Scripture and God in Christianity

probably for the following reason: It was known that this view of Jesus was not entertained by
the disciples during Jesus' lifetime. In the tradition this fact took the form of the oft-repeated
thought that the disciples did not understand until later what Jesus was endeavoring to teach
them." 389
Acceptance of this approach has significant implications upon our understanding of Christology
as Perrin observes: "The acceptance of the fact that synoptic sayings have a history in the tradition
makes a great deal of difference to the study of Christology, especially in connection with
the beginnings of Christology, because it raises serious questions with regard to sayings which
hitherto have been held to tell us something about Jesus' understanding of himself and in this way
to mark the beginning of Christology." 390 He further argues that "What is true of the Son of man
Christology is certainly going to be true of the other christological patterns, those using Son of
God, Son of David, Christ, Lord, and so on, for none of these has anything like the secure place
in earliest Christianity that the Son of Man has." 391 R. Augstein asks that "If Jesus was neither the
Messiah nor the son of man nor the son of God, and if he did not even think he was any of those,
what is left? ...what good could his death do?" 392
Professor J. W. Bowker of the University of Lancaster, on the other hand, emphasizes that Jesus
used this term as an alternative for the first pronoun "I" or "me" or to denote himself as a frail
mortal. 393 K. Armstrong observes that " the original Aramaic phrase (bar nasha) simply stressed
the weakness and mortality of the human condition. If this is so, Jesus seems to have gone out of
his way to emphasize that he was a frail human being who would one day suffer and die." 394 J. D.
Crossan argues that "if Jesus spoke about a son of man, his audience would not have taken the
expression in either a titular or a circumlocutionary sense but, following normal and expected usage,
in either a generic (everyone) or an indefinite (anyone) sense. He is talking, they would presume,
about human beings, making claims or statements about humanity. An unchauvinistic English
translation would be "the human one". 395
Many New Testament scholars argue that Jesus used this term for himself in light of the well
known Danielic Son of man and apocalyptic literature. C. F. D. Moule, for instance, says that the
title Son of man " seems to have come through virtually unmodified from Jesus himself." 396 He
further states that "there is a strong case (or it seems to me) for the view that the phrase belonged
originally among Jesus' own words as a reference to the vindicated human figure of Dan. 7 and as
a symbol for the ultimate vindication of obedience to God's design." 397 Jeremias observes, that "It
would be an error of method to suggest without further ado that these remaining Son of man sayings
may be regarded as authentic, lock, stock and berrel." 398 But he concludes, that "the apocalyptic
Son of Man sayings which we have recognized as the earliest stratum must in essentials go
back to Jesus himself." 399 Ben Witherington claims a sort of consensus among scholars over this
issue observing that "One of the most complex problems in the New Testament studies is how to
understand the one label almost all scholars agree Jesus used of himself-the Son of man. 400 de
Jonge makes almost the same claims. 401
Scholars also differ over the true meanings of Daniel 7. Their views could be summarized in
three man categories. (1) The figure mentioned in the Danielic vision refers to one or more angels.
J. J. Collins persuasively argues this view. 402 (2) It stands for Israel, or at least for faithful
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