The Kind of Messiah No One Expected (Part 7)

The people of Israel had long awaited the Messiah (meaning “anointed one”), the man anointed by God’s Spirit to be the Savior of God’s Chosen People. Jewish super-patriots (later to be called “Zealots”) believed that the Messiah would come as a rebel-military leader to expel the Roman occupying army by force of arms, and rule with justice from his throne in Jerusalem like King David of old. The Pharisees, devout adherents of the Law of Moses, also eagerly awaited the Messiah. They believed that God’s Chosen People, by strictly observing the Law of Moses and the interpretations of that Law by the elders, would merit favor with God. Then God’s Messiah would unleash his supernatural power and work the great redemption of Israel as their reward. At least once in Jesus’ ministry, the people tried to seize him and proclaim him king (Jn 6:15). But Jesus fled their acclaim. His kingdom would not come to the world by an armed uprising, nor (at first) by a coercive act of God’s almighty power.

When Jesus retired for a time to the mountain regions of the north, his apostles accompanied him, and his disciple Peter told him plainly what was on all their hearts: they believed him to be the Christ, the Messiah (Mt 16:16). And immediately, “he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again” (Mark 8:31).

This was a kind of “Messiah” almost no one expected at the time — least of all his disciples! Where is the glory of national liberation and a new Israelite kingdom in such a prophecy of doom? Peter spoke for them all: “Surely, this will never happen to you!” Even John the Baptist, trapped in Herod’s prison, began to have doubts. He sent a messenger to Jesus, asking, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” All Jesus could do was to point to the works he was doing (alluding to the words of the Messianic prophesy of Isaiah 35:5-6): “The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have the good news preached to them”—surely these are the signs that god’s Kingdom is breaking into this world!—and yet, because he knew that this would not be enough for many to enable them to believe, Jesus added: “and blessed is he who takes no offence at me” (Mt 11:2-6).

The disciples themselves might have given up on Jesus if they had not seen these miraculous signs of the Kingdom themselves. Moreover, they noticed that when Jesus preached, he did not speak a message from God, but, as the accounts say, he spoke “with authority.” In other words, he did not say, like the prophets of old, “Thus says the Lord,” as if he was merely passing on a message from God, but “Truly, I say to you,” and “You have heard that it was said … but I say to you.” Was this not God’s Messiah, speaking with the direct, personal authority of God himself? Furthermore, the disciples must have wondered why Jesus kept calling himself “the Son of Man,” if he did not intend to restore the kingdom of Israel and rule over all the world. For in the book of Daniel it was written, “Behold, with the clouds of heaven came one like a son of man … and to him was given dominion and glory, and kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him” (Dan 7:13-14).

Despite his predictions of rejection and death, therefore (and the cryptic things he said about “rising on the third day”), the disciples clung fast to their hope that Jesus was the long-awaited, triumphant Messiah, the Liberator of Israel (Lk 24:21). When Jesus journeyed to Jerusalem, the capital city of the Jews, for the Feast of the Passover the people ran to meet him and laid palm branches before him, crying out “Hosanna [save now], Son of David!” Jesus then rode into the city on a donkey, in fulfillment of a Messianic prophecy familiar to many (Zech 9:9). That prophecy specifically stated that the one who would ride on a donkey into Jerusalem would do so as Israel’s rightful “king,” just as Solomon, the Son of David had ridden on a donkey to his anointing as king long ago (I Kings 33, 38, 44). Indeed, Zechariah prophesied that the Lord himself will become King over his people at the coming of his Messiah (14:9), and drive the money traders from the Hose of the Lord (14:21) — which, of course, is precisely what Jesus did.

The Mystery of the Title, “The Son of Man”

It is a curious fact that except for the confession of St. Stephen in the book of Acts (Acts 7:56), the early church, as far as we know, never called Jesus “The Son of Man.” The title is not used in the New Testament Epistles. In the Gospels, it occurs only on the lips of Jesus himself. We cannot, therefore, attribute this title to the theological creativity of the first Christians. Nor can we claim, as some scholars have done, that Jesus used the title to refer to another person who would come in the future. The few ambiguous “Son of Man” sayings in this regard should be interpreted in the light of the many in which Jesus clearly used the title for himself. Nor can we interpret the title just as Jesus’ humble way of saying “a mere human being,” because Jesus does not refer to himself as  “a son of man” but as “The Son of Man.” An extraordinary claim of some kind is clearly being made here. 

