Enoch As Mediator, Messiah, Judge, and Son of Man in The Book of Parables, A Jewish Response To Early Jewish-Christian Theology - Antonio Piñero

Pinero – Enoch as Mediator, Messiah, Judge and Son of Man 1
La figura e le funzioni di Enoc: messia, mediatore, giudice, Figlio

dell’uomo
ENOCH AS MEDIATOR, MESSIAH, JUDGE,

AND SON OF MAN IN THE BOOK OF PARABLES
A Jewish Response to Early Jewish-Christian Theology?
ANTONIO PIÑERO, Xxxxxxxxx
The current essay is a reflection upon my reading of the two recent works
indicated in the note below.1 It aims at exploring afresh an intricate problem
hitherto somewhat neglected, namely, the possibility that the Son of Man
concept (Menschensohnbegriff) set forth in the Parables of Enoch contains an
Enochic response to the Son of Man christology developed in different strata
of the New Testament.2 In what follows I shall present this tentative hypothe-
1
Composed in the frame of an official Research Project belonging to the Spanish Ministry
of Science and Innovation (MICINN): “250 años de investigación sobre el Jesús histórico” [250
Years of Research on the Historical Jesús], FFI-2009-09316, this essay reflects tentatively upon
the works of M. Casey (The solution to the “Son of Man” Problem [see n. 1 below]), and G.
W. E. Nickelsburg and J. C. VanderKam (1 Enoch 2: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch,
Chapters 37-82 [see n. 1 below]) and intends to provide a new hypothesis on the history of
early Christology and what I would label its Enochic counterpart. I thank Carlos A. Segovia for
improving my weak English.
2
Because of its hypothetical character, almost no secondary bibliography will be provided
in the body of this paper. Yet I have taken into account the following studies, which, nonetheless,
deserve to be mentioned at the outset: G. Aranda Pérez - F. García Martínez - M. Pérez
Fernández, Literatura judía intertestamentaria (Estella: Verbo Divino, 1996); R.K. Bultmann,
Theology of the New Testament (2 vols.; New York: Scribner, 1951-1955; reissued in Waco,
TX: Baylor University Press, 2007); M. Casey, The Solution to the “Son of Man” Problem
(LNTS 343; London: T&T Clark International, 2007); J.H. Charlesworth, The Old Testament
Pseudepigrapha and the New Testament (SNTSMS 54; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1985); id., “Can We Discern the Composition Date of the Parables of Enoch?,” in Enoch and
the Messiah Son of Man: Revisiting the Book of Parables, ed. G. Boccaccini (Grand Rapids,
MI: Eerdmans, 2007), pp. 450-468; J. J. Collins, The Scepter and the Star: The Messiahs of the
Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Ancient Literature (2nd ed.; New York: Doubleday, 2010); id., The
Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to Jewish Apocalyptic Literature (2nd ed.; Grand
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998); F. Corriente - A. Piñero, “Libro 1 de Enoch (et y gr),” in Apócrifos
delAntiguo Testamento, ed. A. Díez Macho and A. Piñero Sáenz (7 vols.; Madrid: Cristiandad,
1984-), 4:11-143; M. A. Knibb, The Ethiopic Book of Enoch: A new Edition in the Light of
the Aramaic Dead Sea Fragments in Consultation with Edward Ullendorff (2 vols.; Oxford:
Clarendon, 1978); D. Muñoz León, “Libro IV de Esdras,” in Apócrifos del Antiguo Testamento,
ed. A. Díez Macho and A. Piñero, 6:301-465; G. W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1: A Commentary
on the Book of 1 Enoch, Chapters 1-36, 83-108 (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001); id.,
Jewish Literature between the Bible and the Mishnah: A Historical and Literary Introduction
(2nd ed.; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005); A. Piñero, “Interaction of Judaism and Hellenismin
the Gospel of John,” in Hellenic and Jewish Arts: Interaction, Tradition, and Renewal: The
Hen 35(1/2013)
2.Pinero.indd 1 19/05/2013 02.55.24

2 Theme Section / Sezione monografica
sis as a plausible conclusion that can be drawn from the study of these two
inter-related textual corpora.
