number of sayings about burial, and our sources show so great an
interest in the general level of meaning that they contradict it: 'But
the rabbis say, As a son of man goes, so will he come again'. Such an
interest is not however necessary, and appears to be absent from
most of our Aramaic sources andfrommost of the sayings of Jesus.
3. Generic, Indefinite and the 'Articles'

We must now consider Aramaic aspects of the proposals of Lindars
and Bauckham, and the effects which they have on our understanding
of the articles in the Gospel expression ó υΐος τοϋ άνθρωπου. First,
some general points about the description of Aramaic nouns. They
have three states, usually described in English as the definite or
emphatic state, the absolute or indefinite state, and the construct
state. Several definite and indefinite forms, including both the
definite m. sg., and the indefinite f sg., are characterized by their
ending in some form of long a, so that the difference between these
states is not as simple as the presence or absence of an independent
article. The difference between the definite and indefinite states
gradually broke down, and this breakdown took theformof increasing

use of the definite state. This process had evidently begun before the
time ofJesus, but we do not know howforit had gone by that time,
still less howforit had gone in the Galilean dialect, of which we have
no contemporary evidence at all. The definite state in Aramaic
should thus be clearly distinguishedfromthe Hebrew article, which
was distinctively sounded before the noun and has never lost its
force, and from the independent definite article in Greek. Conse-
quently, information about Hebrew usage, though it may be useful
because it comesfromthe same culture and may be more generally
illuminating like comparative material from any other language,
cannot be considered as evidence of Aramaic usage. Nor should we
rely on the formulated grammatical rules of nineteenth-century
grammarians, which arefrequentlytoo complex and too subject to
the influence of modern cultural assumptions to be accurate descrip-
tions of the habits of ancient speakers.6 This means that Lindars's
description of this idiom, learned and ingenious though it be, is
without realfoundationin the primary sources. We may not infer the
use, let alone the interpretation, of the definite state in this idiom
from the use of the definite state in expressions like ¥iïn η «irm
(Dan. 2.19).
The crucial factor is therefore the empirical data: do examples of
this idiom use the definite state or not? The answer to this question
was clearly laid out by Vermes in his original paper some examples
do have the definite state WW Ί3 while others have the indefinite
m -o (BUK *n at Sefire 3.16). The fact that some examples have the
indefinite state is sufficient to show that Lindars's description of the
idiom is unsatisfactory. The simplest example is the saying of R.
Ze'ira at/ Ber. 2.8.5c, discussed above. A second example isfoundat
Gen. R. 7.2 (// Num. R. 19.3 // Pes. 4.30), where Jacob of Kefer
Niburayya, ordered by R. Haggai to come and be beaten for ruling
that fish should berituallyslaughtered, replied
«non« "p*? κηηικη rb*ù ΊΟΝΊ m na
—Ά son of man who interprets the word of Torah is beaten! I am
amazed.' Lindars tries to explain the use of the indefinite state here:
'In this case bar nosh is defined by the relative clause, and the
anarthrous form is required to denote a single member of the class so
specified'.7 This is not consistent with Lindars's usual description of
this idiom, in accordance with which we should have the 'generic
article' to denote a particular member of the class, and he offers no

justification for his opinion that the anarthrous form could be
required in Aramaic of this period It is of course true that m "û is
defined by the relative clause. In a situation of implied humiliation,
Jacob identified himself with a group of people by describing himself
as 'a son of man who interprets the word of Torah'. In his
environment, this was not the sort of person who ought to be
humiliated The idiom works because there was a group of people
who interpreted the Law and who were highly thought of for the
reason: it does not need the definite state of (N)ttt *n. A further
example, with the same son of man saying, follows in the same
sources.
A fourth example of the use of the indefinite state in this idiom is
found in a Genizafragmentof a Targum to Gen. 4.14, where one of
Cain's statements about himself is replaced with a general statement
which refers to him equally clearly:
ÎTIDÛD*? erro*? "WOK η*? *ηκ τ » Τ pi
—'andfrombefore you, Lord, it is not possible for a son of man to
hide'. We have already noted afifthexample at Gen. R. 79.6, where
R. Simeon emerged from his cave after declaring, Ά bird is not
caught without the will of heaven; how much less the soul of a son of
man (Ktt *m &&J)'. Lindars's comments on this example are not
wholly clear, but he appears to believe that the versions of Gen. R.
79.6 and EccL R. 10.8 deliberately have a general statement referring
to both R. Simeon and his son. At / Sheb. 9.1.38d, which reads
NtfJ *D, 'the generic article singles out a particular man who might
find himself in the same situation as the birds. Seeing that what is
said can be taken to be a general ruling, some texts take it as such
(eg. Gen. R. 79.6). But the use of the generic article adds to the
comment the sense of discovery, true in every case, no doubt, but
true in his own case too.'8 Thefinalsentence of this description goes
for beyond the verifiable use of the definite state, but the real faults
are more fundamental First, the differentiation between the versions
with the definite and indefinite state is quite arbitrary and not
properly related to the use of these states elsewhere. Secondly, the
general ruling of Gen. R. 79.6 // EccL R. 10.8 still refers to the
speaker. If therefore Lindars's description of the version at j . Sheb.
9.1.38d were admitted, it would mean that there were in fact two -
types of the idiom, one corresponding to my description and the
other corresponding to his. This is not very likely when the differen-
tiation between the use of the definite and indefinite states was
breaking down. This is presumably why Lindars believes that the
version of/ Sheb. 9.1.38d best explains the variants, but we have no
reason to believe that it was the original form, not least because the
transmission of rabbinical literature is at this level too unreliable for
us to have any confidence in the originality of any reading. Thirdly,
Lindars regards the use of the generic article in this idiom as the
reasonforthe presence of the articles in the Gospel expression ó υΐος
του άνθρωπου. If this were right, and if the reason for the use of the
indefinite state at Gen. R. 79.6 // EccL R. 10.8 were the use of a
general statement referring to both Simeon and Eleazar his son, we
should have υιός άνθρωπου without the articles in sayings of Jesus,
such as Mk 10.45 and Mt 8.20 // Lk. 9.58, where the general level of
meaning originally applied to other people in the audience as well as
to Jesus himself.
These.faults appear more clearly in Lindars's longest discussion of a
saying extant in more than oneform,the saying ofRabbi at/. JF3£ 9.6-32b
(II j . Ket. 12.3-35a// Gen. R. 100.2): *ηκ Kin Vn« rj* iyi HDD to—
'It is not as a son of man goes that he will come again'. Lindars begins
from the version of y. Ket. 12.3-35a, where he reads NffJ in and
suggests that this is a proverb, or proverbial type of sentence, and
that the indefinite m *D in other texts turns it into a general rule, as
in the opinion of the rabbis whichfollows:'As a son of man (ttt Ί2)
goes, so will he come again'!9 However, Lindars offers no evidence
that Rabbi's statement is a proverb. He does not show that the use of
the generic article is appropriate to a proverbial type of sentence, it is
difficult to envisage a situation in which proverbs and general rulings
would use different states of the noun, and proverbs and general
rulings do not follow such a distinction. Finally, if this saying were a
proverb, it occurs in other texts with m *n in the absolute state,
which shows empirically that this sentence in its context does not
require the definite state. Thus Lindars's distinction between proverb
ial sentence and general ruling is too artificial He also ignores the
textual question. The two talmudic versions of this saying effectively
comefromtwo textually insecure copies of the same lengthy passage,
and variants at this level are sofrequentthat no text is reliable (the
Wilna edn of/. Ket. 12.3-35a in feet reads m "D).
We must therefore conclude on the ground of the empirical data
that examples of this idiom may use (N)fctf(N) *n in either the definite
or indefinite state. From the theoretical point of view, there are two
points to make. First, general statements are intelligible, and are
found, with the indefinite state (eg. Sefire 3.16). The gradual spread
of the definite state means that they may also use the definite state.
This idiom is likely to have been one of the first in which variation
occurred, because such variation could not affect the meaning and
use of the idiom. Secondly, Lindars's comments should highlight for
us the fact that in many examples (κ)Ώ *u is used in such a general
way that the definite state might be used in a generic sense as this is
normally understood, that is, as a reference to mankind as such. The
significant point about this usage is that it too was optional. For
example, Daniel'sfirstbeast was given the heart of a man (KttN, Dan.
7.4), but the little horn had eyes like the eyes of a man (MttttN, Dan.
7.8). This gives us a second theoretical reason for my original
contention that the variation in statefoundin examples of this idiom
in our Aramaic sources will also have beenfoundin examples at the
time ofJesus. Thus, while we have no access to his idiolect, it is very
probable that some examples in the teaching of Jesus had (N)BHN *n
in the definite state, while others had the indefinite state.
How then do we explain the consistency with which all our Gospel
writers put both articles in the expression ó υΙός τοϋ άνθρωπου?
Lindars effectively argues that this must be due to consistent use of
the definite state in the underlying Aramaic and to this extent he
aligns himself with traditional scholarship. This point has however
caused a lot of trouble, leading our most outstanding scholars to
make some quite extraordinary conjectures. Thus Hengel deduced
from it 'a fixed place for the translation of the Jesus tradition', a
conjecture which Lindars regards as probable. For the same reason
Moule was led to conjecture man rm or some equally hair-raising
Syriac translationese as the expression used by Jesus, though the
term could exist in natural Aramaic only if there were a particular
*τω for Jesus to be in some clear sense the son οζ it cannot in itself
carry a reference to Dan. 7.13, and ò υΐος του άνθρωπου is not a
feasible translation of iL10 We have moreover already seen that
Lindars's view cannot in fact explain the use of the articles because
there are several examples of the Aramaic idiom which use the
indefinite state. I have however already supplied a more sophisticated
explanation of the presence of the articles in ò υιός τοϋ άνθρωπου
which takes account of the predictable variation in state of the
underlying (M)Btt(tt) in. Lindars attacks this not merely as unnecessary
in the light of his proposed Aramaic substratum but as in itself

