The Jewish Gospels (21 page)

45
.
Cf. the similar but also subtly different conclusion of Collins,
Mark: A Commentary,
205. For me, it is not so much the Messiah as king that is at issue but rather the Son of Man as carrier of divinity and divine authority on earth.

46
.
This interpretation obviates the apparent non sequitur between vv. 27 and 28, pointed to inter alia by Beare, “‘The Sabbath Was Made for Man?'” 130.

47
.
Cf. Robert H. Gundry,
Mark: A Commentary on His Apology for the Cross
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004 [1993]), I: 144. For other authors holding this view, see discussion in Neirynck, “Jesus and the Sabbath,” 237–38, and notes there.

48
.
As far as I can tell, my view is closest in certain respects to that of Eduard Schweizer,
Das Evangelium Nach Markus
[Bible. 4, N.T. Mark. Commentaries], Das Neue Testament Deutsch (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1973), 39–40.

49
.
For discussion of these two apparent difficulties, see Marcus,
Mark 1–8
, 243–47.

50
.
This is, indeed, one of the main points of Shemesh's unpublished paper; indeed, Shemesh makes so (appropriately) bold as to argue that Jesus' halakhic arguments are not infrequently more coherent and cogent than some of those of the latter-day Rabbis. But they remain, none the less, and even more so, halakhic arguments.

51
.
Cf. Beare, “‘The Sabbath Was Made for Man?'” 134. I disagree with Beare, however, in his assumption that the David argument could only have been mobilized with messianic overtones, given that we find it in rabbinic literature without such overtones and in a very similar context, namely, as a justification for violating the Torah in a situation in which there is a threat to life (even a very mild such threat, such as a sore throat). Palestinian Talmud Yoma 8:6, 45:b.

52
.
For a similar view, see Collins,
Mark: A Commentary,
185 n28.

2. The Son of Man in First Enoch and Fourth Ezra:
Other Jewish Messiahs of the First Century

1
.
Howard Jacobson,
The Exagoge of Ezekiel
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 55.

2
.
Richard Bauckham, “The Throne of God and the Worship of Jesus,” in
The Jewish Roots of Christological Monotheism: Papers from the St. Andrews Conference on the Historical Origins of the Worship of Jesus,
ed. Carey C. Newman, Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism (Boston: Brill, 1999), 53. See too Charles A. Gieschen,
Angelomorphic Christology: Antecedents and Early Evidence,
Arbeiten Zur Geschichte Des Antiken Judentums und Des Urchristentums (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 93–94.

3
.
For the formerly held position that the parables were earlier than this, see Matthew Black, “The Eschatology of the Similitudes of Enoch,”
Journal of Theological Studies
3 (1953): 1. For the latest and generally accepted position, see essays in Gabriele Boccaccini, ed., Jason von Ehrenkrook, assoc. ed.,
Enoch and the Messiah Son of Man: Revisiting the Book of Parables
(Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2007), 415–98, especially David Suter, “Enoch in Sheol: Updating the Dating of the Parables of Enoch,” 415–33.

4
.
“We certainly find blurring of the lines between human messiah and heavenly or angelic deliverer in the Son of Man tradition.” Adela Yarbro Collins and John J. Collins,
King and Messiah as Son of God: Divine, Human, and Angelic Messianic Figures in Biblical and Related Literature
(Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 2008). It is of the Similitudes that the Collinses are speaking.

5
.
George W.E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, trans. and eds.,
I Enoch: A New Translation
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), 59–60.

6
.
It is not clear to me how the Aramaic
, something like “Ancient of Days,” yields “head of days,” but this is immaterial for the present case. For different solutions of this problem, see Matthew Black, in collaboration with James C. VanderKam and Otto Neugebauer,
The Book of Enoch, or Enoch: A New English Translation with Commentary and Textual Notes. With
an Appendix on the “Astronomical” Chapters (72–82)
, SVTP (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1985), 192.

7
.
The major exegetical work to demonstrate that this chapter is constructed as a midrash on Daniel 7:13–14 has been done by Lars Hartman, who shows carefully how many biblical verses and echoes there are in the chapter. Lars Hartman,
Prophecy Interrupted: The Formation of Some Jewish Apocalyptic Texts and of the Eschatological Discourse Mark 13,
Conjectanea Biblica (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1966), 118–26. My discussion in this and the next paragraph draws on his, so I will forgo a series of specific references. In any case, I can only summarize his detailed and impressive argument.

8
.
Pierluigi Piovanelli, “‘A Testimony for the Kings and Mighty Who Possess the Earth': The Thirst for Justice and Peace in the Parables of Enoch,” in
Enoch and the Messiah Son of Man: Revisiting the Book of Parables,
ed. Gabriele Boccaccini (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007).

9
.
Nickelsburg and VanderKam,
I Enoch: A New Translation,
61–63.

10
.
Ibid., 91–92.

11
.
James R. Davila, “Of Methodology, Monotheism and Metatron,” in
The Jewish Roots of Christological Monotheism: Papers from the St. Andrews Conference on the Historical Origins of the Worship of Jesus,
ed. Carey C. Newman, Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 9.

12
.
My reading here of the Similitudes is close to that of Morna Hooker,
The Son of Man in Mark: A Study of the Background of the Term “Son of Man” and Its Use in St Mark's Gospel
(Montreal: McGill University Press, 1967), 37–48.

13
.
Moshe Idel,
Ben: Sonship and Jewish Mysticism,
Kogod Library of Judaic Studies (London: Continuum, 2007), 4.