For the sake of clarity I will first present the underlying hypothesis in this
essay, in which I will trace some tentative insights on some questions raised
after reading together the extraordinary books by M. Casey, and G. W. E.
Nickelsburg and J. C. VanderKam:
First, can the Book of Parables (BP) be read as a Jewish reply to the
ideological assumption of the first Jewish-Christians who dared to reinter-
pret Jesus – in spite of his death on the cross – as the preexistent celestial
Messiah, as the Anointed One, the Chosen One, and the Suffering Servant
of YHWH? Their assumptions seems to be the ideological assumptions of the
“Petrine” theology recorded in Acts and the Hellenistic Jewish-Christian the-
ology from Damascus and Antioch.
Second: Would it be likewise possible that the theology developed by
Mark, Matthew, and Luke about Jesus as “the Son of the Man” is a vehicle of
a Jewish-Christian response to the authors of BP, following Paul’s theology
of the cross?
Third: would it be possible, furthermore, that Chapter 71, added to the
bulk of BP, was intentionally reduced to silence in the Book of Revelation?
The Jewish-Christian author of the latter emphatically affirms that only Jesus
is the Son of the Man, the Suffering Servant of YHWH (the Lamb sacrificed
on Easter), the Anointed One, the Son of David, the Universal Judge of the
Kings and the Mighty (the Roman Empire). Could it be that John’s Revela-
tion, therefore, is the last New Testament response to the Jewish pretensions
of applying the brakes (Chapter 71 of BP) to the Christian process of heroi-
zing and divinizing Jesus?
Fourth: could it also be that, in agreement with the literary habits of the
time, these answers were not direct, but indirect ones? Responses need not
mention the adversary’s conceptions, nor need they be a direct refutation
of these. Refutations often consisted in the composition of a new work that
endorsed new perspectives. The reader, nevertheless, knew perfectly well
against whom such new perspectives were directed. In the mid-first century
C.E., prior to the Jewish Revolt against Rome, different groups of pious, mar-
Howard Gilman International Conferences I Delphi, 18-24 June, 1995, ed. A. Ovadiah (Tel
Aviv: Tel Aviv University/Ramot, 1998), pp. 93-122; A. Piñero, ed., Biblia y Helenismo: El
pensamiento griego y la formación del cristianismo (Córdoba: El Almendro, 2006); P. Sacchi,
Apocrifi dell’Antico Testamento (2 vols.; Turin: Unione Tipografica - Editrice Torinese, 1981-
1989); id., The History of the Second Temple Period (2nd ed.; London: T&TClark International,
2004); M.E. Stone, Fourth Ezra: A Commentary on the Book of Fourth Ezra (Hermeneia;
Minneapolis: Fortress,1990); D.W. Suter, “Weighed in the Balance: The Similitudes of Enoch
in Recent Discussion,” RelSRev 7 (1981), pp. 217-21. G.W.E. Nickelsburg - J.C. VaderKam, 1
Enoch 2: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch, Chapters 37-82 (Hermeneia; Minneapolis:
Fortress, 2011). In Nickelsburg’s and VanderKam’s commentary the reader will find a very
complete and updated bibliography.
2.Pinero.indd 2 19/05/2013 02.55.28

ginal Jews of apocalyptic mentality seem to have defended their own ideas of
how the Messiah should be. Yet the new Jewish-Christian theology exceeded
the inner limits of Judaism and was judged impossible to accept, since it lead to
ditheism. The process of Jesus’ divinization, which is totally clear in the Fourth
Gospel, produced moments of very serious tension between Jewish-Christians
and both mainstream and marginal pious Jews, especially apocalyptic Jews.
Around the times in which the Gospel of Matthew was composed (85-90 C.E.)
it lead to the separation between Jewish and Jewish-Christians groups and tur-
ned out to be intolerable for the Jews at the end of the century.