improbable, so it must now be restated and defended.11 The
translators had very little choke. Any given translator must have
been bilingual and on general grounds he is very likely to have done
more than one passage. It is therefore certain that he was aware that
the definite state might be used in this idiom, and probable that he
had to translate examples with MKtt(N) Ί2, so in some cases the articles
result merely from a literal rendering. At least some translators will
however have been faced with examples of the idiom using v:(x) i s
in the absolute state, and here any translator naturally used the
articles, as he knew he did in other examples, to make clear that a
particular person was referred to. The reference to Jesus will have
been important to him as a Christian, and unlike people who are not
bilingual or well-informed about Aramaic idiom he will still have
been able to read his native idiom in the translation which he
produced, because the Greek article, like the emphatic state in
Aramaic, could be used genetically. The second article in ò υΙός τοϋ
άνθρωπου is an example of this, and the translator will have treated
thefirstin the same way. He could not have done better. Further, it
is in fact probable on general grounds that the number of sources of
translated sayings was limited, and we know that the evangelists
edited them. If, for example, Luke were faced with a source which
read φιλήματι υΐον άνθρωπου παραδίδως (cf. Lk. 22.48), it is likely
that he would edit it to conform with the title he used so often, just as
he edited μετά τρεις ημέρας and removed fxißßi. Sayings which
originated in Greek necessarily use the same title that Greek-
speaking Christians found in the tradition. Thus the consistency of
our Gospels is the result of a process in several stages: thefirststage,
the translation of our idiom, would normally produce ò υιός τοϋ
άνθρωπου, and the subsequent stages would go for consistency on
the same model
Lindars's first objection is that 'it is doubtful if ho huios tou
anthropou would be recognized as generic in Greek, so that all the
gospel sayings do in fact treat it as an exclusive circumlocution for
the first person'. This is misleading because it proceeds from our
finished Gospels rather thanfromthe situation faced by the translators.
Nothing a translator could do would enable him to produce a version
which accurately and literally represented the text without being
liable to some degree of misinterpretation, because natural Greek did
not have the expression (ο) υΐος τοϋ άνθρωπου still less this
idiomatic use of i t Many Gospel sayings are irrelevant because they

are not derived from this idiom, while those which are could be seen
as an example of this idiom by the bilingual people who our
translators must have been. Whether our evangelists knew this
cannot be deduced from our Gospels. The feet that ό υΙός τοϋ
άνθρωπου appears to be a title in passages such as Mk 13.26; 14.62
simply does not tell us whether Mark translated passages such as
2.10, 28; 14.21 himself or knew from a bilingual translator what the
force of the original idiom was. If he did, there was not much he
could do about it, and no convinced Christian would feel over
whelmingly motivated to remove the possible impression that Jesus
actually said he was the most important man on earth. The impression
that Jesus meant the saying to refer to himself was correct, and
correctly transmitted, and the impression that the saying was also
generic was perceptible to the translator and the well-informed. We
should not then analyse the problem as if the Gospels were wholly
original creations rather than partly translated texts.
Lindars's second objection is that tttttK in may have stood in the
underlying text in cases where it has been otherwise rendered, with
the result that we cannot detect any individual example of free
translation. This true feet should not be considered an objection to
my hypothesis. There do not appear to be any genuinely relevant
cases in the Gospel of the generic use of ò άνθρωπος. At Mk 2.27,
Lindars's conjecture should be rejected because it arbitrarily makes
the translator of Mk 2.27-28 unaccountably capricious.12 At Mt.
12.43 // Lk. 11.24 τοϋ άνθρωπου might represent MM« Ί3 or WJK,
and in either case it renders the sense of the underlying Aramaic with
such accuracy that the translator had good reason to be satisfied with
his version. How often NiMH -Q was so rendered we do not know.
Aramaic usage suggests that there should have been examples, but
the actual number is unknown, and in Gospels which are habitually
written in better Greek than the LXX^ it is reasonable that KBUK *ο
should be rendered literally only when a translation problem was
perceived (as with the plural, perceived in the collective but difficult
KffJK Ί3 and rendered τοις υΐοίς των ανθρώπων at Mk 3.28, but
translated άνθρωποι anywhere that it may have occurred). An
alternative translation of the generic (H)VIH *D with έγώ can be
verified only at M t 10.32-33, and this shows no more than that the
considerations advanced for predicting the translation ò υΐος τοϋ
άνθρωπου carry very strong probability rather than absolute certainty
for every individual case. Lindars makes the further point that the
translators may have been guided by the LXX and thus provided an
interpretative translation which makes deliberate reference to Dan.
7.13. Like more traditional scholarship, this suggestion fails to take
seriously the mundane nature of the bare expression V:H *n. This
expression and its literal rendering υιός άνθρωπου were not specific
enough for this reference to be carried merely by the article.
Translators and members of an audience who knew their LXX would
require contextual indicators to direct their attention to Dan. 7.13,
and this requirement is satisfied by,forexample, Mk 14.62 but not by
Mt. 11.19 // Lk. 7.34. In his reply to Bauckham, Lindars goes even
further, arguing that ó υΙός τοϋ άνθρωπου as a rendering of the
absolute ϋϊΝ *û 'is inconceivable, as bar enash is always translated
huios anthropou in the few places where we have both Aramaic and
Greek version'. There are infeetonly two examples, Dan. 7.13 LXX
and Theod. The Hebrew ùlH ρ more obviously lacks an article, but
even so the plural Di« *» may be rendered with oi uioi των
ανθρώπων (eg. Pss 11.4; 12.2, 9) or oi άνθρωποι (Isa 52.14;
Prov. 15.11), and even anarthrous ΏΊΗ may be rendered oi άνθρωποι
(Hab. 1.14; Ps. 17.4). Lindars's argument is thus too crude. The
translators of Gospel sayings had in this case to render an idiom, not
just a wordfor'man', and in rendering examples with the indefinite
v: *o with ό υΐος τοϋ άνθρωπου they went no further awayfromthe
most literal rendering possible than translators of on« oa (and even
ΟΊΚ) sometimes did in contexts where the expression was equally
generic, as that term is usually understood. This was necessary to
make clear the reference to Jesus, a contextual factor absentfromall
LXX examples but consistently present in NT examples and forming
the reasonforthe largely consistent behaviour of Gospel translators.
Lindars's criticisms should therefore be rejected. The articles in ó
υΐος τοϋ άνθρωπου arose so naturally from the translation process
that independent translators are likely to have reached the same
solution to the problem of rendering an idiom which did not have an
exact equivalent in Greek. The generic use of the Greek article
means that bilinguals will have been able to perceive the Aramaic
idiom in Greek, and the development of NT Christology provides the
cultural context in which the production of a perceived title by the
translation process will not have been unwelcome among Greek-
speaking Christians.
We must now turn to Aramaic aspects of Bauckham's proposal,
that 'Jesus used bar enash (probably, rather than bar enasha) in the
indefinite sense ('a man', 'someone'), which is itself a very common
usage, but used it as a form of deliberately oblique or ambiguous self-
reference'. Bauckham believes that this proposal 'cannot appeal to
parallels in later Jewish Aramaic'.13 This might atfirstsight appear
to be a simple weakness, but it is complicated because several
Aramaic examples of this idiom can to some extent be described as
Bauckham describes sayings of Jesus. Some examples use 2tt *o in
the indefinite sense, they are deliberately oblique, but they are not
ambiguous. We must recall again R. Simeon ben Yohai at Gen. R.
79.6: Ά bird is not caught without the will of heaven: how much less
the soul of a son of man (vi Ίηη vtiï)\ This is clearly indefinite, so
there is no difficulty in finding an example of the grammatically
indefinite use of m 12 referring to the speaker. Secondly, we have
noted R. Ze'ira's saying at/. Ber. 2.8.5c, 'a son of man cannot eat a
pound of meat until they have given him a lash'. Here again, at the
opposite end of the spectrum of generalization found in this idiom,
m Ί2 is quite indefinite but it easily and naturally refers to a definite,
though unidentified person, namely R. Ze'ira, and it does so much
more easily than 'someone' in English. It should be clear that all
examples of this idiom which use the indefinite state also necessarily
use it in an indefinite sense ('a man', 'someone'). However, in no case
does this idiom refer to one person only. Further, all the Aramaic
examples are oblique but they are mostly not ambiguous. There is
one example of deliberate ambiguity, and it is instructive. At 7. Ber.
2.8.5c R. Kahana, to ask R. Johanan whether he should return from
Israel to Babylon, asked him the quite obscure question:
:ÌT*? ^n* jrf? n+> icipiD vram nwptti rr+> mono rram m "\2
4
— A son of man whose mother despises him, and a wife of his father
honours him, where shall he go?' This really is a deceptive statement,
and the ambiguity is produced by the allegorical concealment of
Israel by 'mother', and of Babylon by 'a wife of his father', rather
than by the use of'son of man'. The result is quite differentfromthe
result of any son of man statement spoken in the Gospels. R. Johanan
answered the question at the level of a purely general statement, and
when R. Kahana acted by applying this to himself and going to
Babylon, Johanan made it clear that he did not understand why he
had gone. Johanan's disciples then explained the self-reference to
him. This is the necessary result of the kind of ambiguous sentence
that this idiom can be used to produce, and it is not a reaction found
in the Gospels. It is the only ambiguous example so far known in our
Aramaic sources and we shall see that the Gospel evidence also does
not imply ambiguity in the usage of Jesus, which therefore does
correspond to normal Aramaic usage.
4. Sayings of Jesus
Gospel sayings which use the term ò υιός τοϋ άνθρωπου, but do not
correspond to any Aramaic idiom, cannot be authentic Son of man
sayings spoken by the historical Jesus. In theory, this does not mean
that only examples of this particular idiom may be authentic, but in
practice there are very few examples of Son ofman sayings which use
this term in a satisfactory way but are not examples of this idiom, and
most of these can be shown to be inauthentic on other grounds.14 As
examples of sayings which must be considered inauthentic because
their use of 'son of man' does not correspond to any use of the
Aramaic m ID, we may cite Lk. 17.22, Mt 24.27 // Lk. 17.24, Mt
24.37 // Lk. 17.26, Mt. 24.39, Lk. 17.30. This group of sayings have
an excellent Sitz im Leben in the early church. There is abundant
evidence from Acts, the Epistles and Revelation that the early
Christians did believe that Jesus would shortly return and that many
of them regarded that belief as of fundamental importance. Further,
this belief slots neatly into the culture of Second Temple Jews, some
of whom hoped to be delivered by a messianicfigureof some kind
The coincidence of these criteria is Significant because they are quite
independent of each other, and that makes them a very strong
combination. Finally, it is to be noted that it is a helpful consequence
of my understanding of this idiom that it can be used to distinguish
authentic from inauthentic sayings in this way, as Vermes's under
standing of it cannot
We may now proceed to authentic sayings of Jesus which do use
this idiom. A foil discussion would require a further monograph: I
propose therefore to do no more than illustrate the different levels of
generality which are to be found in examples of this idiom in the
sayings of Jesus, to deal with the passimi predictions and to try to
clarify those aspects of this hypothesis which have caused the most
misunderstanding. We may begin with Mt 12.32 // Lk. 12.10 (c£ Mk
3.28-29), which illustrates the most general level of meaning. The
following reconstruction may be suggested:
rb planen twìtK na4?rf?DΊΟΚ* η *?ai

