Class Warfare and the New Testament

Background:

In circa 30 CE, at the zenith of Jesus' ministry, the Judaean Province was a fairly unstable place politically. In the mid-second century BCE, the Jewish state won a fleeting independence from the Ptolemaic Hellenists, only to absorbed into the Roman empire in the mid 1st century BCE. While the state was allowed some degree of autonomy, resentment against the Roman rulers was constantly brought to the fore in the form of protest and occasionally revolution, right up until the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE.

Galilee, in the north of modern Israel, was at the time a largely rural province, populated almost entirely by small, agrarian communities. Although empire can be a cruel imposition on any population, there is evidence that it was these poorer, less politically influential communities who tended to suffer most at the hands of imperial policy. In general, Shauel Noah Einstadt writes, "the middle and lower peasant groups were the largest part of the rural population" in ancient agrarian empires and "the peasantry [also] carried the greatest burden of taxation" (Political Systems of Empires, p. 207). Land appropriation and increasingly burdensome taxation seemed to be a common feature of Roman policy within Galilee and much of the rest of the Near East at the time.

The incapacity of farmers to produce at surplus levels (as all surpluses tended to be appropriated by the state) produced what might be termed a permanent underclass of communities barely capable of sustaining themselves. "[T]he Roman Empire was an agrarian society, characterised by... marked social inequality", John Dominic Crossan writes. "Agricultural productivity increased, elite appropriation of peasant surpluses increased, and inequality between the producers and the takers increased" (The Birth of Christianity, p. 153). This meant that the Peasant Class, "that vast majority of the population, was held at (or close to) sustenance level so that their appropriated surplus could support elite conspicuous consumption. Those appropriations could reach, cumulatively, as high as two thirds of the total crop" (p. 155).

But if even those landed peasants - capable of self-sustenance at least at some fundamental level - were barely capable of supporting themselves, what can we possibly say for those who owned no such land at all? This "Expandable Class", writes Gerhard Lenski, "included a variety of types, ranging from pretty criminals and outlaws to beggars and underemployed itinerant workers, and numbered all those forced to live solely by their wits or by charity" (Power and Privilege, p. 281). This class existed, he continues, because "agrarian societies usually produced more people than the dominant classes found it profitable to employ... [H]igh death rates were usually offset by the steady stream of new recruits forced into [their] ranks from the classes immediately above [them]. These recruits were largely the sons and daughters of poor peasants and artisans who inherited little more than the shirts on their backs and a parental blessing" (pp. 281-283).

It is from these disenfranchised, impoverished classes of Galilee that Jesus and his early followers first emerged.

Jesus and Poverty:

When it comes to determining exactly who Jesus was and what his message consisted of, we have no choice but to abandon any pretense of talking about "facts" and enter instead the wonderful world of "probabilities". No account of Jesus' life or teachings exists from his day, the earliest surviving account dating to perhaps forty years after his death (presuming a 70 CE date of authorship for gMark). There are certain criteria that can and have been used to adduce what parts of the gospels report reliable history and which are the invention of the gospel authors (I explore J.P. Meier's criteria on here, for those interested) but this is scarcely a scientific process and not especially important if (as in the case of this post) we're not particularly concerned with distinguishing Jesus' message from that of his earliest followers.

From what we can tell, Jesus was the son of a manual labourer (tekton in Greek: can be translated as "carpenter", but not the sort of who produced fine furniture) who - based on his absence from the later gospel record (cf. Mk. 6:3) - may well have been dead or otherwise absent for much of Jesus' life. In any case, all the indications are that Jesus came from an impoverished family and grew up in a tiny, inconsequential Galilean community.

It is clear from the early sayings traditions preserved in gMark and the "Double Tradition" (i.e. those sayings common to gMatthew and gLuke but not to gMark, which a majority of scholars explain as having come from a hypothetical, now lost "Q" gospel) that concern with poverty was present in the philosophy of Jesus and the early Christian tradition from the very beginning. Only "concern with poverty" doesn't quite capture it: the tone is far more severe than that. But to understand we must first we digress into a brief discussion of "eschatology".