A possible scenario
This state of affairs presupposes the following possible scenario imme-

diately after Jesus’ death: groups of pious apocalyptic Jews, dissidents of
mainstream Judaism, were fully convinced of being recipients of God’s spe-
cial revelations. They were also persuaded that they were living in the last
days, just before the imminent end of the present world, which would bring
about the restoration of Israel and the coming of God’s kingdom. It was an
age of anxiety and distress and of deep anti-Roman feelings, since Rome
was the oppressive power of the chosen people of God. To be sure, there was
among these groups a great diversity of conceptions about the events that
would bring the end of the oppression of the righteous of Israel. But they all
agreed that an immediate intervention of God was about to take place. God
would send his special agent to the earth, who would annihilate Israel’s ene-
mies and prepare the land of Israel for the establishment of God’s Kingdom.
Yet the Romans were too strong to be defeated by human means. Israel nee-
ded a new Gideon to fight against God’s enemies. This scenario represented,
therefore, the moment prior to the final universal Judgment, which would
take place after the defeat of Israel’s enemies and ought to be preceded by the
resurrection of the dead. After this final judgment, God would establish his
reign on a renewed earth and a new heaven. But prior to that, God’s Messiah
would receive the submission of the kings and the mighty, the powerful ene-
mies of God and of his chosen people.
A. Considering what we now know from the Dead Sea Scrolls, in this hi-
ghly inflamed messianic scenario there existed a powerful Jewish apocalyp-
tic group whose referential figure was not Moses – even without denying
his importance3 – but Enoch, the seventh man after Adam. According to the
members of this apocalyptic group, Enoch himself had been chosen by God
3
“The absence of Moses [in BP] simply reflects the fact that this author stands in a tradition
that celebrates Enoch as the earliest prophet and as the recipient of eschatological . . . wisdom
. . . Different from other parts of the Enochic corpus, the Parables say nothing that is arguably
anti-Mosaic . . . [T]he absence of any reference to temple, priesthood and purity provides
us with no information about the author’s positive or negative attitudes about these matters”
(Nickelsburg and VanderKam, 1 Enoch 2, ?).
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as a prophet and revealer of the mysteries of the end times. As the Enochic
corpus demonstrates, the lineaments of this figure had been already develo-
ped by earlier apocalyptic groups.
B. Between the years 30-40 C.E., a new apocalyptic group arose whose
hero was not Enoch but the almost unknown rabbi Jesus of Nazareth, killed
by the Romans but resurrected by God. Some of the Jesus’ first followers,
independent members of the Jewish-Christian church of Jerusalem, and espe-
cially the Jewish-Christian Hellenists of Damascus and Antioch, began to
construct a solid re-interpretation of Jesus as Messiah. They formulated a
Christology, which would produce Jesus’ heroization and later divinization.
Such new theology extracted Jesus out of the human sphere to place him dan-
gerously into the area of the divine. Inspired by the Spirit, as they themselves
believed to be, the members of this new apocalyptic group had dared to create
a new messianology relying on the belief that Jesus’s death was according to
a divine, eternal plan, and that Jesus had revived after his death in the cross.
The Spirit had revealed to them that a new, inspired reading of the scrip-
tures would help them discover this new divine plan for salvation. Jesus,
who had inaugurated the messianic age, was considered rather quickly to be
the only Messiah, the real Son of David, the Anointed One, the Chosen, the
Prophet, the universal Judge, the agent of God’s kingdom. He began to be
regarded as the real embodiment of the “one like a son of man” predicted in
the book of Daniel. For his followers, Jesus, the definitive messianic figure,
appeared in the fullness of the times.
It was not necessary for the moment (i.e., between 30-50 C.E.), however,
to theologically define whether the expression “son of man” (“the Son of the
Man” in Greek) was a strict messianic title that could be used to name the
Savior. Such expression pointed to a heavenly figure and this was enough.