.rb planer»tf?w n p n «rm1? rhu note η *?ai
'Everyone who speaks a word against a son of man, it shall be
forgiven him, and everyone who speaks a word against the spirit of
holiness, it shall not be forgiven him.' The first part of this saying
declares forgiveness for everyone who speaks against another person:
this general statement is intended to refer particularly to Jesus
himself and to concede that opposition to him personally is forgivable.
This then sets up the second halÇ in which opposition to his divinely
inspired ministry by scribes and Pharisees from Jerusalem, who
spoke against the Holy Spirit by suggesting for example that he cast
out demons by Beelzebub, is said to be an unforgivable sin. The
general statement, used because of the humiliating situation in which
Jesus found himself of being opposed by such important Jews and
because of the implication that it was all right to speak against him,
has the broadest possible general level of meaning. In accordance
with Jesus' preaching of forgiveness to the repentant sinner, it is
being assumed that all men at all times and in all circumstances who
speak against their fellow men will beforgiven(that they repent is a
cultural assumption which need not be expounded in the saying
itself).15
Somewhat less general is Mt 8.20 // Lk. 9.58, discussed in detail in
a previous article in this journal16 The following reconstruction was
suggested:
pjattD *CDP nßtfyi p i n jiro W K tftvrb
.na πκη iiDon JK rò TPK tò mt* na1?!
'The jackals have holes and the birds of the air have roosts, and a son
of man has nowhere to lay his head.' It was shown that we can
perceive a very general level of meaning in this saying, at which the
divine provision of resting-places for jackals and birds is contrasted
with the lack of such provision for men, who have to build houses to
have anywhere to stay. However, I also noted that this perception
was not inevitable, not least because all men are not usually on the
move, and consequently the lack of divine provision of resting-places
for them is not usually relevant to their needs. This was not however
relevant to the function of the saying in its original context, just as
the feet that most people do not have disciples is not relevant to the
effectiveness of R. Hiyya bar Adda's saying at/ Ber. 2.8.5b. Since the
saying was spoken in a context in which the point was that neither
Jesus nor his disciples could expect reasonable accommodation

during a migratory ministry, the contrast with jackals and birds will
have operated at the level of their social sub-group, and the most
general level of meaning need not have occurred to most, or even
any, of his audience.
A more serious restriction of the social group to which the general
level of meaning refers is found at Mk 2.28. This saying is closely
related to Mk 2.27, which is important partly because it guarantees
the general level of meaning in 2.28. The two verses may be
reconstructed as follows:
,«na» 'ma HVÏH to) mawiH twin *?na «naff ,ρπ1? IQH\
,NT\2V2 η« tWìt* Ί2 ΗΪΠ HÌ Û^ff
'And he said to them, "The Sabbath was madeforman, and not man
for the Sabbath. So, you see, a son of man is master of the Sabbath
too."'17 This was the main defence of disciples who had been going
along (nap, misread nap and rendered literally ποιείν) a path and
plucking grain on the Sabbath, an action to be expected of poor and
hungry people taking Peah. The first point made is the divine
purpose in creating the Sabbath for the benefit of man. From this is
deduced man's lordship over the Sabbath, a deduction which must be
seen in the context of man's lordship over creation as a whole (cf.
Gen. 1.26,28; Ps. 8.6; 2 Bar. 14.18; 4 Ezr. 6.54). Itfollowsthat Jesus
has the authority to ward off unwanted Pharisaic halakhah which
would have prevented poor and hungry peoplefromtaking Peah to
feed themselves on the Sabbath, so the general statement does apply
to the speaker. It also applies to the disciples, who were entitled to
take advantage of the Law's provisions for the poor on the day which
God had made for them to rest on and be joyful on. The saying's
general level of meaning might appear to apply to everyone, and in a
sense it does, for creation was for the benefit of all people. However,
lordship over the creation is dependent on obedience to God: by and
large, it was Jews who obeyed the Law and Jews who observed the
Sabbath. In practice, therefore, only pious and faithful Jews are
masters over the Sabbath. This was not however relevant to the
effectiveness of the idiom because it was not relevant to the situational
context, for Jesus and the people criticized pass Jesus' standards for
being masters of the Sabbath, and there were no Gentiles present,
nor any Jews who wanted deliberately to disobey the divine command
ment
We move near to the limits of the use of the idiom at Lk. 22.48,
though even this is more effective than the saying of R. Ze'ira (/. Ber.
2.8.5c). The following reconstruction may be suggested: ish pro ¿mir
nriDom mt*. This might be rendered literally: 'Judah, kissing a son of
man and you betray him!' Mark records the historicalfeetof the kiss
(Mk 14.45): it is not probable that Luke's saying is secondary when it
conforms both to historicalfeetand to an Aramaic idiom unknown in
the native Greek of this Gentile author. It also provides one of the
two genuine sayingsfromwhich Ίθ&/παραδίδωμι entered passion
predictionsfromwhich it was originally absent. The use offcttK*ia is
indefinite, as we have seen it to be in some Aramaic examples of the
idiom, but this does not mean that it is not generalized or that it is in
any way ambiguous. like R. Ze'ira, Jesus generalizedfromhis own
experience in this saying, but unlike him he got the custom right The
feeling that one should not betray one's friends and colleagues is
virtually universal and it is this that the general level of meaning
relies oa The point ofusing κοκ na rather than ^ or rmtrh is to speak
indirectly in a very fraught situation, and this is achieved by the
generalized level of meaning. For the saying to function properly,
there do not have to be lots of people betrayed by Judas with a kiss: it
is enough that the thought of kissing any person and thereby
betraying them should be generally repugnant
With the limits of the idiom set out in the sayings of Jesus in
approximately the same way as in our Aramaic sources, we can now
reconsider Mt. 11.19 // Lk. 7.34, where Lindars's exegesis has been
seriously misrepresented and vigorously criticized, though in my
view it is on therightlines.18 The most important part of the passage
for present purposes may be reconstructed as follows:
,ροκι raw tft\ *?a« tò pnr» ηηκ
,pDHi nnen ·»« mt* na nnn .rf? WH taw
.pDrfn prart nan jtaoi *Λιτ ran κη
'John came not eating or drinking, and they say, "He has a demon."
A son of man comes eating and drinking and they say, "Look! A
glutton and a drunkard, an associate of tax-collectors and sinners."'
The context makes it quite clear that at one level Jesus classified
himself and John the Baptist together as prophets sentfromGod (c£
Mk 1.9-11; 9.11-13; 11.27-33; Mt 11.7-10 // Lk. 7.24-27): he then
criticized his contemporaries for rejecting the message of both of
them, as we know that the conservative wing of Judaism and the