Eschatology and Judaism:

For the Jews of the ancient world - particularly those who lived pre-diaspora - there was usually little distinction made between the realms of theology and politics. All that happened to Israel (both from within and without) was a consequence of divine machination, a response to the piety (or lack thereof) of Israel's children. This can be seen most vividly in the books of the prophets, where the success of kings and the state are linked entirely to Yahweh's whim, which is itself determined by how faithfully the king and his subjects carried out Yahweh's commandments. Within this prophetic literature, though, existed a more specific genre called "the Apocalyptic", which involved not merely a theological explanation for contemporary events but a genre in which future events were "revealed" (the most accurate translation of the Greek word "apocalypse") to the prophets. These kinds of "prophecies" were particularly common during periods where the sovereignty of Israel was under threat from foreign powers, and people looked desperately to the prospect of future divine intervention for reassurance.

Note, then, that the apocalyptic genre was from the beginning an outlet for the weak and disenfranchised to imagine a future time in which the power imbalance would be righted. Israel may well be at the whim of foregin powers now, but at some point in the future the great power of Yahweh shall be revealed and all these presently powerful kings who have so tormented his children shall be made subject to him. Eventually, this idea of a future turning point in history (or, more accurately, an end to history as we know it) where God shall arrive and institute a quite literal kingdom on Earth, became a common feature of Jewish theology. This, naturally, gave rise to the belief that this future eschaton (lit. "the last") was close at hand, and that the adherence to certain standards of behaviour might either draw the eschaton nearer or, in the case of early Christians, offer one a means of salvation in the event that God (or one acting in his name - i.e. "the Son of Man") were to arrive in judgment, determining who exactly was worthy to live in his kingdom.

It is this concept of "ethical eschatology" (i.e. a future, definitive turning-point in history) that is at the centre of most early Christian beliefs.

Eschatology, Christianity and Power:

From the beginning, Christian theology has clearly been motivated by a belief in an imminent eschaton, the first step of which was marked by the death and resurrection of Jesus. Like many other Jewish eschatologies, there appeared to be a belief in a general resurrection of the dead at the "coming of the Lord" (see 1 Thess. 4:13-18 - the earliest surviving work of Christian literature, and also the passage that has inspired modern Christian visions of "the Rapture"). In 1 Cor. 15:20-23 Paul spells out his "Adam Christology", his belief that Jesus represents a kind of inverse Adam (where Adam tried to raise himself and inflicted death on mankind, Jesus lowered himself and brought life to mankind) and - more importantly - his belief that the resurrection of Christ marks only the "first fruits" of a more general eschatology, which involves the "resurrection of the dead".

But Christian eschatology was about more than just the promise of eternal life. Like other Jewish eschatologies, the Christian message was one of a coming "kingdom of God", where the oppressive rulers of the current age would be swept aside by God in a glorious inversion of power. Consider the passages that come immediately after the two quoted above:

1 Thess. 5:1-3:
Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers and sisters, you do not need to have anything written to you. For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. When they say, "There is peace and security", then sudden destruction will come upon them, as labour pains come upon a pregnant woman, and there will be no escape!
1 Cor. 15:24-25:
Then comes the end, when [Christ] hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.

Note that we are not just talking about salvation in some distant, heavenly sense, we're talking about salvation on this Earth, here and now. Just like Yahweh coming down and smiting Israel's enemies in the prophetic OT literature, so to shall he arrive to deliver his children from the present day kingdoms (i.e. Rome) that oppress them. Like the earlier apocalyptic literature, we see the expectations of a future day where the powerful shall be toppled by the powerless in a divinely led revolution.

Even after Paul, during the 70s when Mark wrote, the eschatological belief that "the Kingdom of God has come near" (Mk. 1:15) was apparently still going strong. It's only towards the end of the second century, where several decades of expectation had ended in disappointment, that the belief in the parousia (i.e. the second coming of Christ) and coming eschaton were placed at some point in the indefinite (as opposed to immediate) future. But the eschaton was not just about inverting the power imbalance between competing societies, it was about inverting the power imbalances within societies themselves.

Eschatology, Christianity and Poverty:

The New Testament as we have received it was written by many different authors, living in vastly different parts of the world, over a period spanning many decades. It's important to recognise, therefore, that we cannot expect to find a unified theology or ethical system undergirding all the books that comprise it: different authors, put simply, are bound to have differing opinions. Although there is a unity of sorts in the way that the NT treats poverty (all its authors who breach the subject naturally regard it as a pressing ethical concern), there is no question that different authors treat the issue of poverty in different ways.

For instance, there is no shortage of passages instructing readers to simply show due ethical concern for the plight of the poor. When modern Christians consider their ethical responsibilities to the poor (excluding sola fide Protestants, of course, who don't actually care about the poor at all), these are probably the sort of passages they have in mind:

Luke 3:11:
And [John the Baptist] would answer and say to them, "Let the man with two tunics share with him who has none, and let him who has food do likewise."
1 Tim. 6:18:
Do good... be rich in good deeds, and... be generous and willing to share.
Mt. 6:2:
When therefore you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be honored by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full.

Now it goes without saying that each of these injunctions are noble enough in their own right, but it also has to be said that they are otherwise quite pedestrian and unremarkable. Similar sentiments, I am sure, could be found in any other religious work which dwells on the issue of poverty: there is nothing particularly or uniquely "Christian" about any of them. Such injunctions to share if you can, to always be good and generous and to never boast about such deeds could scarcely be said to represent a bold or unique system of ethics.

The interesting thing about each of these passages, though, is that they can all be dated to late "strata" within the New Testament - special Lukan material ("L"), pseudo-Pauline Pastoral material and special Matthean material ("M") respectively, each of which date to the late first century at the earliest. As a general rule, we find that the later material in the NT often has a "softer" edge than the earlier material. Much of the early ethical injunctions concerning poverty in the New Testament have a distinctly unreasonable and polemical tone about them.

Consider some of the most famous ethical injunctions presented by Jesus:

Luke 6:29-30:
If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again.
Luke 18:22:
When Jesus heard this, He said to him, "One thing you still lack; sell all that you possess and distribute it to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me."

A simple reading might tell us simply that Jesus is suggesting that it is good to give to the poor, but the unreasonableness of Jesus' expectations tells us that there is something deeper going on here. What kind of society can function with these counter-intuitive ethical norms of giving more to those who have stolen from you, or where having any possessions at all is a hindrance to future salvation? The answer is simple: a society who didn't expect that the world (as we know it) would last much longer. Recognise that Jesus was not the irenic hippy that we often imagine him to be, going round telling people to be nice to each other out of some general altruistic concern for mankind. He offered all these strict ethical injunctions, rather, because he believed that the world was about to end and that the coming judgement would require everyone to measure up to extremely particular ethical standards.

But again, his beliefs were even more strident than that. He believed not only that giving excessively to the poor was a necessary moral condition for salvation, he apparently believed that poverty in itself was virtuous and wealth, by extension, inherently sinful. Take this famous passage:

Matthew 19:24:
Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

The message is clear: wealth itself is an anathema to divine salvation. The reasoning behind this idea is that the world is inherently "evil" (for want of a better word) and so therefore those who have profited most here must be evil as well, and that those who have profited least must therefore be "good" - a situation that will be rectified, with each getting their just desserts, when the eschaton finally arrives. It is this belief in a complete reversal of fortunes that scholars refer to as an inversionary ethical eschatology.

The meaning of this is simple enough. It means that "the last shall be [made] first, and the first last" (Mt. 20:16) and that "the meek shall inherit the earth" (Mt. 5:5) when this future kingdom arrives. For this reason "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God" (Lk. 6:20) and "woe to you who are rich, for you have [already] received your consolation" (Lk. 6:24). The author of the book of James has an especially blunt message for those who amass wealth:

James 5:1-6:
Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. Your riches have rotted, and your clothes are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure for the last days. Listen! The wages of the labourers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts on a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you.

And an eschatological consolation for the poor:

James 5:7-8:
Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains. You also must be patient. Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near.

