The dissolution of the apocalyptic Son of Man consensus in the 1960s brought with it a new emphasis on the interpretation of “son of man” as a nontitular idiom. In 1990 Reginald Fuller saw a trend toward interpretations of this kind:

This type of interpretation has a long history, going back to the Reformation. While patristic and medieval authors interpreted ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου in its Greek sense, Reformation scholars began to examine the possible Semitic background of the phrase, usually tracing it to Hebrew ben adam or Aramaic bar enasha. While most scholars continued to view the expression as some sort of title, others began to see it as a nontitular idiom. Three possible idiomatic senses of the expression were investigated: the circumlocutional sense (“this man” = “I”), the generic sense (“man” in general), and the indefinite sense (“a man,” someone).

A circumlocution for “I”

Phase 1: 1557–1835

As early as 1557, Theodore de Bèze (Beza) appealed to Hebrew idiom to account for the expression “son of man.” Noting that Jesus spoke of the son of man in the third person while apparently referring to himself, Beza suggested that the expression was a Hebrew idiom, used as a circumlocution for “I”: