Talk:Son of man

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	Christianity Portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Christianity, an attempt to build a comprehensive guide to Christianity on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit this article, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion. If you are new to editing Wikipedia visit the welcome page to become familiar with the guidelines.
Start	This article has been rated as Start-class on the quality scale.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale.
	This article is supported by the Jesus work group. (with unknown importance)
Assessment comments This article has been rated for quality and/or importance but has no comments yet. If appropriate, please review the article and then leave comments here to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article and what work it will need.

	Judaism Portal Son of man is part of WikiProject Judaism, a project to improve all articles related to Judaism. If you would like to help improve this and other articles related to the subject, consider joining the project. All interested editors are welcome. This template adds articles to Category:WikiProject Judaism articles.
Project Judaism To-do: edit purge watch Here are some tasks you can do: Requests: Jewish and Biblical Units of Measurement or some such name, to include material of Ancient Hebrew units of measurement but also Talmudic units and use in Halacha (a la the Hebrew Wikipedia article he:מידות ומשקלות תורניים) Collaboration of the week { Cleanup: Jewish mythology - needs to be rewritten to be inline with our other mythology articles. Expand: Yom Ha'atzmaut - quite short for an article of such importance Wikiversity: School of Jewish Studies. Part of the new open content university, Wikiversity. Stubs: Category:Judaism stubs, Category:Tanakh stubs, Category:Synagogue stubs Update: Portal:Judaism is WikiProject Judaism's frequently updated portal. You can help make this the best portal on Wikipedia. Look at the talk page to see how you can help. Template loop detected: Template:WikiProject Judaism
Start	This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale.

This entry incorporates text from the public domain Easton's Bible Dictionary, originally published in 1897.

Archives
2004-2005

Contents 1 Lord of the sabbath 2 Introduction 3 Lost Sheep 4 Foxes have Holes 5 An unfortunate conflation of 2 terms: "A son of man" and "THE son of man" 6 Trying to make RTL/LTR mix display comprehensibly in Firefox (and other browsers?) 7 The Thadman 8 Relfexively comment reverted

[edit] Lord of the sabbath

I added another instance of the phrase "son of man" being used in the synoptic gospels. I did my best to be fair to both the Christian POV and the naive reading of the passage (if I can use "naive" as a neutral adjective). The last time I tried adding this passage, it was reverted, so I hope I got it right this time. Jonathan Tweet 02:21, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Introduction

Wouldn't it be fair for the introduction to this page to mention the use of "Son of Man" as an epithet for Jesus? After all, I think that's why this page is so extensive. It's not like everyone's really interested in Near Eastern idioms. Or am I way off base? Jonathan Tweet 02:24, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Nah, you're not way off base. However, we -do- have a section about Christian theology and the implications of the "Son of Man" (note caps :-) ). The article is primarily about the ancient idiom, and there are tomes of scholarly research on that subject, tracing it's use from Ancient Mesopotamia on down the lines. אמר Steve Caruso _(poll) 13:22, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I added something simple and noncontroversial to the introduction. Jonathan Tweet 15:46, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Looks good. :-) אמר Steve Caruso _(poll) 15:54, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lost Sheep

I added another instance of "son of man" in the synoptics, this one clearly refering to Jesus himself but also not generally regarded as an authentic part of the original gospel. I'm tempted to say something about how this verse suggests a change in the usage of the phrase (from earlier "a person" to later "Jesus"), but I don't want to go overboard. Jonathan Tweet 16:09, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Hehe, I should have read the talk page before I edited things. Although it's not considered authentic (mainly due to it's placement and manuscript evidence), it does follow proper semitic use as a humble self-appelation. אמר Steve Caruso _(poll) 17:09, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Foxes have Holes

In this section, it seems clear to me at least that Jesus is using "son of man" to refer to himself. A scribe says he wants to follow Jesus, and Jesus answers that the "son of man has no where to lay his head." Seems to indicate that Jesus can't offer the scribe any shelter if he follows him, and may suggest that they'll be traveling a lot rather than settled down in one place. If it meant people in general, Jesus would be saying that people, or most people, don't have a place to sleep, which doesn't make nearly as much sense. Wesley 20:22, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm not an expert on the subject so I can't expand much on this but shouldn't there be an atheist view of this phrase? For Jews to claim they were the 'Son of God' was heretical so a Jew (Jesus) using the phrase would be him denying his divinity (while others were asserting it). This phrase is therefore evidence of his non-divine status and suggests others later claimed the contrary. AC 16/07/2006

