The Greek expression ὁ υἱòς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, usually translated “the Son of Man,” plays a key role in the christology of all four canonical Gospels. While it appears in about fifty different sayings in the New Testament, all but one of these occur in the Gospels. There the expression almost always occurs on the lips of Jesus. Since Jesus always speaks of the Son of Man in the third person, one could infer that he is referring to someone other than himself. In most of the sayings, however, it is clear that Jesus uses the phrase to refer to himself.

This expression has been a central issue in New Testament studies since the beginning of modern scholarship. Because it is used almost exclusively by Jesus, many scholars have seen it as a key to Jesus' own self-consciousness. In the nineteenth century, for example, H. J. Holtzmann affirmed,

Today scholarship can no longer take for granted that Jesus actually used this expression in the way the Gospels describe. We know now that the Gospels often attribute to Jesus ideas and sayings that actually originated at a later time, in the life of the early Christian church. Even if Jesus did not use the expression, however, it remains important for understanding the origins of christology. Its frequent occurrence in the Gospel tradition shows that it represented an important strand of thought in the early Christian community.