Indeed, some scholars now believe that the title on the lips of Jesus was an implicit claim to divine status! If, as seems likely, Jesus was drawing the title from Daniel 7:13-14 (quoted above), then, as Grant Pitre says, 

[T]hat means he is no mere earthly Messiah, no mere earthly king. … First, he comes “on the clouds of heaven” — something only God does in the Old Testament. Second, the book of Daniel says that he is “like a son of man”— that is, he appears to be a merely human figure but is in fact a heavenly being (Dan 7:13). (Pitre, The Case for Jesus, p.143-144)

Moreover, as Jesus himself states in the Gospels, the Son of Man even has divine authority on earth to forgive people’s sins (Mk 2:5-12). 

Scholars are also divided, however, on whether or not the Jewish people of Palestine in Jesus’ day would have recognized “The Son of Man” as a Messianic title. A book written in Galilee entitled The Similitudes of Enoch (1 Enoch 48:10, 52:4) does explicitly use the title “Son of Man” for the Messiah, but as Reza Aslan points out, “because no copies of the Similitudes were found among the many copies of Enoch found at Qumran [that is, among the Dead sea Scrolls], most scholars are now convinced that it was not written until well after the destruction of the Temple [in Jerusalem] in 70 c.e.” (Zealot, p. 255). What we can say for sure is that the later rabbis identified the “son of man” in Daniel as the Messiah (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 98a; Numbers Rabbah 13:14).

Some of the Jews may have interpreted “a son of man” in Daniel 7:13-14 as a reference not to the Messiah, but as symbolic of the vocation of the People of Israel as a whole, who will reign over the earth on God’s behalf, leading all in the true worship of the Lord when God’s Kingdom finally comes. Of course, the two interpretations are not necessarily contradictory: Jesus could have seen his own, individual vocation as “Son of Man” to be one of leader, symbol, and savior of a whole new purified Israel, to enable Israel finally to fulfill its vocation in God’s plan to bring all the nations of the earth to worship the true God (Gen 12:3; Is 49:6).

The theory that best fits all the facts we have on hand is that Jesus himself was the first one clearly to interpret Daniel’s “son of man” as the Messiah (indeed, implicitly, as the divine Messiah). It would have been the perfect title to use for himself, because it would not have been instantly recognized by his audience as a claim to Messiahship (with all the popular misunderstandings that went with the expectation of the Messiah in Jesus’ day). As a cryptic title, therefore, it would have forced his listeners to search the Scriptures and pray to uncover its hidden meaning.

Moreover, it would have prompted his hearers to listen very carefully to how Jesus himself spoke of his vocation as the Son of Man. New Testament scholar C.H. Dodd noted that Jesus often used the title, in response to the Messianic expectations of others, and in connection with his sufferings to come; for example: “Peter answered, ‘You are the Christ’ .… And [Jesus] began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and scribes, and be killed ….” (Mk 8:31). Also, Jesus taught his disciples, “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mk 10:45). Thus, the true Son of Man would come into his triumph only through the way of suffering. Jesus not only adopted the title “The Son of Man,” therefore, he also used it in a paradoxical way”: as a title for the divine Messiah, sent from heaven, to be sure, but also as the title of one who fulfills his vocation only by suffering and dying on a cross. 

In this respect, according to Grant Pitre, Jesus was being faithful to the message of the book of Daniel as a whole:

Although the Son of Man in Daniel 7 is not described as being put to death, the future “messiah” in Daniel 9 is described as being put to death. In fact, this is the only explicit prophecy of the death of the “messiah” (Hebrew mashiach) in the Old Testament [Daniel 9: 24-27]. … First, the prophecy declares that there will be 490 years (“seventy weeks of years”) between the restoration of the city of Jerusalem and the coming of a “messiah” …. Second, and equally important, the prophecy also declares that this future Messiah will be “cut off” — a common Hebrew expression for being put to death. As I have argued elsewhere in more detail, Jesus is treating the Son of Man in Daniel 7 and the Messiah in Daniel 9 as if they were the same person: the first prophecy describes the heavenly enthronement of the Messiah; the second describes the earthly suffering and death of the Messiah. … According to the book of Daniel, the Messiah will not just come in glory; he will also suffer and die.” (The Case for Jesus, p. 114-116)

Next Time: The Suffering Servant of the Lord

Robert Stackpole, STD

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