but also when the link between the Son of Man and the historical Jesus is not so clear (the rest of the examples above). And at least once, Matthew adds the personal pronoun “he” to Mark’s account (Mark 8:31/Matt 16:21), thus equating the Son of Man with the Messiah and with the historical Jesus, a theological move that the other evangelists seem to imply but not offer explicitly.
“Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” . . . Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah. From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem. (Matt 16:13–21)
Mark’s use of Son of Man meaning “human being” is found in 2:10 (/Matt 9:6; Luke 5:24) and in 2:28 (/Matt 12:8; Luke 6:5). In the first instance, the Son of Man is said to have authority on earth to forgive sins. In the second the Son of Man is declared as being Lord of the Sabbath. In both examples, Jesus is the immediate textual referent to the Son of Man. He is the one who expropriates the scribes’ right to interpret who mediates God’s forgiveness—it is God who forgives, not Jesus, as the Greek passive verb ἀφίενται denotes—for even though the priests in the temple are agents of God’s forgiveness, they do not forgive sins: God does.
But the evangelist seems to think differently. In verse 10, he affirms that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.91 He seems to be not solely an agent, but the generator of the forgiveness. But probably this is not the case, especially if Mark is recalling here the imagery of Daniel 7, where one like a son of man is given authority by the Ancient of Days (God) to rule earthly nations at the eschaton. So, as Joel Marcus reminds us, “[the] heavenly God remains the ultimate forgiver, but at the climax of history he has delegated his power of absolution to a ‘Son of Man’ who carries out his gracious will in the earthly sphere.”92 But the difference with the Danielic figure is that this Son of Man exercises his authority through forgiveness of sins, not through the overcoming of his enemies, as is the case in Daniel 7. In that sense, this may represent a novelty on the part of the evangelist, who is bent on counteracting the messianic ideology of the Jewish revolutionaries.93
Now, if the Son of Man is a communal symbol representing God’s people, as we will propose throughout this work, then the forgiveness of sins is enacted by the community he represents. Soteriology then is linked to a people, not to an individual savior (see chapter 6 of this work). We can see this idea surfacing in Mark 2:27–28, when Jesus says “The Sabbath was made for humankind (ὁ ἂνθρωπος) and not humankind for the Sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.” Interestingly enough, neither Matthew nor Luke includes this affirmation, thus making the lordship of the Son of Man more of an individual feat than a communal responsibility. But, if according to Mark, Jesus is the representative of the community, then what the evangelist is really saying is that it is the community that has the right to decide how to interpret the Torah in relation to Sabbath observance. This obviously puts them at odds with other Jewish Christian communities at the time. Both groups are represented in the text, one by the Scribes and Pharisees, the other by Jesus. We will come back to this in chapter 5.
2. The eschatological Son of Man.
Mark’s depiction of the Son of Man as a heavenly figure, who is to come in the clouds of heaven, is followed very closely by Matthew and Luke. In Mark 8:38/Matt 16:27, and Luke 9:26, the Son of Man comes in his Father’s glory; in Mark 13:26/Matt 24:30, and Luke 21:27, he is coming in clouds; in Mark 14:62/Matt 26:64, and Luke 22:69, he is sitting at the right hand of God. In each of these contexts, the Son of Man is depicted in Danielic fashion as possessing power and glory bestowed by God the Father. He is an agent of God’s final eschatological retributive justice. Matthew and Luke do not add any particular theological insight to Mark. Even when Luke fails to mention in 22:69 that the sitting Son of Man will return to earth riding on the clouds, he nevertheless acknowledges this return in other parts of the narrative (9:26; 21:27; cf. Acts 1:9–11).
Use of Son of Man in Q
The most popular hypothesis about the Son of Man traditions in Q is that they were added later, when the messengers of Q met with opposition from their fellow Jews and reacted with a proclamation of judgment that was going to be brought about by Jesus as Son of Man.94 This approach has created the perception that what we have at play in Q, at a Christological level, is a two-stage Son of Man Christology. In the first stage, the Son of Man is presented in ways that coincide with the experience of the community as marginal, lacking theological acceptability, and social status. In the second, he is presented as coming in victory to vindicate his suffering people.95 I believe this is a possible way of explaining the nature of Q as a community-produced document.96 The circumstances of the community influenced the way in which the oral traditions were appropriated. In other words, their praxis shaped their theology. Or to put it in Liberation Theology terms, theology became a second step after praxis.97 What we have in Q then, is the testimony of a community struggling for self-identity couched in apologetically driven rhetoric that utilizes the image of the Son of Man as a catalyst for this conflict. Let us consider now the passages in Q that refer to the Son of Man. As in the Markan tradition, they fall into two categories: the earthly Son of Man and the eschatological Son of Man.
1. The earthly Son of Man.
Luke 6:22 (/Matt 5:11). The Lukan version of the Sermon on the Mount—the Sermon on the Plain—says that the disciples are blessed when they are reviled “on account of the Son of Man.” The parallel in Matthew reads “on account of me,” thus clearly identifying the Son of Man with the historical Jesus. Even though Luke seems to be referring to a future coming figure (cf. also 3:16; 7:19; 13:35), the immediacy of the beatitude being addressed to the disciples in the second person plural “you” shows that, for Luke, allegiance to the Son of Man has immediate consequences: people hate, exclude, revile, and defame the disciples now! The emphasis is on a present-day experience, not something that will happen in the future. The suffering modeled by the Markan Son of Man, which Luke includes in his gospel (9:22, 44; 18:31; 22:22), has already begun in the life of the post-Easter community.
Luke 7:34 (/Matt 11:18). In this passage, the reference to the Son of Man is clearly directed to Jesus, whose lifestyle is contrasted with that of John the Baptist. Both John and the Son of Man “have come” (ἐλήλυθεν).Their ministries are still fresh in the community’s memory,98 giving people food for thought. And they are still controversial figures for the religious authorities, each on their own terms, one for his asceticism and the other for his apparent excesses.
Luke 9:58 (/Matt 8:20). The itinerant and uncertain lifestyle of Jesus is presented as a challenge to those who wanted to become his disciples. Again, even though Jesus seems to be talking about another person when referring to the Son of Man, he is obviously referring to himself, since the prospective disciples promise to follow him “wherever you go.” The community that produced and/or received this tradition knows that a lifestyle of duress and deprivation is in store for them if they decide to become disciples.
Luke 11:30 (/Matt 12:40–41). This passage can go both ways. It can refer to the historical ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, in which case the sign of Jonah has to be interpreted as Jesus’ prophetic proclamation against the religious authorities. But while Jesus’ proclamation will not engender a positive response, i.e., repentance, Jonah’s did, as attested in verse 32. The irony resides in the fact that for Luke, Jesus is greater than Jonah! Or it can also be interpreted in a futuristic manner, as referring to an eschatological figure who was to come and to whom Jesus bore witness, advising people to prepare for. When the Son of Man comes, Jesus says, he might find faithlessness and hardness of heart, rather than willingness to repent (cf. Luke 18:8).
These are all the Q passages that point towards an earthly Son of Man and his ministry. Whether this refers to Jesus or to one coming in the near future is difficult to assess, given the fact that this tradition has been woven into the theological frame of the Gospels, where Jesus is unmistakably identified with the Son of Man. However, what is clear is that no eschatological grandeur and power is attached
