Page:Quest of the Historical Jesus (1911).djvu/291

 purely eschatological transcendental significance which the term had taken on in the Similitudes of Enoch and retains in Fourth Ezra had no existence for Jesus? Thus, by a long round-about, criticism has come back to Johannes Weiss.<refSee the classical discussion in J. Weiss, Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes, 1892, 1st ed., p. 52 ff.

In the second edition, of 1900, p. 160 ff., he allows himself to be led astray by the "chiefest apostles" of modern theology to indulge in the subtleties of fine spun psychology, and explain Jesus' way of speaking of Himself in the third person as the Son of Man as due to the "extreme modesty of Jesus," a modesty which did not forsake Him in the presence of His judges. This recent access of psychologist exegesis has not conduced to clearness of presentation, and the preference for Lucan narrative does not so much contribute to throw light on the facts as to discover in the thoughts of Jesus subtleties of which the historical Jesus never dreamt. If the Lord always used the term Son of Man when speaking of His Messiahship, the reason was that this was the only way in which He could speak at all, since the Messiahship was not yet realised, but was only to be so at the appearing of the Son of Man. For a consistent, purely historical, non-psychological exposition of the Son-of-Man passages see Albert Schweitzer, Das Messianitats- und Leidensgeheimnis. (The Secret of the Messiahship and the Passion.) A sketch of the Life of Jesus. Tubingen, 1901. > His eschatological solution of the Son-of-Man question-the elements of which are to be found in Strauss's first Life of Jesus-is the only possible one. Dalman expresses the same idea in the form of a question. "How could one who was actually walking the earth come down from heaven? He would have needed first to be translated thither. One who had died or been rapt away from earth might possibly be brought back to earth in this way." Having reached this point we have only to observe further that Jesus, from the "confession of Peter" onwards, always speaks of the Son of Man in connexion with death and resurrection. That is to say, that once the disciples know in what relation He stands to the Son of Man, He uses this title to suggest the manner of His return: as the sequel to His death and resurrection He will return to the world again as a superhuman Personality. Thus the purely transcendental use of the term suggested by Dalman as a possibility turns out to be the historical reality.

Broadly speaking, therefore, the Son-of-Man problem is both historically solvable and has been solved. The authentic passages are those in which the expression is used in that apocalyptic sense which goes back to Daniel. But we have to distinguish two different uses of the term according to the degree of knowledge assumed in the hearers. If the secret of Jesus is unknown to them, then in that case they understand simply that Jesus is speaking of the "Son of Man" and His coming without having any suspicion that He and the Son of Man have any connexion. It would be thus, for instance, when in sending out the disciples in Matt. x. 23 He announced the imminence of the appearing of the Son of Man; or when He pictured the judgment which the Son of Man would hold (Matt. xxv. 31-46), if we may imagine