authorities did. The image of children who will not join in dancing or
wailing is drawn out by reference to the baptist's known asceticism
and Jesus' more normal social habits, so that at this level the two
propheticfiguresare contrasted with each other. The sentence about
John the Baptist is quite straightforward: mentioning him by name
makes for clarity and there was no reason to do otherwise. Jesus then
avoided both a direct claim to prophetic authority and the direct
humiliation of saying how he had been criticized by using the
generalizing expression mn 12. For its plausibility, this saying
depends on there being people (not non-ascetic evangelists) who also
ate and drank among tax-collectors and 'sinners', but that is so
obvious that we could deduce itfromthe general level of the saying
against the background of Jesus' ministry as a whole (cf eg. Mk 2.15-
17). Further, it depends on the condemnation of such people by
conservative Jews being a perceptibly normal event This again
should not be in doubt, because there wasfromOT times a tradition
of condemnation of being a glutton and a drunkard (cf Deut 21.20;
Prov. 23.20, 21; T. Jud. 14; Philo, De Spec Leg. 4.97-104; De Ebr.
206-24; Jos. Contra Ap. 2.195). This gives us a cultural background
against which Jesus' generalizationfromhis own experience of being
criticized by conservative Jews will have made excellent sense among
a social sub-group of people accustomed to similar criticismfromthe
same quarters.
5. The Passion Predictions

The passion predictions have caused difficulties for many different
views of Jesus' use of the term 'son of man'. Lindars arguesforbrief
original sayings behind Mk 10.45; 14.21a, and from Mk 8.31; 9.31;
10.33; 14.21b; 14.44 he reconstructs one partial prediction - . . .
twin na ΊΟΟΠΝ—which he translates, Ά man may be delivered
19
up... ' This prediction is however too incomplete to be useful; the
modal 'ma/ is a feature of his translation, not of the Aramaic: and
the argument in its favour depends too much on the use of other NT
texts which do not contain the term 'son of man', and which, if given
real force, would rather show that the predictions had their Sitz im
Leben in the early church, a radical view which cannot explain the
presence of the term 'son of man' in them. We may begin with Mk.
14.21, a prediction which should be regarded as wholly genuine:
whv avia na *?m mn na

nrv2 nooriD v:t< nan «in wwtf? η«
1
.Hin m a j τ * κ ? ?η η*? aß
Ά son of man goes as it is written of him. Woe to that man by whose
hand a son of man is betrayed! It would have been good for that man
if he had not been born!' In thefirstson of man saying here, ΉΝ is a
euphemism for death. At its most general level, therefore, the saying
involves scriptural justification for the mere feet of death. At this
level, there are many OT passages that could be in mind—among the
more obvious are Gen. 2.17; 3.19; Isa. 40.6-8; Eccl. 12.5-7. This level
20
of meaning should not be dismissed as banal Its function is to
make the saying obviously true, and when the saying is obviously
true it becomes difficult to disagree with its application to the
speaker. This does not however exhaust the obviousness of the
general level of meaning. It also makes perfect sense as a reference to
the differing fetes of the righteous and the wicked written in
Scripture. Again, many passages could be called upon. For example,
after the Last Supper, Jesus and the disciples sang, 'Glorious in the
eyes of the Lord is the death of his pious ones' (Ps. 116.15), and it is at
this level that he might have had in mind part of Isa. 52-53.21
Equally, the fete of the wicked might be found eg. at Isa. 66.24, or
Dan. 12.2. This further refinement ensures that the saying is
obviously true, and it is in no way inconsistent with Jesus seeing his
own death especially referred to in general passages of Scripture or
very precisely foretold in others. For example, he might have seen
God's support and vindication of him in this understanding of the
Hebrew text of Ps. 118.14-17: 'The Lord is my strength and song,
and he is for me, for Jesus... The right hand of the Lord raises
up... I shall not die because I shall Uve.' That could readily be
applied directly to the speaker of Mk 14.21a when it was sung after
the Last Supper. These different ways of understanding Mk 14.21a
mean in practice that the general level of meaning and the application
to the speaker will both have been obvious when he said it It was a
natural moment to use this idiom because he was in the humiliating
situation of being about to be betrayed by one of the inner circle of
twelve disciples, and he believed that he held the exalted function of
being the final harbinger of the kingdom of God which God would be
enabled by his atoning death to bring.
The second line of Mk 14.21 is another son of man saying with a
good general level of meaning, true of a sort of social sub-group,
namely traitors. At a general level it condemns traitors, and declares

that they will have a very unpleasantfete.The idiom was functional
because this sentiment is virtually universal The obviousness of the
general level of meaning will have combined with the disciples' belief
that anyone who betrayed Jesus was indeed exceptionally wicked to
ensure that the saying was remembered in its originalform.We now
certainly have a genuine prediction containing nonna mt* na, and if
the above reconstruction is correct in all details, we also have a line in
which the collective understanding of nra... *fl?3tt could lead to the
translation εις χείρας ανθρώπων (Mk 9.31) and the interpretative
rendering εις χείρας των αμαρτωλών (Mk 14.41).
Before discussing other son of man predictions, we must note that
there are several other predictions ofJesus' death in the Gospels: cf
Lk. 12.50; 13.32; 13.33; Mk 10.38; 14.36. All of these have in common
that they predict his death indirectly, but all will have been clear in
their original contexts, as most of them are now.22 One of them, Mk
10.38, comes in a context in which Jesus' future glory has already
been made clear and it was necessary to point out to those who
wanted too high a status in it that the way to it involved immediate
suffering. Jesus himself intended to lead the way, but the context of
this discussion as well as his own humiliation led him to use our
idiom in a saying where the general level of meaning was of more
direct relevance than in most of his sayings. Mk 10.45 may be
reconstructed as follows:
rwurwrb κηκ tò twm na ηκι
rtvw *pr\ «mea iroj jnjD*?i nvmtñ ton
—'And so a son of man does not come to be served but to serve and to
give himself as a ransom for many'. At the general level of meaning,
this saying was not intended to be true of all men at all times and in
all circumstances, but, as we have seen in several instances, this does
not affect the operation of idioms of this kind To appreciate the
general level of meaning, we must view the saying in its context.
Jesus had been asked by Jacob and John, two of his inner circle of
twelve, that they should sit on his right and left in his glory. He
replied with indirectly expressed but contextually clear reference to
hisforthcomingdeath. He obtainedfromthem an undertaking that
they would share his fate, and he told them, again indirectly but
surely with perfect clarity, that they would share his death but that
so exalted a position in the kingdom was not his to give. When the
other members of the inner circle were annoyed with Jacob and John,
Jesus gave very straightforward teaching on the needforservice. Mk
10.45 summarizes both these aspects of teaching, and puts forward
Jesus himself as an example. The requirement of servicefollowsvery
straightforwardly from the teaching to all twelve: the need for people
to give their Uves for others is directly appropriate to the social sub
group of the inner circle of the disciples, two of whom had just
accepted his challenge to die with him. We mayfindthe general level
of meaning a bit much, but it is perfectly good Aramaic and has a
perfectly good Sitz im Leben in Jesus' teaching of the twelve. In this
instance therefore, we have two reasons for Jesus' use of this idiom:
he needed to give the general teaching about service to the point of
death, as well as to speak indirectly of his ownfete.We may compare
Sefire 3.16, where the king of Krt needed to lay down the serious
effects of action by subsequent kings of Arpad against his descendants,
as well as to speak indirectly of the possibility that he might himself
die as a result of such action against him.
Thus the Gospels contain several predictions of Jesus' death, and
four genuine Son of man sayings which deal with aspects of it (Mk
10.45; 14.21 bis; Lk. 22.48). With these in mind, we can deal with Mk
8.31. This cannot be authentic in its presentformbecause it cannot
be reconstructed in feasible Aramaic in such a way that it has a
general level of meaning. On the other hand, Jesus' rebuke of Peter
has no satisfactory Sitz im Leben in the early church, but it makes
excellent sense as it stands. Peter's attempt to dissuade Jesus from
martyrdom is as natural as it is clear, and couldfollowonlyfroma
prediction of his death. In Mark as it stands, the impression is given
that the prediction was immediately comprehensible. The problem
for us is therefore to see whether we can reconstructfromMk 8.31 a
genuine prediction which conforms to Aramaic idiom and has a
satisfactory Sitz im Leben in the teaching ofJesus. I have suggested
something on the following lines:
:Dip" j w nrtn nnai mt* na DID*
Ά son of man will die, and after three days he willrise.'A previous
version of this suggestion has been severely criticized: I propose to
defend it 2 3
First, this reconstruction makes an excellent general statement It
is certainly and obviously true that all people die, and the general
resurrection of the dead was a belief sufficiently widely held by some
Jews, including Jesus and his disciples, for the reference to it to