Jewish-Christians were also claiming that, in his earthly life, Jesus himself
had already applied this expression to his own person. Jesus was the Messiah,
but a new one, a Suffering-Triumphant Messiah, and the universal Eschatolo-
gical Judge. This interpretation of Jesus was in fact very dangerous, since it
lead to an equally dangerous ditheism. There was “in heaven not one Power,
but two,” although the Second was subordinated to the First.
C. The Enochians reacted in an indirect but forceful way, according to the
style of the times. They did not compose a direct refutation of these senseless
Jewish-Christian pretensions, as they viewed them, but created a new work
which expressed a different perspective on the Messiah, although theirs is
Jewish outlook as well: the concluding in chapter 70 of BP. Their response
was based upon very ancient material, the Book of the Watchers, re-read and
reinterpreted by them on a traditional scheme of revelatory visions from God
or his angels. This was a very old scheme which is already found in Ez 40-48.
In BP Enoch appears as a human being, a son of man, but raised to a
semi-divine status as the Chosen One, the Anointed One, the Universal Judge
2.Pinero.indd 4 19/05/2013 02.55.28

of the living and the dead and the vindicator of the righteous and chosen of
Israel. His function and “name” was foreseen and created by God before he
created the universe. In this work, which followed the steps of the book of
Daniel, there was no danger of ditheism, for Enoch is in BP a mere human
being, albeit we are told he had the face of an angel. For the Enochians, he
was the personification of the human assistant and agent of God, and in his
function he did not exceed the limits of Israel’s hopes.4
D. After having knowledge of this new Enochic writing, the Jewish-Chri-
stians reacted by intensifying Jesus’ divine predicates and by composing a
“biographical” story of Jesus in a new literary mold, a gospel, which cer-
tainly extended its influence among them quickly. It was Mark who initiated
this process of identifying Jesus still more clearly as the Danielic Son of
Man, to whom God had granted divine qualities. That seems to be clear in
Mark 14:61ff. Everything about this divine decision was revealed before-
hand in the Scriptures by God’s Spirit, and could be readily deduced from
them by reading them between the lines. This new literary, biographical, and
theological work was thought to be a full and concrete specification of Jesus’
figure as Son of David, Prophet, Anointed One, “Son of Man” (in Greek),
Universal Judge, and the Incarnation of Wisdom. As incarnation of Wisdom
he was regarded as both preexistent and divine. This Jewish-Christian reac-
tion to the Enochic Messianology was rather successful and quite promptly
found its followers in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Thus we can affirm
that between 70-95 C.E. the expression “one like a son of man” evolved into
a strict messianic title, “The Son of the Man” (with two articles in Greek).
Nevertheless, it was only shortly after this that Jesus’ full figure as preexi-
sting and divine appeared within the Christian movement. In no more than
twenty years, the Prologue to John’s Gospel was composed and published.
Surprisingly, far from going back to earlier positions, Jewish-Christians radi-
cals went even further forward: there were, in fact, “two Powers in heaven”5.
4
Nickelsburg and VanderKam, 1 Enoch 2, 39.
5
See J. Marcus, Mark 8-16: A new Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AYB;
New Haven: Yale Universidad, 2009), 1009: “Philo (On Dreams 2.129-131; Decalogue 61-69;
Embassy to Gaius 353, 357, 367-368) denounces as blasphemers those who claim to be like God,
who give the Creator and the creature equal honor, or who “worship those who are our brothers
by nature,” though he is able, nonetheless to refer to the Logos as a second God. In b. Sanh. 38b,
similarly, R. Jose denounces R. Aqiba for profaning the divine presence by interpreting the plural
“thrones” in Dan 7:9 as a reference to the Messiah’s enthronement beside God. In y. Ta’an. 2:1
(65b; Neusner, 18.183) R. Abahu condemns any person who claims to be a god, to be the Son of
Man, or to go up to heaven. This sort of stretching of biblical monotheism is linked with the motif
of someone besides God sitting in heaven in 3 En. 16:2-3: “When he saw me seated upon a throne
like a king, with ministering angels standing beside me as servants’,” he opened his mouth and
said, ‘There are indeed two powers in heaven!’” (cf. b. Ḥag. 15a; Gen. Rab. 65.21; Alexander, “3
Enoch,” 54-66; “Family,” 292). 3 Enoch and the rabbinic traditions postdate the NT, but the same
idea is expressed in a Qumran text, 11Q17 (11QShirShabb) 7:4 “In his glorious shrines they do
not sit” (my trans.; cf. Newsom, Songs, pp. 308-309). This proscription has to do with the notion
that inferiors stand while superiors sit (cf. Mark 4:1; 10:37).”
