The view that Jesus spoke of an apocalyptic Son of Man presupposed that such a conception existed in Judaism prior to Jesus. This presupposition came under attack at the end of the nineteenth century and again in the 1960s. Various factors joined to cast in doubt the view that the title “Son of Man” or a unified Son of Man concept existed in pre-Christian Judaism.

The nineteenth-century consensus

A few scholars of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries affirmed that when Jesus spoke of himself as the “Son of Man,” the Jews were familiar with the title and understood him to mean the Messiah. Serious objections, however, were raised against this view.

(1) First, scholars at the end of the nineteenth century pointed out that the expression “son of man” never became a title in pre-Christian Judaism. In Daniel, the phrase “one like a son of man” is not a title, but a description of a manlike figure. Likewise, the human figure in 1 Enoch is introduced not with a title but with a description: “the son of man to whom belongs righteousness” (1 Enoch 46.3). Subsequently, he is called “that son of man” with reference back to his initial appearance. That this phrase never becomes a fixed title is further suggested by the fact that the Ethiopic uses three different expressions for it. Nor is there such a title in 4 Ezra 13, where the human figure is called simply “a man” or “the man” (the one referred to previously). Finally, though the Rabbis did interpret the figure in Daniel 7.13 as the Messiah, they did not refer to him with the title “Son of Man.”