function equally effectively in a general statement The reference to
resurrection is essential for a combination of emotional, linguistic
and theological reasons. From Jesus' point of view, hisfirstattempt
to explain to his disciples that he would have to die was not only
difficult enough to require an indirect idiom, but also made less
difficult to contemplate by the immediate mention of divine
vindication. From a linguistic point of view, the removal of reference
to the resurrection makes the proposed original saying too short, and
thefeetthat the most important of the secondary additions conforms
to the original idiom would be extraordinarily coincidental From the
theological point of view, Jesus' death would be meaningful if and
only if it was part of God's purpose, and this is affirmed with clarity
(though again indirectly) by reference to the resurrection by which
Jesus would be vindicated. The interpretation of j w nn*?n nna may
be deduced from evidence of midrashic sayings which declare that
Israel, or therighteous,will not be left in distress for more than three
days, a view buttressed with several passages of scripture (including
Jonah 2.1; Hos. 6.2).24 One such occasion is the last days, when
deliverance will be by means of the resurrection. If'three days' be
taken in a metaphorical sense like this, the general resurrection could
be expected 'after three days'. We have three other sayings of Jesus in
which the three-day interval is used in a similar metaphorical sense:
two of these (Lk. 13.32,33) should certainly be regarded as genuine,
and the third (Mk 14.58; c£ Mt 26.60-60; Mk 15.29 // Mt 27.40)
probably reflects a genuine saying which used the three-day interval
with reference to eschatological events. We must conclude that the
proposed reconstruction would be understood to mean that the
resurrection, in which Jesus would be vindicated, would take place
after a short interval Further, these words do not have a satisfactory
Sitz im Leben in the early church. They must belong to the Aramaic
layer of the tradition, because μετά τρεις ημέρας appears to contradict
the stories of the resurrection of Jesus. The Aramaic-speaking church
will not have been motivated to develop an existing reference to the
general resurrection of the dead, but the addition of a phrase
referring to Jesus alone would be difficult in Aramaic because of the
generalizing effect of BUK na. If it were done, taking Vît* na as a
reference to an undefined single individual to give us a possible
sentence whose potential obscurity would be removed by the context-
ual knowledge of the social sub-group producing it, then in Aramaic
as in Greek someone adding in freely a precise reference to the

resurrection of Jesus would have done so precisely, not using a phrase
which could be naturally translated μετά τρεις ημέρας.
The most common criticism of this suggested original has been
that it is banal, but the whole saying is not in the least banal because
resurrectionfromthe dead is a powerful symbol of divine vindication.
To make the saying banal it has to be chopped in halÇ an inadequate
critical mode far too common in NT scholarship. That the opening of
the saying is obvious is an advantage of it, because it makes it so
difficult to disagree with. Lindars's criticisms are more specific He
first objects to the anarthrous KttN na. We have seen that this is in
accord with our Aramaic sources, not least íttH na niD* at Sefire 3.16,
though it is certainly true that Jesus may have said twin na. Lindars
then argues that a general statement of this kind is 'extremely
improbable, because it has left no trace on the rest of the New
Testament The idea is never applied to anyone except Jesus himself'
This true fact should not be held against my reconstruction. The
general statement in this instance was functional rather than
substantive, and the early church had good reason to remember
Jesus' predictions of his own death and resurrection, but very little
reason to recall in purely generalized form the precise metaphors he
used for this purpose. None of the other predictions of his death
survived elsewhere either, even though the assumptions on which
they were based did survive (cf Lk. 13.33 with 1 Thess. 2.15: at this
level 1 Cor. 15.51-52 supplies the resurrection of all men used at Mk
8.31 and precludes their death only because of the expectation of the
parousia). More generally, few of Jesus' sayings have left traces
elsewhere in the NT, and this one was not likely to survive in its
originalformin the Gospels precisely because it was developed into a
prediction of the death and resurrection ofJesus alone. Lindars goes
on to argue that 'the reconstructed saying does not make a convincing
statement on the part of Jesus. It remains afloatingitem, with no
known context For, of course, if the saying is a general statement it
loses the ironical reference to the situation of Jesus himself' The
saying has however a very firm context as the cause of the incident
related in Mk 8.32-33, and from this context it should not be
removed. We have seen that the Aramaic evidence shows that
general statements are as a matter of fact used with reference to the
speaker, and the situation at Mk 8.31 is so extreme, with the speaker
predicting his own death, that the need for an indirect mode of
speech is exceptionally great Lindars further objects to the use of

niD< on the ground that άποθνήσκειν does not occur in any of the
passion predictions. This objection is too rigid. When DID is applied
to someone who will be put to death, a translator may raider it with a
verb meaning 'kill', as in the LXX with both άποκτείνω (e.g. Deut
22.22, 25) and θανατόω (eg. Exod. 21.14; 1 Sam. 14.45). These
examples illustrate not only the same shift of meaning in translation,
but also the use ofDID of someone who is in fact to be killed, the same
usage as is found with reference to deliberate killing at Sefire 3.16,
which illustrates how easy it was in Aramaic to slipfromthe general
level of meaning in the proposed original saying behind Mk 8.31 to
the specific application to Jesus.
These criticisms of the proposed original saying should therefore
be rejected. We cannot of course be certain that it represents the
ipsissima verba ofJesus. It is possible that δει really translated Trw or
a^n, or that πολλά παθεϊν... γραμματέων is an interpretative
expansion of a phrase which we can no longer recover, perhaps
because it might be taken in a sense unwelcome to the early church
(cf Mk 3.28). It is not difficult to make up conceivable sayings, and it
may be useful to illustrate this:
ιϋ\ρ* j w nrtn *ιπκι nion οκοηκη HVÏH ηΛ TU
'It is decreed concerning a son of man that he is rejected and will die
and after three days he will rise.' The general level of meaning refers
to the fall of man (cf Gen. 3.19; 4 Ezr. 3.7; 7.11-16, 78): the
application to Jesus is conceivable as an explanation of the divine
decision to require his death before the kingdom came, and DHDDH is
uncomfortable enough to be one cause of the safe interpretative
expansion now found at Mk 8.31. This is however extremely
conjectural All we can be sure of is that Jesus predicted his death and
resurrection with a saying on the proposed lines, a general statement
including a reference to the general resurrection after three days.
This saying was expanded from the tradition of the events which
took place, possibly with the help of scripture. This process might
reasonably be expectedfromthe way in which the traditions of the
OT prophets were expanded, and more generallyfromthe clarifying
expansionsfrequentin Targum and midrash.
This same process is verifiable in the editing of the central
predictions by Matthew and Luke, and it is to be found at Mk 9.31
and 10.33-34. At Mk 9.31, ó υίος του άνθρωπου παραδίδοται comes
from the genuine nooriD mn na of Mk 1421 (cf also Lk. 22.48), εις
χείρας ανθρώπων is probablyfromthe same source, and most of the
verse is another version of the prediction underlying Mk 8.31. Mk
10.33-34 is a further expansion. For άναβαίνομεν είς Ιεροσόλυμα, c£
Lk 13.33; ò υΐος του άνθρωπου παραδοθήσεται renders nonno VIH na
(Mk 1421; cf Lk. 22.48); τοις άρχιερεϋσιν και τοις γραμματευσιν...
τοις έθνεσιν may be perceived as interpretations of nra... tw:t<
(Mk 14.21); ò υίος τοϋ άνθρωπου... άποκτενοϋσιν και μετά τρεις
ημέρας άναστήσεται is again a version of the prediction behind Mk
8.31. The prediction has also been expanded with many details from
the actual events. Similar comments apply to Mk 14.41, where
παραδίδοται ò υΐος του άνθρωπου isfrom14.21, and εις τάς χείρας
των αμαρτωλών is probably to be understood as an interpretation of
nTa... KKttN in the same verse; and at Mk 9.9 ò υίος του άνθρωπου
έκ νεκρών άναστρ is a developed version of Dip*... BUK na from
8.31. There are further editorial developments at Mt 25.2 and Lk.
24.7, while at Lk. 17.25 the process has gone so fer that we can only
just perceive that the same sayings are being developed. Finally, it is
to be noted that the posited process of midrashic development has an
excellent Sitz im Leben in the early church. When Jesus was
crucified, the possible basic interpretations were that he was con
demned by God or that his death was part of salvation history. The
earliest Christians were those who took the second view, a view
prepared by Jesus' predictions, and to some extent his interpretation,
of his death (cf. Mk 10.45; 14.22-25). They were bound to consider
further the meaning of his death, and Acts and the Epistles show
abundantly that they did so.
At this point we must consider again the view that this group of
passion predictions were ambiguous and had an enigmatic or riddling
character. We have already seen that Aramaic examples of this idiom
may be indefinite, are always oblique but were not inherently
ambiguous. We have noted one deliberately ambiguous example (FL
Kahana at/ Ber. 2.8.5c), which provoked discussion and explanation.
This is the natural result of ambiguity, and it is significant that
Peter's reaction to Mk 8.31 was quite the opposite: he understood it
only too well. The only Son of man saying that is said in the synoptic
Gospels to have been confusing is Mk 9.31, and this is instructive
both for its exceptional nature and for its actual contents. What
happens if we try to reconstruct an original Aramaic?
jnwK *rt noono mt< na