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It did not matter whether mainstream Jews could understand this theology
as a strong case of ditheism. It was after all already present in Philo Judaeus.
E. Enoch’s followers reacted in turn by affirming once more that the pree-
xisting Son of Man was not Jesus, but Enoch. The support of this contention
was the composition of a powerful appendix to BP, Chapter 71, added to the
bulk of the writing. For the Enochic Jews Enoch was not a new, second God.
He could be human and divine simultaneously, without contradiction6.
F. As far as we know, the last first-century C.E. Jewish-Christian reaction
to the Enochians is John’s Revelation. According to its author, Jesus was the
Son of David, the Anointed One/the Messiah, the Son of Man (an expression
that he interprets as a messianic title), the Suffering Servant of YHWH (i.e.,
the Lamb sacrificed in Easter), the only Son of God subordinated as such to
the Father, and the universal Judge who would finally destroy the mighty and
the kings, namely, the Roman Empire.
G. But let me insist upon what seems to me essential for my argument. A
direct refutation was not the Jewish standard in polemical texts of this time.
A direct response to the arguments of the adversary, one by one, was not as
usual as the presentation in a new book of the same motif addressed from a
different perspective. It was by no means necessary to write a direct, concrete
story in opposition to a similar story7. Let me give two examples of this:
(a) Two passages from the book of Wisdom, namely 2:23-3:10 and
6:18. These were probably composed as a reply to Qohelet 3:21-22 and
8:15; that is, they were probably written against the Preacher, but neither
mentioning him nor in the manner of a direct refutation.
(b) The composition of John’s Gospel. The relationship between the
Synoptics and John is disputed, but it seems impossible to me that the
author of the Fourth Gospel did not know the Synoptic Gospels at all or
at least some Synoptic material. Its author implicitly refutes the Synoptic
views on Jesus which he considered to be “material,” i.e., not spiritual
or pneumatic, without mentioning them (Clement of Alexandria dixit ac-
cording to Eusebios of Caesarea, who accepts the notice on John from
Clement’s Hypotyposeis or Adumbrationes; see Eusebius, Eccesiastical
History VI 14.7). In short, John proceeds by omissions and allusions,
he sets forth complementary stories and composes new Jesus’ speeches
6
Cf. 4Q246 (4Q540?), 11Q13Mel, where there seems to be contradiction between these
two attributes. But see also Nickelsburg and VanderKam, 1 Enoch 2, 52, referring to 1 En 51:1-
5 + 61:5 /39:4-5: “The scenario in both passages, 51:1-5 + 61:5, appears to stand in blatant
contradiction to 39:4-5.”
7
Nickelsburg and VanderKam, 1 Enoch 2, 3 do not seem to be aware of this when they
write: “Like the Epistle BP is set in a time of political, social and economic oppression; but
different from the Epistle, BP does not indicate that the author and his audience belong to a
group that contrasts itself with other Jews whose religious practice (and belief) they consider
to be in error…”. See further p. 57.
