the-book-of-enoch-r-h-charles - Fallen Angels

APPENDIX II
THE SON OF MAN: ITS MEANING IN JEWISH
APOCALYPTIC AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
Within the last eighteen years a vast literature^ has been
written on the above Messianic title, which started with the
publication of the first edition o£ the present work. I have
followed with much interest the various attempts to explain the
origin and meaning of this title or else to prove that it had no
part originally in 1 Enoch or in the N.T. Into a discussion of
these hypotheses I cannot enter here, and will only state my
present position on the question, and this position is the same as
regards the meaning of the title in 1 Enoch and the N.T. as in
1893. However scholars may differ as to the origin of the title,
its meaning in the N.T. is to my mind free from such ambiguities.
If the title has a long history behind it, it does not in the least
follow that what was its meaning in O.T. times persisted in later
Judaism or Christianity. In fact every analogy teaches us to
expect an entire transformation. I will here republish with a
few verbal corrections what I wrote in 1892.
The true interpretation of the N.T. title 'Son of Man •"
will,
we believe, be found if we start with the conception as found in
1 Enoch and trace its enlargement and essential transformation
in the usage of otir Lord. In this transformation it is reconciled to
and takes over into itself its apparent antithesis, the conception of
the Servant of Jehovah, while it letrays occasional reminiscences
of Dan. 7, the ultimate source of this designation.
First, shortly, as to the facts of the problem. The expression
is found in St. Matthew thirty times, in St. Mark fourteen, in
1 See the Articles in the Eneyc. Bib. and Hastings, B. T>. for the fairly exhaustive
bibliography on this question.