Note that the word translated here as "poor" is the Greek word ptochos, which refers not merely to those who are struggling a bit for cash, but rather to the completely destitute: that expendable underclass I spoke of at the top of this post. This inversionary eschatology was both written by and directed to this permanent underclass, giving them the hope that the iniquities of the present ages would soon pass. Jesus, then, was a champion of this poor, a revolutionary who saw his battle as being played out on some future heavenly realm rather than in the present material world. His revolutionary zeal didn't manifest itself in the taking up of swords, but rather the adoption of counter-intuitive standards of ethical piety. The early Christians were also drawn from this underclass, uplifted by the prospect of a divinely inspired revolutionary reversal of fortunes that they - as a lowly and disenfranchised people - could never hope to realise of their own volition. The New Testament is by construction, then, a statement of class warfare.

So what went wrong?

As I have already said, the earlier strata of the New Testament seem to represent a much courser polemic than the later strata. Put simply, as Christianity spread and the plight of rural Galileans became less central to the Christian message, the polemic was necessarily toned down. We can already see this happening in the first century, as Matthew (writing in the cosmopolitan city of Antioch) tones down the invective from the passages he derives from the "Q" gospel (written several decades earlier in the less developed province of Judea). Take the beatitudes, for instance, that both Luke and Matthew have taken from Q:

Luke 6:20-21:
Then he looked up at his disciples and said:
‘Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
‘Blessed are you who are hungry now,
for you will be filled.
‘Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh.

Compare Luke's rendition of the beatitudes (most scholars believe that his rendering of Q is generally closer to the original wording the Matthew's rendition) to those in gMatthew:

Matthew 5:2-6:
Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:
‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
‘Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

Note that Matthew's beatitudes are no longer strictly about the poor and hungry, but (with the addition of the bolded words) are softened into more general, spiritual blessings, without class overtones. The later "woe to the rich" passage in gLuke is, not surprisingly, absent from gMatthew. Matthew, in fact, quite frequently seems to deliberately downplay the role of poverty in Jesus' life and message. Whereas in gLuke Jesus is born in a stable and visited by shepherds, in Matthew Jesus is visited by mighty kings from the east. Whereas in gLuke Jesus gives his sermon on a plain, in gMatthew he gives it atop a mountain. Whereas in gLuke Jesus is unequivocal in his denunciation of the rich, in gMatthew he fraternises with tax-collectors (the ultimate class-traitors: those drawn from local communities to procure funds on behalf of the empire). And that's just in gMatthew: by the time we get to gJohn (circa 95-100 CE) there is scarcely any mention of poverty at all.

And, unfortunately, that's the Christianity that we've been left with. A Christianity whose origins are to be found only in a few exposed roots among the surviving literature, otherwise completely obscured by a more dominant theology of vicarious atonement. The idea of salvation being delivered on the basis of need to groups, communities and nations has been supplanted - perhaps inevitably - by the more selfish concerns of personal salvation and "treasures in heaven". However, although the Christian message has been castrated by a church who preaches concern for the poor only in some abstract, pandering sense, it is important not to forget that at the centre of the church's canon lies a bold and revolutionary message: in one way or another, the poor will be delivered salvation at the expense of the rich.

Who is the "Son of Man"?

No Christological title has inspired as much confusion as that of "the Son of Man". What it means, to whom it refers, in what context it was used and from where it came remain a matter of on-going debate, though perhaps we can take heart in the fact that the confusion apparently goes back to Christianity's earliest days ("Who is this 'Son of Man'?" - Jn. 12:34).

Part of the problem appears to be that different individuals in the early Christian movement had different ideas about what the title "Son of Man" actually meant. The OT literature, the NT literature and the intertestamental apocrypha all seem to use the term in different ways. We begin with its use in the OT.

Uses of "Son of Man" in OT literature:

There are three different ways that the phrase "Son of Man" is used in the Old Testament¹.

Firstly it is used as a perjorative (Job 25:4-6):

How then can a mortal be righteous before God?
How can one born of woman be pure?
If even the moon is not bright
and the stars are not pure in his sight,
how much less a mortal, who is a maggot,
and a son of man², who is a worm!’

Secondly as an honorific emphasising human beings as being next to God in the order of creation (Ps. 8:3-6):

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you have established;
what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
sons of men that you care for them?
Yet you have made them a little lower than God,
and crowned them with glory and honour.
You have given them dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under their feet.

