British New Testament Society

Jesus used the term ())#$n()) rb in a particular Aramaic idiom, which has a general level of meaning but which applies particularly to the speaker or whoever else is obviously in mind. Some 30 examples of this idiom are now known, in several different dialects, but with more extant in Jewish Aramaic than elsewhere. The general level of meaning may apply to most people, or to a social subgroup, or it may be a generalisation from the experience of one individual. About a dozen son of man sayings spoken by Jesus, and using this idiom, can be recovered from the synoptic Gospels. There is no such idiom in Greek. The translators therefore followed a strategy, using the new Christological title o( ui(oj tou~ a)nqrw&pou when ())#$n()) rb applied particularly to Jesus, and something else when it did not. They found this title in scripture (Dan. 7.13), and the synoptic evangelists were so delighted with it that they used it in secondary sayings, especially those with an eschatological reference.

There is a very strong argument that underlying Jesus' son of man sayings is an Aramaic phrase meaning something like 'a human being such as myself'. Thus, it is argued that none of Jesus' son of man sayings referred to a heavenly 'son of man' figure (such as that in Dan 7:13, according to some interpretations of that text), and that the Aramaic idiom underlying o( ui(oj tou~ a)nqrw&pou of the gospels would not accommodate such a reference anyway. This argument is based on careful study of Aramaic idiom.

A central difficulty for those who would argue against this case, is the fact that at some point between 200 BCE and 400 CE the difference between the absolute and emphatic states broke down. Any Aramaic phrase underlying o( ui(oj tou~ a)nqrw&pou of the gospels would need to be in the emphatic state, and the emphatic state would need still to be in force (at least in this phrase), if this phrase were to be capable of referring to a particular son of man (such as that in Dan 7:13). No contemporary Aramaic source uses a phrase that might refer to a son of man in the emphatic state. Thus, the philological evidence for Jesus' referring to a particular son of man (such as that in Dan 7:13) has been lacking.

This paper brings forward new evidence from Semitic Greek. It notes in six texts, originally written in Greek, from the period 200 BCE to 200 CE, the presence of the phrase ui(oj a)nqrw&pou. It notes that this phrase has a semantic area that matches that of the idiom said to underlie Jesus' son of man sayings. The paper asks whether it is sensible to maintain the view that o( ui(oj tou~ a)nqrw&pou of the gospels must reflect an Aramaic idiom meaning something like 'a human being such as myself', rather than reflecting an Aramaic phrase in the emphatic state referring to a particular son of man, in view of the fact that a better translation of such an idiom was available to them.

This paper will assess the early Jesus-tradition in which Jesus, in response to John the Baptist's disciples, generalises from the healings-traditions to a larger conceptualisation of his activity and the relationship of that activity to that of the Baptist's (cf. Matt. 11.2-19//Luke [Q] 7.17-35; 16.16). Social memory theorists have problematised perspectives that reify memory, treat it as if it were a 'thing' that existed, without regard for memory's processual and discursive aspects. The key point on which this paper will dwell is that the memory—the reputation—of any historical figure is process rather than product. This is as true of twenty-first-century images of the historical Jesus as of first-century images: history and memory are always interpretive reconstructions. Thus it is necessary to reconceptualise the product of historical Jesus research to facilitate clearer understanding of what it is we are after. Toward this end this paper will utilise the work of Gary Alan Fine and Barry Schwartz, among others, who have approached 'historical reputation' as a social handle by which important figures and events can be quickly accessed and understood. Reputations are also employed to express social values in the present as well as to assess present needs and circumstances and thereby suggest appropriate courses of behaviour. The image of the historical Jesus healing people of various ailments, as a subset of the larger image of Jesus proclaiming the kingdom of God, became a key 'handle' in the constructions of Jesus' reputation within the later communities of his followers, including their assessment of what Jesus was doing and what, consequently, they were doing in the decades following Jesus' death. What we find, then, is dialectic tension: the continuing influence of the historical Jesus upon the dynamics of his followers' social lives even as the later contexts in which the Jesus movements found themselves bore their influence upon the memory of the historical Jesus.