2.Pinero.indd 6 19/05/2013 02.55.28

placed by him in a different context, thus giving birth to a different, pu-

rely “spiritual” interpretation of Jesus. In my opinion, the Fourth Go-
spel corrects, amends, and sometimes contradicts the Synoptic tradition.8
Two typical examples, in which the author says nothing expressly against
other Gospels but are refutations of preceding Gospel material are:
- The elimination of Jesus’ baptism and its substitution by a Christological
proclamation put in John the Baptist’s mouth (John 1:29-34); and
- The elimination of the institution of the Eucharist and its substitution
by Jesus’ foot washing of his disciples. Echoes of the Eucharistic institu-
tion appear nonetheless in John 6:35-59 framed into a genuine Johannine
theology… the only real theology of Jesus according to the author of the
Fourth Gospel! In that passage in chapter six several sayings of Jesus are
placed there in an absolutely different historical and theological context.
There are dozens of other examples of the same phenomenon:

- The Book of Jubilees, which corrects and complements the Book of
Genesis.
- LAB also corrects, or complements, the Hebrew Bible. Cf. for instan-
ce Anna’s Canticle in LAB 51:33ff, which notably corrects 1 Sam 2.
- Likewise, BP corrects, or complements, the Book of the Watchers.
Furthermore, 1 Enoch 42 can be read as a re-interpretation of the Book
of Daniel; 1 Sam 7; Is 11. 42. 52-53; Prov 8; Sir 24; etc.9
H. If, as a hypothesis, we presuppose a late date (ca. 50 C.E.) for BP, his
author would have had a similar attitude to that of the Fourth Gospel author
or editor. His reply to the Christian authors would have been more or less as
follows: “You, Christians, contend that your Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, is
the real Son of Man; conversely we Jews claim with equally good or better
arguments that the Son of Man was, and is, the prophet Enoch.” The twofold
composition of the Similitudes of Enoch (BP + chap. 71 afterwards) was
the Enochic answer to the Jewish-Christian messianic claims, but it was not
construed as a direct refutation in so far as its potential readers knew well its
target.
I cannot give here an absolute demonstration or proof of this hypothe-
sis and scenario, which could probably help to understand the relationship
between BP and the New Testament, since such a task would very likely
require a complete monograph! Yet it is possible to offer at last some indica-
tions in favor of its fairness:
8
For a thorough-going assessment of the Fourth Gospel’s critique of the Synoptic Gospels see
J. Harold Ellens, The Son of Man in the Gospel of John (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2009).
9
See the correspondences and contrasts provided in Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 13, 56, as well
as those provided in Nickelsburg and VanderKam, 1 Enoch 2, 79.
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I The arguments for a pre-Christian date of BP are extremely weak.

II BP was probably composed in the second third of the first century C.E.
(ca. 50):
a) The absence of BP from Qumran is significant for a post-Christian
date of BP.
b) Regarding its central messianic figure, BP’s theology is akin to
that of the Hellenistic Jewish-Christians, whose ideas can be deduced
from the Acts of the apostles and from Paul’s genuine letters.
c) Regarding its messianism in general, BP’s theology is also similar
to that of two works safely datable at the end of the first century C.E.,
2 Baruch and 4 Ezra.
III BP (without Chapter 71) does still not understand the expression “son of
man” as a proper messianic title. It insists on the humanity of the prophet
Enoch, though his “name” was pronounced before God prior to the crea-
tion of the world. BP could thus be a response to the Hellenistic Jewish-
Christian theology that exalts the Jesus’ figure up to a divine setting by
supposing him really preexistent.
IV If, prior to the appearance of Mark’s Gospel (ca. 70/71 C.E.), the concept
“Son of Man” as a proper messianic title did not exist, i.e., there was no
messianic figure who attributed such a title to himself, it can be supposed
that such a title was a creation of the Synoptic theologians, and more spe-
cifically a creation of the author of the Gospel of Mark. Mark’s theology
is tied to his conception of the “messianic secret,” and might encapsulate
the mature and almost definitive response of Mark and his followers,
Matthew and Luke, to the doctrine regarding the prophet Enoch found in
BP.