And thirdly in an apocalyptic or eschatological sense (Dan. 7:13-14):

As I watched in the night visions,
I saw one like a son of man
coming with the clouds of heaven.
And he came to the Ancient One
and was presented before him.
To him was given dominion
and glory and kingship,
that all peoples, nations, and languages
should serve him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion
that shall not pass away,
and his kingship is one
that shall never be destroyed.

First thing to note is that the first two uses of the term (lowly creature, creature slightly beneath god) don't really seem to influence any of the New Testament uses of the term. Daniel - with its use of the "son of man" in an apocolyptic context - seems like a much better fit. However, could the litany of New Testament uses of the term really all be derived from a single passage in Daniel? Could the NT authors have been inspired by a somewhat more contemporary source?

Uses of "Son of Man" in intertestamental literature:

The intertestamental period (i.e. the very rough period of some 200 years between the penning of the last books of the OT and the first books of the NT) was actually a period of great literary creativity within the Jewish faith. Although most of this material remained at the fringes of acknowledged scripture within both the Jewish and Christian faiths, that is not to say that it wasn't a great influence on (and, indeed, reflection of) the thought of the day.

The intertestamental work of greatest relevence to the issue at hand is surely the book of 1 Enoch. Although doubts and controversies about the date and manner of its composition linger, there is good reason to believe that the oldest sections of the work (mainly from 1 En. 1-36, aka the Book of Watchers) were penned at some point near the beginning of the 3rd century BCE and it was probably completed in something approaching its surviving form by the end of the first century BCE.

Its relevence to the topic at hand is that it appears to present a quite developed eschatology centered (in part) around a figure titled "the Son of Man"³. While clearly sometimes inspired by the passage from Daniel, the author(s) of The Book of Parables (1 Enoch 37-71) flesh the figure of "the Son of Man" out in a way that often startlingly resembles later Christian understanding of the term. This "Son of Man" is described as a pre-existing being who has a rank higher than the angels, as "the Elect One" and - perhaps - even as a messianic figure (48:10, 52:4). He is described as having "righteousness", is depicted as sitting on a throne at the right hand of God, where he has the wicked brought before him in judgment to be shamed. The parallels between the understanding of "the Son of Man" in 1 Enoch and the gospels (at least the first way that the term is used in the gospels - see below) are there for all to see.

But could such a work have really influenced Christian thought? It seems likely that the work was popular in early Christian circles, as it has the distinction of being the only non-OT work cited in the entire NT (in Jude 1:14) and is cited as authoritative scripture (a precursor to canonicity) by many early early church fathers. Even Jesus' own thought may have been directly influenced by 1 Enoch, or at least the exegetical philosophy that gave rise to it. To quote Raymond Brown⁴:

All this evidence suggests that in apocolyptic circles of the 1st century AD, the portrayal in Dan 7 had given rise to the picture of a messianic human figure of heavenly pre-existent origin who is glorified by God and made a judge. Against that background Jesus, if he was familiar with apocolyptic thought, could have used "Son of Man" terminology. He need not have read the Parables of 1 Enoch, but only have been aware of some of the burgeoning reflection on Dan 7 that gave or would give rise to the presentation of the Son of Man in the Parables [and elsewhere].

We now finally move onto the use of the term "Son of Man" in the New Testament.

Uses of "Son of Man" in NT literature:

One of the most confusing aspects of the use of this title in the NT is that it is extremely frequent in the Gospel literature (appearing some 80 times) but appears just three times outside of the gospels (excluding Acts). Why this title appears so frequently in the Gospels but not in other early Christian literature (both within and outside of the NT) is one of the most mysterious questions surrounding this title.

NT treatment of "Son of Man" outside the gospels - As I have already mentioned, the phrase "Son of Man" appears just three times outside of the gospels and Acts. These appearances are Hebrews 2:6, Revelation 1:13 and Revelation 14:14, all of which appear to be direct allusions to the OT passages posted above. Hebrews 2:6 is taken directly from Psalm 8:4 (a popular Psalm in the early Christian community) and the passages in Revelation appear to have been inspired by the apocolyptic use of the term in Daniel 7:13. That is, in contrast to the use of the title in the Gospels, the rare use of the title outside of the gospels can be traced back directly to the way it is used in the OT: why is its use in the gospels so different?