14
.
I am fully persuaded by the argument of Daniel Olson, “Enoch and the Son of Man,”
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigraphica
18 (1998): 33, that chapter 70 also originally identified Enoch with the Son of Man. His article is exemplary philology in that it supports one variant of a manuscript tradition and then explains compellingly why that reading had been changed in other branches of the paradosis.

15
.
For a study of the ubiquity of this pattern, see Idel,
Ben
, 1–3.

16
.
Bauckham, “The Throne,” 58.

17
.
Pierre Grelot, “La légende d'Hénoch dans les Apocryphes et dans la Bible: Origine et signification,”
RSR
46 (1958): 5–26, 181–220; James C. VanderKam,
Enoch and the Growth of an Apocalyptic Tradition
(Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1984), 23–51; Helge S. Kvanvig,
Roots of Apocalyptic: The Mesopotamian Background of the Enoch Figure and of the Son of Man
(Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1988), 191–213; Andrei A. Orlov,
The Enoch-Metatron Tradition,
Texte und Studien Zum Antiken Judentum (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 23–78.

18
.
Kvanvig,
Roots,
187; John J. Collins, “The Sage in Apocalyptic and Pseudepigraphic Literature,” in
The Sage in Israel and the Ancient Near East,
ed. John G. Gammie (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990), 346.

19
.
Idel,
Ben,
1–7. Earlier and more directly relating to such merger, see Moshe Idel, “Metatron: Notes Towards the Development of Myth in Judaism” [Hebrew], in
Eshel Beer-Sheva: Occasional Publications in Jewish Studies
(Beer-sheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 1996), 29–44.

20
.
Helge S. Kvanvig, “Henoch und der Menschensohn: Das Verhaltnis von Hen 14 zu Dan 7,”
ST
38 (1984): 114–33.

21
.
This summary draws on Nickelsburg,
1 Enoch 1,
255–56.

22
.
Black, VanderKam, and Neugebauer,
Enoch,
151–52, accepts this position but offers as well the not implausible hypothesis of a common dependence on a work earlier than the two of these. In any case, this issue is immaterial for my investigation here.

23
.
Contrast Sigmund Olaf Plytt Mowinckel,
He That Cometh: The Messiah Concept in the Old Testament and Later Judaism,
trans. G.W. Anderson (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1956), 384–85.

24
.
James Davila also reads the work of the so-called redactor (once again, I call him author) as having specific ideological/theological intent. Davila, “Of Methodology,” 12. He doesn't interpret this activity in quite the way I do, however, but does note the very important point that the Hebrew 3 Enoch (and thus the Enoch-Metatron tradition) presupposes it.

25
.
Daniel Boyarin, “The Gospel of the Memra: Jewish Binitarianism and the Crucifixion of the Logos,”
Harvard Theological
Review
94, no. 3 (2001): 243–84. Note too Larry Hurtado's three categories of divine mediation: personified and hypostasized divine attributes, such as Wisdom or Logos; exalted patriarchs; and principal angels (Larry W. Hurtado,
One God, One Lord: Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism,
2nd ed. [Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1998]). To these James Davila adds two others, of which one seems relevant here: “archetypes based on earlier biblical characters and offices (e.g., the Davidic king, the Mosaic prophet, and the Aaronid high priest) but whose incarnation as individuals is projected either into the future (future ideal figures) or into the heavenly realm (exalted ideal figures).” Davila, “Of Methodology,” 6.

26
.
Bauckham, “The Throne,” 61.

27
.
I find incomprehensible, therefore, Baukham's claim that “early Christians said about Jesus what no other Jews had wished to say about the Messiah or any other figure; that he had been exalted by God to participate now in the cosmic sovereignty unique to the divine identity” (Bauckham, “The Throne,” 63), since Bauckham himself had just demonstrated the significance of Enoch in this regard. To answer, as he does implicitly in the next paragraph, that “the Parables represent a parallel rather than a source” does not in any way impugn the authority of the Similitudes to render his claim false; in fact, as I have argued here, it enhances it, since now we have at least two independent witnesses to this religious concept, neither dependent on the other. Further, it should be emphasized that accepting Bauckham's premise, which seems compelling, that there are not a series of semi-divine mediator figures within Second Temple Judaism to which Jesus could have been assimilated forces us to recognize that Daniel 7:13–14 already assumes that the Son of Man shares in God's divinity, thus once again giving the lie to Bauckham's claim to some absolute uniqueness to Christology in the Jesus version. The Similitudes and the Gospels represent two developments out of the Danielic tradition. Of course, this does not preclude further religious creativity on the part of each of these traditions, as we see from the Gospels' apparent powerful addition of Psalm 110:1 to the mix (if Bauckham is right) and the continuation of the Enoch tradition in 3 Enoch (if he is, as I suppose, wrong).

28
.
Michael Edward Stone,
Fourth Ezra: A Commentary on the Book of Fourth Ezra,
ed. Frank Moore Cross, Hermeneia—a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), 381–82.

29
.
Ibid., 383.

30
.
Ibid., 387.

31
.
I offer a different way of approaching the Son of Man, an approach that doesn't so much resolve the famous Son of Man debate but makes an end run around it by asking different questions. Joel Marcus has made this same point in quite another language when he wrote, “This conclusion [that the “Son of Man” in the Similitudes is pre-Christian] is supported by the way in which Jesus, in the Gospels, generally treats the Son of Man as a known quantity, never bothering to explain the term, and the way in which certain of this figure's characteristics, such as his identity with the Messiah or his prerogrative of judging, are taken for granted. With apologies to Voltaire, we may say that if the Enochic Son of Man had not existed, it would have been necessary to invent him to explain the Son of Man sayings in the Gospels.” Joel Marcus,
Mark 1–8: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary
(New York: Doubleday, 2000), 530.