V The Enochic response to these claims about a false Messiah, Jesus, who
was nonetheless exalted by his followers, could then be Enoch’s identifi-
cation with the Son of Man regarded as divine and preexistent. Enoch is
the real Son of Man, not Jesus. BP chapter 71 must probably be read as
an addendum to the main bulk of the Parables. It was composed before
the destruction of the Temple and it incorporates BP’s previous doctrine
about the preexistence of the Son of Man.
VI The last first-century Jewish-Christian response to Enochic pretensions
could be, as I have suggested, John’s Revelation.
In the following pages I intend to expand these points (I-VI)
I.
Dating BP in pre-Christian times depends on the following presumption:

the historical Jesus innovated dramatically within Judaism. Although Jesus
joined a well established tradition about the Son of Man, he innovated by
affirming that he was the “Son of Man”. In other words, he was the fulfil-
lment of the divine promises about the coming of this heavenly figure: he,
2.Pinero.indd 8 19/05/2013 02.55.29

and no other, was the Messiah, the Son of Man. He knew in advance God’s
plan about the need of his suffering, death and resurrection as the suffering
Servant of YHWH (Mark 8:27-29; 9; 10). He also knew that his appointment
as Messiah made him divine and guaranteed him a seat at the right hand of
the Father, or to stand before Him (Acts 7:56). As a consequence of his divine
designation, Jesus was entrusted by God to perform the role of supreme Jud-
ge at the divine Judgment after his second and definitive coming (Mark 14:62
+ Matt 25:31-46, though there is no second coming in John. Moreover in the
Fourth Gospel, 5:27-47, Jesus insists he will not act as judge or prosecutor).
Most New Testament scholars suppose that, to a great extent, the featu-
res of the Son of Man figure remain unchanged in the Gospels, especially
in the Synoptic Gospels, which in their view drew upon the Similitudes of
Enoch. There Jesus is presented as the Son of Man (taken as a messianic
title), the Righteous One, the Servant of YHWH, the Chosen One, the Davi-
dic Messiah, the Anointed One, the preexisting Judge who will punish the
sinners together with the rebellious angels and will reward the righteous,
resurrecting them to live in a transformed land. It has been argued that “BP
is deservedly considered to be a link between Daniel’s prophecy and the
New Testament”10.
This kind of argument supposes that in the first century C.E. there existed
among the Jews a clear and universal conscience of the existence of a hea-
venly messianic figure alluded to in several writings as the Son of Man. Jesus
simply claimed that he was such a figure. This position has been defended
by arguing first,
(A) An early, high, pre-Christian date for BP; and
(B) The existence in BP of a “Son of Man Concept” which would translate
into a messianic title; that is, the messianic title “Son of Man” existed as
such before the appearance of Christianity and every pious Jew knew and
understood it without problem.
(A) One of the supporters of a pre-Christian date for BP is Paolo Sacchi,
who dates it back to the year 30 B.C.E. The argument in his book The Histo-
ry of Israel in the Second Temple Period, runs as follows: The figure of the
Son of Man as such comes certainly from Daniel’s book, but now it is a real
autonomous figure that is identified as Enoch (1Hen 71,14) and is declared
Messiah (1 Hen 52,4). “Son of Man,” therefore, seems to be a title that ap-
plies to a mysterious and superhuman figure that has Messianic functions and
that the Similitudes identifies with Enoch, probably in an added fragment, but
surely not of a Christian hand (1En [LP] 71,14).
My first suggestion in this essay would be: the reasons for sustaining (A)
BP’s early date and (B) that “Son of Man” figures in BP as title are far from
being convincing, and are probably erroneous.
10
Aranda Pérez - García Martínez - Pérez Fernández, Literatura intertestamentaria, p. 280.