NT treatment of "Son of Man" within the gospels - In addition to the earlier fact that it is used so frequently, there are two vital facts we must note about the use of the term in the Gospels.

Firstly (with the possible exceptions of Mk. 2:10 and Jn. 12:34) the term "Son of Man" is only placed on the lips of Jesus - that is, it appears nowhere in the general narrative or on the lips of other characters within the gospel. It is a term almost completely peculiar to the purported sayings of Jesus. Secondly, as J.D. Kingsbury notes, no person ever addresses Jesus as the "Son of Man" and Jesus never makes any attempt to address its meaning⁵. The precise significance of these facts is difficult to ascertain, but they may be important in piecing how the term came to be used within the gospel literature.

With that in mind, there are two main ways in which the title is employed within the gospels⁶. Firstly as a reference to some future eschatological being "who is to come" (e.g. Mk. 8:38; 13:26; 14:62), an understanding probably derived from the apocalyptic passage in Daniel. Often in these passages the most straightforward reading is that Jesus is referring to a third person, eg. Mk. 8:38:

'Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.’

It takes a very contrived reading of the text to assume that Jesus here is referring to himself.

On the other hand, most of the passages featuring the phrase "Son of Man" do appear to be third-person references made by Jesus about himself. These are passages which refer to "unique events in the story of Jesus' suffering and death, so that 'son of man' seems to be only a roundabout way of saying 'I'"⁷. With all that in mind, how do we square these different usages and account for the inconsistent yet frequent use of the term throughout the gospels?

It's difficult to say for certain, and about all we can say about the issue with any confidence is that the understanding of the term within the early Christian community was confused, and this confusion is demonstrated by its inconsistent use both between and within each of the gospels. On the other hand, the frequency with which it is used probably suggests that the term goes back to Jesus and the idea that all instances of the term "son of man" were anachronistic inserts by the gospel authors probably doesn't hold much merit.

One possible explanation for the data is that Jesus actually did reference a "son of man" figure quite frequently throughout his ministry, and his understanding of this figure was furnished by the eschatological uses of the term in Daniel and 1 Enoch. In other words, he believed that the eschaton would bring with it "one like the son of man" as a cosmic judge, to be given dominion of the Earth during the coming Kingdom of God (e.g. Mk. 8:38; 13:26). After his death, the failure of the eschaton to manifest itself and the growing belief in the Christian community concerning the parousia⁸ and higher Christological views, this "son of man" ceased being associated with a heavenly agent of the eschaton and instead started being linked to Jesus himself.

Firstly the apocolyptic "son of man" sayings (which plausibly originated with Jesus) were transformed into expectations of Jesus' return as that son of man, and secondly other sayings were invented linking the "son of man" to events in Jesus' life (usually by the means of having Jesus "predict" these events, while referring to himself with this third person title). Though the evidence available to support this position is hardly unequivocal, it does have the virtue of explaining:

• Why the term is so frequent in the gospels (it originated with Jesus, and may have formed an intergral part of his overall eschatology).
• Why only Jesus uses the term and why no-one else applies it to him.
• Why the term is so inconsistently and confusingly applied.

Now if I've done this properly, you should be more confused about the term "Son of Man" than ever. Hopefully, though, my argument becomes more apparent as we progress through the gospels and encounter more specific instances of how it is used by the gospel authors.

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1 - Taken from The Five Gospels by Funk et al., pp. 76-77.

2 - In some translations the phrase is rendered as "human beings" or "mortals", but the original Hebrew is ben 'adam (בן אדם), literally the "Son of Adam" (where "adam" refers both to the mythical first man of Genesis and is the Hebrew word for mankind more generally).

3 - One problem is that much of the material concerning the "Son of Man" was not found amongst the manuscripts of 1 Enoch discovered at the Qumran site, leading some scholars to suggest that the "Son of Man" material might not have been original to the book and may have therefore been redacted by later Christian authors. However, such a conclusion is hasty in my opinion, as the "Son of Man" material exists within the lastest layers of 1 Enoch, and the Qumran manuscripts may therefore simply represent an earlier stage of the work, an explanation that fits in with our current understanding of how the work was developed in successive stages.

