"Son of Man" -- Who is This Being? Is He Real or a Symbol?
Throughout the Bible to whom does the title "Son of Man" belongs or represents? What power does this Being possess? Consider the following passages for starters, see Matt. 8:20; Matt. 9:6; Acts 7:56; Luke 21:26, 27, 28; John 3:13-15.
Is the "Son of Man" God, Jesus, Angels or Christians? When clearly identified does it have the meaning or reference point in the OT as it does in the NT? See Daniel 7:9-14; Dan. 8:14. What say ye? CM
Comments
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Son of Man also = Son the Man. So I think it represents the Son [God] in man form.
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God the Son, Jesus Christ.
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"Son of Man" the road to correct understanding...
Jesus humbled Himself to minister to the weak, oppressed, and disenfranchised: lepers, the demon-possessed, divorced and diseased women, Romans, Canaanites, Samaritans, the blind, the lame, and tax collectors. Simultaneously, those seeking Jesus’s healing sought cried out to and even touched Jesus. He heals the societal framework rather than diseases.
Jesus’s response to cries of help is evidence of God’s power to answer prayer. Beasley-Murray discusses the topic in terms of the Jewish apocalyptic concept of the Son of Man. It should be noted that, while each of the people Jesus touched was humbled by circumstances, not all were physically poor. Jesus was known as a friend of tax collectors and sinners. Without a doubt, Jesus was comfortable in all socioeconomic situations and treated everyone with respect.
Bible scholars see a direct correlation between the idiom of Mark 10:45b and the suffering of the Servant of Yahweh in Isaiah 53:11-12 The “Son of Man” used in Mark 10:45 is linked to Daniel 7:13-14. Upon close examination, the verse is conceptually similar to Isaiah 53:11.
It may be said overall that Jesus combines Daniel’s idea of the Son of Man and Isaiah’s concept of the Servant of Yahweh into a unitary theme of redemptive suffering. CM
SOURCES:
-- Crossan, John Dominic. “Kingdom and Children: A Study in the Aphoristic Tradition.” Semeia 29 (1983): 75-95. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed May 19, 2011). pp 119-121.
-- Dowd, Sharyn Echols. Prayer, Power, and the Problem of Suffering: Mark 11:22-25 in the Context of Markan Theology. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1988. p133.
-- Beasley-Murray, G. R. Jesus and the Kingdom of God. Grand Rapids, MI: William B.
Eerdmans, 1986. pp. 229-237.
-- David Prior, Jesus and Power (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1987), 95-96.
-- Monika K. Hellwig, Public Dimensions of a Believer’s Life: Rediscovering the Cardinal Virtues (Lanham, MD: Roman and Littlefield Publishers, 2005), 27-29.
-- Wessel, Walter W., and Mark L. Strauss. “Mark.” In Matthew~Mark, edited by Tremper Longman III and David E. Garland, 671-989. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010. p. 876
-- Lois Malcolm, “Forgiveness as New Creation: Christ and the Moral Life Revisited,” in Christology and Ethics, ed. F. LeRon Shultz and Brent Waters (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2010), 117-119.