.Dip'» rov nrftn nna nonoi natmDpn
This is not an enigmatic saying in which Jesus avoided claims, but
invited people to think for themselves about the implications of the
undeniable facts of his ministry: it is mundanely incoherent και
άποκτενοϋσιν αυτόν καί άποκτανθείς is comprehensible on linguistic
grounds only as the work of a Greek-speaking editor. We must
remove nono because it is unsatisfactory Aramaic, but the insertion
of καί άποκτανθείς does not have a good Sitz im Leben in the work
of someone who was translating literally an authentic prediction (it
may readily be explained in work of a bilingual person composing
midrashically). The rest of the saying is certainly obscure enough to
be incomprehensible, but not much else can be said for its authenticity
as it stands in its present context It does usefctt«na indefinitely with
reference to an unidentified person, and the result is an obscure
sentence. We then have to suppose that Jesus, having predicted his
death clearly enough for Peter to object, rebuked Peter equally
clearly for opposing his intentions (Mk 8.31-33), but made a second
prediction which is partly similar to thefirstyet so obscure that the
disciples could not understand it (9.31-32). He followed it up with a
third prediction (10.33-34) in which the situational context and
circumstantial details are so clear that only he could be subject—
Jacob and John understood his intentions in the very next pericope
(10.39)—but the use of EON na is nonetheless contrary to normal
Aramaic usage so that people could think for themselves about the
implications of his ministry. This makes 8.31 both enigmatic and
clear, and entails an internally incoherent view of 10.33. The
proposed understanding of 9.31 is perhaps not inconceivable, but it is
most improbable and if it were right, Mk 9.31 would be an
exceptionally unsuccessful use of the idiom, not typical of a group of
son of man sayings. We must conclude that Bauckham's suggestions
for Jesus' unique use ofmx na belong to a theological and exegetical
tradition which is on the wrong trajectory, the posited unique use of
κοκ na does not leave room for faith, it makes incoherent nonsense of
sentences whose origin can be otherwise explained as secondary
developments, partly of authentic predictions. Mk 9.32, like 9.30, is
best regarded as the work of an editor, perhaps the evangelist himself.
Luke continued to develop his comment (Lk. 9.45; 18.34).
We must therefore conclude that the genuine 'son of man' predic
tions of Jesus' death are Mk 10.45,14.21 and a saying which can be at
least partly reconstructed from Mk 8.31. All these sayings were

indirect but clear. Lk. 22.48 is also a genuine saying from the
moment of Jesus' betrayal Mk 9.9, 9.31,10.33-34, and 14.41 are all
midrashic developments of genuine sayings: the developmental process
is characteristic ofJewish culture, and the process and the needforit
have an excellent Sitz im Leben in the early church. The original
sayings belong to a larger group of genuine predictions: the other
ones were also indirectly expressed.
6. Some Overall Aspects of the Son of Man Problem

We must considerfinallysome of the overall features of the kind of
solution to this problem proposed by Lindars, Bauckham and myself
One of the crucial questions is whether the proposed number of
authentic sayings is large enough to explain the genesis of inauthentic
sayings. Lindars's version of the theory is in serious trouble at this
point because, of the nine posited sayings, two (Lk. 11.30 and his
proposed passion prediction behind Mk 8.31 et al.) are not true of
anyone except Jesus himself and cannot therefore be regarded as
satisfactory examples of the idiom: the passion sayings are especially
important at this point because if the proposed original of Mk 8.31,
etc., be unsatisfactory, Lindars's view that it produced a development
of other sayings cannot be accepted either. Seven sayings are surely
too fewforthe authentic core. This article has stated the main reason
why I believe that there are about a dozen straightforwardly authentic
sayings, and a penumbra of midrashic developments of two of the
passion predictions. This means that a large majority of sayings in
our oldest sources (Mark and Q) are either authentic as they stand, or
consist of perceptible developments of authentic sayings. Further,
both the secondary developments of the passion predictions and the
large group of inauthentic sayings have a perfect Sitz im Leben in the
early church, which vigorously interpreted Jesus' death and fervently
hoped for his return. The secondary parousia predictions contain a
whole group which are demonstrably dependent on Dan. 7.13.25
Bauckham, after arguing that the proposals of Lindars and myself
lead to too small a number of authentic sayings, makes his proposal
that "Jesus used bar enash (probably, rather than bar enasha) in the
indefinite sense (*a man', 'someone')... but used it as a form of
deliberately oblique or ambiguous self-reference'. Bauckham includes
here sayings such as Mk 14.62 which refer directly to Dan. 7.13. He
argues that the usage cannot appeal to parallels in later Jewish

Aramaic, and suggests that the degree of ambiguity will have varied,
including cases "where the saying has a somewhat enigmatic or
riddling character (Lk. 11.30; the passion predictions), and cases
where some hearers might easily assume Jesus' reference to be to a
figure other than himself. I have discussed some of the reasons why
this proposal should not be accepted, and all the main points may be
drawn together here. First, it is misleading to claim that there are no
parallels in later Jewish Aramaic. As we have seen, some Aramaic
examples of this idiom can easily be classified as indefinite, and the
self-reference may be perfectly clear when it is oblique. There are
however no examples whore the reference might be to some other
person, and the only ambiguous example is instructive because it
leads to discussion and explanation, a reaction not found in the
synoptic Gospels. Lk. 11.30 passes without interruption, the first
passion prediction of Mk 8.31 provoked an immediate reaction from
Peter which shows that he understood it with perfect clarity, and the
high priest is portrayed as reacting to Mk 14.62 equally without
hesitation. We have seen that the only Son of man saying that is said
to have puzzled the disciples is genuinely puzzling only in soferas it
is a secondary development in the wrong context (the original parts
at Mk 8.31, and 14.21, are not puzzling). Nor should we accept the
suggestion that sayings referring to Dan. 7.13, such as Mk 14.62,
should be accepted as authentic Bauckham comments, 'There seems
no reason why Jesus should not have exploited the coincidence
between his accustomed form of oblique self-reference and the
language of Dan. 7.13, so that bar enash in a saying alluding to Dan.
7.13 becomes the same kind of veiled hint of his own status as other
authentic Son of Man sayings convey'. I have attempted to refute this
view elsewhere: if the arguments put forward are incorrect, they
should be disproved.26
One more overall feature of my proposed solution to the Son of
Man problem must be dealt with. I have noted elsewhere that it is an
advantage of this hypothesis that it explains why these sayings
appear in the synoptic Gospels on the Ups of Jesus himself the
pattern breaks down in subsequent literature, beginning with Jn
12.34. The reason for this is that Jesus is the only person in the
Gospels who talks about himself to any extent This explanation has
been vigorously attacked by Moloney: 'why are the Son of man
sayings found uniquely on the Ups of Jesus? This century-old
question is lamely solved in the following fashion... Scene after