4 - An Introduction to New Testament Christology, pp. 95-96.

5 - The Christology of Mark, pp. 166-179.

6 - Funk et al., p. 77.

7 - Ibid.

8 - i.e. Jesus' second coming.

Mark 1:12-15

The text:

Link

Mark 1:12-13: The Temptation

In the tradition of Moses (Exodus 24:18 / 34:28) and Elijah (I Kings 19:8) Jesus finds himself driven into the wilderness for 40 days¹. Mark says that Jesus here was "tempted" by Satan, but goes into no further detail (we'll have to wait for Matthew and Luke for more specific accounts). But for now, it bears touching upon who exactly this "Satan" is.

The name "Satan" doubtless inspires a cacophany of vivid imagery, drawn from a long and fecund Christian tradition, but in the interest of approaching the New Testament objectively, it's probably best to dispense with all of it. The Satan of orthodox Christian theology (a kind of subterranean "anti-god": a freely-acting being of great power and even greater evil) hadn't been fully developed by the time Mark's gospel was penned. The ha-satan (הַשָׂטָן) of Old Testament Judaism (and therefore, most likely, of early Christianity as well) simply means - to translate the term literally - "the accuser" or "the opposer". This is a being who operates within God's divine court, often depicted as playing the role (if you'll excuse the pun) of devil's advocate. This is made especially clear in the book of Job, where Satan is essentially cast as the prosection attorney to God's own judge and jury. This role, by the way, is performed under the auspices of God, with (we can only assume) his implicit support.

What, then, are we to make of Satan tempting Jesus? Was this a case of God using Satan to demonstrate or test the loyalty of Jesus (a la Job), or was Satan - as later Christian theology would have it - acting of his own accord, stirring up chaos for the sake of chaos? I'll leave the issue here for now, but it shall be returned to.

Mark 1:15: "The Kingdom of God has come near."

A full exposition of the term "Kingdom of God" may have to wait for another post, but a brief treatment of this phrase here is probably in order.

The expression "Kingdom of God" is not merely used in the NT as a poetic way of referencing heaven, it is - as best I can discern - an expectation of a future in which Yahweh² will establish his quite literal kingdom³ here on earth. It deserves to be noted that this is our very first introduction to the topic of "eschatology" on this blog (that is, the expectation of some radically altered future state of the world, usually consequent to some form of divine intervention⁴). Although it's a subject that modern theologians are not wont to dwell on, the belief in some future eschaton appears to have been integral to the philosophy of Jesus and his early followers.

Secondly, the term "come near" (ἤγγικεν / ēngiken) gives us the indication that this coming eschaton is not set at some indefinite point in the future, but is rather extremely close to - or even in the process of - manifesting itself. This theme of immediacy, of breathless urgency, is a common motif throughout Mark's gospel.⁵ For Mark (and probably Jesus as well) there is an impending eschatology, where history will not merely end, it will end in this generation (see Mk. 9:1, 13:30). This passage, then, suitably sets the eschatological tone for Mark's portrayal of Jesus' ministry: God is gonna get here soon, so best get your act together in a hurry!

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1 - Again, take note of how Jesus is portrayed gMark. Is he being cast in the role of divine saviour or OT prophet?

2 - "Yahweh" (or "YHWH") is the name given to God in the Old Testament.

3 - Yahweh is frequently portrayed in OT literature as a literal king, complete with throne: e.g. Ps. 47.

4 - "Eschaton" (ἔσχατοv) literally means "the last". Most eschatologies carry the assumption that history as we know it will end at the point of the eschaton, but that's not quite the same as saying that the world itself will be destroyed in the kind of fiery vision that contemporary Christian imagery so often associates with the end of times. Best to think of eschatology in terms of a "coming of a new age" rather than the destruction of the world proper.

5 - Some of it is lost in the English translation, but Mark uses lots of "ands" and "thens" to link his pericopes together. Not particularly great grammar, but it does succeed (deliberately or otherwise) in giving the gospel a real sense of urgency.