I would think that would be more appropriate to the Son of God article to bring up issues of divinity. There were many Jews in the 1st Century "claiming" to be sons of God (in fact it was common rhetoric for Rabbim of the time to say that all Jews were sons and daughters of God). "Son of man" was just a common way to refer to humanity of oneself in a conversation, and (at least linguistically) shouldn't, in this son of man's opinion, be used as any basis to claim "divinity." ;-) אמר Steve Caruso _(desk/poll) 15:33, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Agree. The phrase Son of Man was used to refer to one's self. JPotter 16:27, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] An unfortunate conflation of 2 terms: "A son of man" and "THE son of man"

While it is true that the expression "a son of man" (or even, "O', son of man") is an ancient Semitic idiom for referring to someone as being an all too typical human being, the term "the son of man" has a specific meaning originating in 2nd Temple Judaism, and especially the apocalyptic writings of that time.

Drawing from the vision recorded in Daniel 7:13, the rabbis and mystics of the 2nd Temple period increasingly spoke of "THE son of man", a heavenly, eternal, uncreated being who sat upon the Throne of God. He was also associated with "THE angel of the LORD" in the Old Testament - a being who was more than any angel, but was in some way a theophany (or avatar, if you prefer) of God Himself.

Jews of the Inter-testimental period increasingly imagined a cosmos populated with a vast angelic hierarchy, necessary as a means of bridging the gulf between God's utterly perfect righteousness and human sinfulness. It was believed that God was SO holy and righteous, that if even one of the four guardian Cherubim (who stood about the Throne of God) so much as glimpsed God's Face, even they would be utterly destroyed.

The problem was then, how does anyone "know God"? How does God have any contact with His creation? Their answer was, "By the son of man". This being was believed to exist as the ultimate mediator between God and all creation. In fact, it was this "THE son of man" who had actually done all the creating ... in God's Name, of course. He was God's great viceroy, the grand vizier of heaven, prince of all the angels. Unlike the angels, He was not a created being, but was somehow a perfect reflection of God Himself, eternal and resplendent. He possessed all the glory, majesty, holiness, power, and authority of God. He was so perfectly submitted to the will and nature of God, that he was utterly transparent to it. His words were the words of God. His will was the will of God. His deeds were the deeds of God. He was so much like God that no meaningful distinction could be made ... except that the Jews insisted on making one. He was who (or what) Philo termed, "the logos".

Every book, author, and theorized "source" of the New Testament, and all other early Christian documents, claim that Jesus was and is the incaranation of this being. In fact, all the evidence that exists overwhelmingly substantiates that this claim originated with Jesus himself.

That's excellent information! find a source for it and add it to the article. (To make things more confusing, the gospels sometimes record Jesus as using "son of man" to mean "a human being.") Jonathan Tweet 13:14, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Trying to make RTL/LTR mix display comprehensibly in Firefox (and other browsers?)

In the "Hebrew Bible" section there are some quotations which mix (left-to-right) Arabic numerals with (right-to-left) Hebrew text. I don't know about other browsers, but Firefox on Linux deals with these really badly. I've rearranged some of these quotations so you can clearly see which verse has which number (and incidentally added {{hebrew}} tags). I can't read Hebrew, so some of these may have been mangled. It took a lot of effort given that none of the editors I can find deal with the mix at all nicely, so I haven't bothered to do the others. I'd appreciate it if someone else could continue (or else revert :). Hairy Dude 04:15, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The Thadman

Thanks. Garry Denke 23:53, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Relfexively comment reverted

I tried to leave a message in my edit comments but it seems to have glitched. "Son of man" is not solely used as a reflexive appellation, hence my revert of a good faith edit. אמר Steve Caruso 04:33, 7 December 2007 (UTC)