scene in the Gospelsfindspeople talking about themselves and their
concerns: Scribes and Pharisees, people seeking cures, disciples,
Pilate(!), or some of the great charactersfromthe Fourth Gospel: the
Mother of Jesus in the Cana story, Nicodemus, the Samaritan
woman, the man born blind, and so on. Never do they speak of
themselves as "the son of man".'27 This is a most unsatisfactory list
Mary and the Samaritan woman must both be removed because they
were not sons of men, but women: Pilate is not likely to have known
this or any other Aramaic idiom. More fundamentally, my explanation
has been removed from its context, where it was intended to explain
why Son of man sayings are confined to the Ups of Jesus in the
bottom layer of the tradition. Most of Moloney's characters speak in
the Gospel attributed to St John, a Gospel most of whose discourse
material is so fer removed from the Jesus of history that it has no
examples of this idiom in his sayings either. Ifwe look at the synoptic
Gospels, where I have suggested about twelve simply authentic
examples of this idiom and some further developments of these
sayings, it is infeetthe case that other people speak so much less than
Jesus that 12:0 is a perfectly reasonable proportion of occurrences,
weU comparable with something in the region of 50:1 for probably
authentic uses of άνθρωπος. Other people talk little about themselves,
and there are very few occasions when this optional idiom is even
feasible, even fewer where the circumstances are as dramaticaUy
exalted or humiliating as the situation of Jesus. When we come to
secondary developments, we find that the synoptic Gospels met the
church's needs by attributing fundamental teaching to Jesus himself;
a habit culturaUy endemic among Jewish people who pseudonymously
attributed much of their Law, prophecy, wisdom, psalms and
apocalyptic to thefountain-headsof their traditions. The fourth
Gospel was however partly written like a Hellenistic revelatory
discourse. These are frequently carried forward by some not very
bright questions, and the first occurrence of "son of man' on someone
else's Ups in the Gospels isfoundin such a question at Jn 12.34. The
pattern broke down further in apocryphal documents.
The explanation which I proposed must therefore be allowed to
stand. It is fundamental to the solution to the Son of Man problem
which I have proposed that it permits the solution of the classic
problems of Son of Man research in this way.
Conclusions
The following conclusions may therefore be suggested. Our Aramaic
sources give us sufficient evidence of the existence of an idiom in
accordance with which any Aramaic speaker might use the term
(vìpìH "D, in either the definite or indefinite state, in a general
statement in order to say something about himself or sometimes
himself and a group of associates. He would normally do so in order
to avoid sounding exceptionally exalted or feeling exceptionally
humiliated A core of authentic Son of man sayings in the synoptic
Gospels turn out when reconstructed to be examples of this idiom.
They should be accepted as authentic sayings of Jesus, because the
idiom in itselÇ and these sayings in particular, have an exceUent Sitz
im Leben in the ministry of Jesus and most of them have no Sitz im
Leben in the early church or in the creative work of the evangelists.
The genuine statements about Jesus' death, most of them predictions,
were then further developed in the light of the circumstances in
which he died. This process also has an exceUent Sitz im Leben in
the early church. Inauthentic son of man statements were then
developed on the basis of the term, and the return of Jesus, being
found in scripture at Dan. 7.13. Once this process was under way,
further son of man sayings about the parousia of Jesus were
generated without reference to this text Both this process and belief
in the return ofJesus have also a verifiable Sitz im Leben in the early
church.
Unhappily we cannot add that work on this problem is complete.
The following tasks remain. The Aramaic sources must be reworked
to see if further examples of the idiom can be found. The idiom must
then befittedinto the more general background of indirect ways used
by Aramaic speakers to express themselves. These features in their
turn may be illuminated by the much more detailed knowledge
which we have of modern people expressing themselves indirectly in
awkward circumstances. Further, if this theory is right, several other
theories must be wrong, and these must be disproved. The exegesis of
individual examples of the idiom will require further exposition. The
traditional exegesis of authentic sayings as authoritative statements
containing a Christological title is ingrained in our culture and
difficult to shift by means of the discussion of the assumptions of
Second Temple Judaism, the evidence for which is often fragmentary
and difficult to reconstruct. Finally, the generation of inauthentic
sayings, which has already been seen to have an exceUent Sitz im

Leben in the early church, must be seen against the background of a
more general theory which will explain the development of NT
28
Christology.
NOTES
1. G. Vermes, 'The Use of m *)2/tWl Ί2 in Jewish Aramaic*, Appendix

E in M Black, An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts (Oxford OUP,
3
1967), pp. 310-28, reprinted in G. Vermes, Post-Biblical Jewish Studies
(Leiden: Brill, 1975), pp. 147-65; P.M. Casey, 'The Son of Man Problem',
ZNW 67 (1976), pp. 147-54; G. Vermes, 'The Present State of the "Son of
Man" Debate', JJS 29 (1978), pp. 123-34; P.M. Casey, Son of Man: The
Interpretation and Influence of Daniel 7 (London: SPCK, 1980), esp. ch. 9; B.
lindars, 'The New Look on the Son of Man', BJRL 63 (1981), pp. 437-62,
reprinted separately (Manchester The John Rylands Library of Manchester,
1981); B. lindars, Jesus Son of Man (London: SPCK, 1983)—my quotation
isfromp. 24; P.M. Casey, 'The Jackals and the Son of Man (Matt. 8.20 //
Luke 9.58)', JSNT21 (1985), pp. 3-22; R. Bauckham, 'The Son of Man: "A
Man in my Position" or "Someone"?', JSNT 23 (1985), pp. 23-33 (my
quotation isfromp. 29); B. lindars, 'Response to Richard Bauckham: The
Idiomatic Use of Bar Enash', JSNT23 (1985), pp. 35-41; cf also M Müller,
'The Expression "the Son of Man" as Used by Jesus', Stud Theol 38 (1984),
pp. 47-64. This approach has been rejected by F.J. Moloney, 'The End of the
Son of Man?', Downside Review 98 (1980), pp. 280-90; Ai Black, 'Aramaic
Barnasha and the "Son of Man'", ExpT 95 (1983-84), pp. 200-206; cf. P.M
Casey, 'Aramaic Idiom and Son of Man Sayings', ExpT 96 (1984-85),
pp. 233-36. For alternative understandings of the term KttN Ί2, cf R
Kearns, Vorfragen zur ChristoIogie91-ΙΠ (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1978-82);
G. Gerleman, Der Menschensohn (Leiden: Brill, 1983). For different
approaches to the problem, cf V. Hampel, 'Menschensohn und historischer
Jesus' (Diss., Tübingen, 1982); S. Kim, The 'Son of Man' as the Son of God
(WUNT, 30; Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1983); W.O. Walker, 'The Son ofMan:
Some Recent Developments', CBQ 45 (1983), pp. 584-607. More generally,
M Müller, Der Menschensohn in den Evangelien (Leiden: Brill, 1984). A full
discussion of the whole problem cannot be attempted here. I am grateful to
those who have recently discussed it with me, especially Dr AT. Lincoln, Dr
J.B. Muddiman, Dr S.H. Travis and other members of the postgraduate NT
seminar at Nottingham, Professor R Leivestad, Professor W.O. Walker and
above all Professor B. Lindars. None of them is responsibleforany of my
comments.
2. Vermes, op. cit., ψ. 327.
3. For Aramaic literature from the time of Jesus, cf J.A Fitzmyer and
D.J. Harrington, A Manual of Palestinian Aramaic Texts (BibOr, 34; Rome:

Biblical Institute Press, 1978); K. Beyer, Die aramäischen Texte vom Toten
Meer (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1984). For the classification of
Aramaic into phases, J.A. Fitzmyer, "The Phases of the Aramaic Language',
in J.A Fitzmyer, A Wandering Aramean (SBLMS, 25; Missoula: Scholars,
1979), pp. 57-84. For the use of such classification to date this idiom later
than the time of Jesus, see J.A. Fitzmyer, 'Methodology in the Study of the
Aramaic Substratum ofJesus' Sayings in the New Testament', inj. Dupont
(ed), Jéus aux origines de la christologie (BEThL, 40; Gembloux: Duculot,
1975), pp. 73-102, rev. edn in Fitzmyer, A Wandering Aramean, pp. 143-60;
J.A Fitzmyer, 'Another View of the "Son of Man" Debate', JSNT 4 (1979),
pp. 58-68; cf Vermes, JJS 29 (1978), pp. 123-34; Casey, Son of Man, p. 227;
and for a careful statement of appropriate method, G. Vermes, JTS 31
(1980), pp. 580-82 (reviewing Fitzmyer and Harrington, op. cit.). It is to be
noted that Fitzmyer's original criticism was a reaction to Vermes's interpreta-
tion of the idiomatic use of EO *D as a simple substituteforT, a very large
change from otherwise known usage of this term, and an interpretation
which excludes Sefire 3.16fromserious consideration as an example. If all
examples are seen as general statements, and Sefire 3.16 is taken into
account, the shift is very small, and one of the examples is early: this makes a
considerable difference to the consideration of this point Cf J.A Fitzmyer,
CBQ 43 (1981), p. 477, Ί personally think that Jesus did use bar 'enas of
himselÇ in a generic indefinite sense... '.
4. Casey, JSNT 23 (1985), pp. 10-12, referring to H. Sacks, 'Everyone
has to lie', in Sociocultural dimensions of language use, éd. M. Sanches and
B.G. Blount (New York Academic Press, 1975), pp. 57-59; K. Wales,
'"Personal" and "Indefinite" Reference: The uses of the Pronoun ONE in
Present-day English', Nottingham linguistic circular 9 (1980), pp. 93-117; K.
Wales, 'Exophora re-examined; the uses of the personal pronoun WE in
present-day English', UEA Papers in Linguistics 12 (1980), pp. 12-44.
5. For further discussion of this issue, see Casey, JSNT 23 (1985), p. 7
and na 14-15.
6. Lindars, JSNT 23 (1985), pp. 35-36, expressly bases his definition of
the generic article on Gesenms' Hebrew Grammar, ed. E. Kautzsch, rev. AE.
Cowley (Oxford: OUP; 2nd edn, 1909), pp. 407-408, paras. 126q fi, but his
use of this description goes beyond what can be safely inferred from this
source orfromthe evidence cited. The use of the Hebrew article in passages
like Amos 5.19 shows that Hebrew differs from English in its use of the
article, so that we may not draw upformulationswhich assume an English
(or German) meaning for the article, and then go on to use that formulation
to refer to further examples which might also be classified under the same
head. The article at Amos 5.19 barely denotes a particular lion. To put it
another way, the level of specification is quite low: all we know about this
9
CASEY 'Son of Man —General, Generic and Indefinite 55
lion is that it is one. The level is much higher in Aramaic examples of this
idiom, as Lindars interprets them, referring not just to a single example of
the class 'man', but for instance to 'a class of those who have disciples' (op.
cit., p. 37, on the saying of Κ Hiyya bar Adda at/ Ber. 2.8.5b), and the single
member of the class is extremely well known, being the speaker himself The
group gets narrower as Lindars moves to the sayings of Jesus, some of which
are true of him alone. This results partly from the overliteral use of a
definition which should never have been drawn up.
7. Lindars, Jesus Son of Man, p. 196.
8. Lindars, JSNT 23 (1985), pp. 37-38; cf Jesus Son of Man, pp. 22-23.
9. Lindars, Jesus Son of Man, p. 21; JSNT 23 (1985), p. 37.
10. M Hengel, ZTK 72 (1985), pp. 202-203; ET: M. Hengd, Between
Jesus and Paul (London: SPCK, 1983), pp. 27-28; followed by Lindars, Jesus
Son of Man, p. 24; C.F.D. Moule, Neues Testament und Kirche (for Rudolf
Schnackenburg), ed J. Gnilka (Freiburg: Herder, 1974), pp. 413-28. Cf
Casey, Son of Man, pp. 205-206; Lindars, Jesus Son of Man, pp. 24-25.
11. Casey, ZNW67 (1976), pp. 149-50; Son of Man, pp. 230-31; JSNT 23
(1985), pp. 14-15; lindars, Jesus Son of Man, pp. 25-26; JSNT 23 (1985),
p. 40.
12. Lindars, Jesus Son of Man, pp. 102-106, treats Mk 2.28 as a Markan
addition, but this is equally arbitrary and, like his treatment of Lk. 22.38, it
involves the supposition that secondary examples of this Aramaic idiom
were produced by Greek evangelists who did not know it I hope to publish
in the near future a full study of Mk 2.23-28, arguing that it is a literal
translation of an Aramaic source written by a Jew from Israel and giving a
perfectly accurate but abbreviated account of an incident which really took
place.
13. Bauckham, op. cit., pp. 28 and 30.
14. E.g. Mk 14.62. Cf Casey, Son of Man, pp. 178-84, 201-19.
15. For more detailed exegesis of this saying, cf lindars, Jesus Son of
Man, pp. 34-38,178-81. It will be evident that I have not accepted some of
the main contentions of E.P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (London: SCM,
1985), but a full answer to his work requires a fresh analysis of Second
Temple Judaism, and this cannot be attempted here.
16. Casey, JSNT 23 (1985), pp. 3-22.
17. Full justification of this reconstruction must be attempted elsewhere
(cf n. 12). It may be noted here that the Aramaic behind ώστε is quite
uncertain, and fc^ff rather than N1D is merely very probable.
18. Lindars, Jesus Son of Man, pp. 31-34,174-76, misrepresented both by
Bauckham, op. cit., pp. 25-26, and by Black, op. cit.
19. Jesus Son of Man, pp. 60-84,184-87; JSNT 2$ (1985), pp. 39-40.
20. For this kind of reaction to Casey, ZNW 67 (1976), p. 149 and Son of
Man, pp. 229-30, cf M.D. Hooker in Text and Interpretation. Studies in the
New Testament presented to Matthew Black, ed. E. Best and Κ McL Wilson
(Cambridge: CUP, 1979), pp. 157-58; F.J. Moloney, Downside Review 98

(1980), p. 280; Bauckham, op. cit., p. 28.
21. That is, as one of several passages about faithful and suffering Jews,
among whom he was included. Barrett and Hooker have disproved the
traditional view that it was a fundamental text for him, interpreted
individually of him alone. Cf C.K. Barrett, 'The Background of Mark
10.45', in New Testament Essays: Studies in Memory of T. W. Manson, ed.
AJ.B. Higgins (Manchester Manchester University Press, 1959), pp. 1-18;
M D . Hooker, Jesus and the Servant (London: SPCK, 1959); C K Barrett,
'Mark 10.45: *a Ransom for Man/, New Testament Essays (London: SPCK,
1972), pp. 20-26.
22. A full discussion cannot be attempted here. The most helpful known to
me is J. Jeremías, New Testament Theology, I (London: SCM, 1971), pp. 176-
99; and on Mark 10.45, Barrett, op. cit.
23. Casey, ZNW 67 (1976), p. 151; Son of Man, p. 232. For criticism, cf.
Moloney, op. cit., p. 288, 'even more unlikely1; Hooker, op. cit., p. 158, 'so
obvious as to be trite'; Lindars, BJRL 63 (1981), pp. 447-8; idem, Jesus Son
of Man, pp. 66-67.
24. Cf. H.K. McArthur, 'On the Third D a / , NTS 18 (1971), pp. 81-86.
Schaberg has recently suggested that the phrase is derived from Dan. 7.25,
but 'a time, times and half a time' is too different from 'after three days' for
this to be plausible, and it would be surprising that this unusual interpretation
left no verifiable trace on the Christian exegetical tradition. Schaberg's
criteria seem to me to be too loose to demonstrate anything, but this matter
cannot be dealt with here. Cf J. Schaberg, 'Daniel 7,12 and the New
Testament Passion-Resurrection Predictions', NTS 31 (1985), pp. 208-22.
25. Casey, Son of Man, with Table 5 (p. 236) laying out the basic pattern
of development
26. Bauckham, op. cit., pp. 29-30; Casey, Son of Man, ch. 8.
27. Moloney, op. cit., p. 287, replying to Casey, Son of Man, p. 234;
followed by Kümmel, ThR 47 (1982), p. 375.
28. I have now adumbrated such a theory in the Cadbury lectures,
delivered at the University of Birmingham in the autumn of 1985, under the
title 'From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God. The Origins and Development of
New Testament Christology.'
^ s
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\jfSNT 29 (1987) 21-56]

GENERAL, GENERIC AND INDEFINITE:

1. Aramaic Sources and the Date of This Idiom

abundantly attested in later Aramaic, is quite sufficiently well

2. General Statements in the Aramaic Sources

statements used by a speaker in order to say something about

explaining how R. Hiyya bar Adda came to leave his valuables to R.

speaker and his audience. Finally, it will be noted that in this

3. Generic, Indefinite and the 'Articles'

gradually broke down, and this breakdown took theformof increasing

article' to denote a particular member of the class, and he offers no

in the light of his proposed Aramaic substratum but as in itself

idiomatic use of i t Many Gospel sayings are irrelevant because they

rb planen twìtK na4?rf?DΊΟΚ* η *?ai

Jesus nor his disciples could expect reasonable accommodation

them, as we know that the conservative wing of Judaism and the

5. The Passion Predictions

whv avia na *?m mn na

namely traitors. At a general level it condemns traitors, and declares

Jews, including Jesus and his disciples, for the reference to it to

as in Greek someone adding in freely a precise reference to the

speech is exceptionally great Lindars further objects to the use of

jnwK *rt noono mt< na

least partly reconstructed from Mk 8.31. All these sayings were

6. Some Overall Aspects of the Son of Man Problem

argues that the usage cannot appeal to parallels in later Jewish

question is lamely solved in the following fashion... Scene after

sayings, which has already been seen to have an exceUent Sitz im

1. G. Vermes, 'The Use of m *)2/tWl Ί2 in Jewish Aramaic*, Appendix

D.J. Harrington, A Manual of Palestinian Aramaic Texts (BibOr, 34; Rome:

(Cambridge: CUP, 1979), pp. 157-58; F.J. Moloney, Downside Review 98

The ATLA Serials (ATLAS®) collection contains electronic versions of previously

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1. G. Vermes, 'The Use of m )2/tWl Ί2 in Jewish Aramaic, Appendix