2.Pinero.indd 9 19/05/2013 02.55.29

Regarding A)
The first argument to date BP before the common era is an erroneous
interpretation of 1 En 56:5-7:
“5 And in those days the angels will gather together, and will throw
themselves towards the east upon the Parthians and Medes; they will stir
up the kings, so that a disturbing spirit will come upon them, and they
will drive them from their thrones; and they will come out like lions from
their lairs, and like hungry wolves in the middle of their flocks. 6 And
they will go up and trample upon the land of my chosen ones, and the
land of my chosen ones will become before them a tramping ground and
a beaten track. 7 But the city of my righteous ones will be a hindrance to
their horses, and they will stir up slaughter amongst themselves and their
own right will be strong against them”11.
It is normally assumed that this text refers to the invasion of the Parthians
in 40 B.C.E.; according to Sacchi, exactly ten years before the composition of
BP. It is legitimate to think that, if such a little time has passed, the historical
account provided in BP should be very precise. But it is not. The argument,
therefore, does not seem to me convincing for the following reasons:
First, the text refers to Parthians and the Medes, not just to the Parthians.
It is possible, therefore, to argue that the passage alludes to a group of tra-
ditional enemies of Israel, living in diverse epochs. Conversely, according
to Flavius Josephus (Ant. 14.330 and Bell. 1.248), the Parthians were those
who invaded Israel in 40 B.C.E.
Second, BP speak of “kings” in plural, when in fact there was no king
among the invaders: they were lead by a son of the Persian king, Pacorus,
and a satrap, Barzafranes, both of whom were Persians/Parthians. Jerusalem
was not fortified in a special way against them, and indeed the city proved
not a serious impediment for the invading army, at least not for the claimant
Antigonus, who, after recruiting some followers among the Jews, entered the
city with relative facility and launched some skirmishes from inside against
the troops of Fasael, Herod’s brother.
When the Parthians managed to attract Fasael to a mortal trap, a small
detachment of the Parthian cavalry stayed before the walls and fought against
Herod, who was still inside the city. Herod, knowing that the country was full
of Jewish adversaries, that is, of Antigonus’ supporters and of Parthians in-
vaders who up to the moment had plundered the land but had scarcely fought
seriously, left the city without any battle and fled toward Masada and Petra…
In any case, if there was some struggle, it was against a skirmish of Jews who
uselessly tried to prevent Herod’s retreat.
Therefore, I do not see in BP 56:5-7 any certain allusion to 40 B.C.E. In
my opinion the author of this text is thinking of the last battle against Israel
11
Knibb, The Ethiopic Book of Enoch, 2:140.
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conducted by the kings of the earth. The author is drawing his inspiration
from Ez 38 and 39. The Parthians and the Medes, the most powerful kings of
his time are representing Gog and Magog. In this text however, the kings are
not taking their impulse from God, as in Ez 38:14-17, but from angels as in
Dan 10:13ff. With D. W. Suter, therefore, I rather think that the controversial
passage is an atemporal and an ahistoric reference to the ancient motive of
the attacked Sion, as it is reflected, for example, in Psalms 48:2-8 and 76:2-7.
See, for instance, the Coptic Apocalypse of Elijah and its references in 2:42-
43 to the war waged in the last days between the Persian and the Assyrian
Kings in Jerusalem.12
The second argument in favor of BP early, pre-Christian date is BP 67:8-
13:
“8 And in those days those waters will serve the kings and the mighty and
the exalted, and those who dwell upon the dry ground, for the healing of
soul and body, but (also) for the punishment of the spirit. And the spirits
are(so) full of lust that will be punished in their bodies, for they denied
the Lord of Spirits. And they see their punishment everyday, yet they do
not believe in his name. 9 And the more their bodies are burnt, the more
a change will come over their spirits for ever and ever; for no one can
speak an idle word before the Lord of Spirits. 10 For judgment will come
upon them, for they believe in the lust of their bodies but deny the spirit
of the Lord. 11 And those same waters will undergo a change in those
days; for when those angels are punished in those days the temperature of
those springs of water will change, and when the angels come up (from
the water), that water of the springs will change and will become cold. 12
And I heard the holy Michael answering and saying: ‘This judgment with
which the angels are judged is a testimony for the kings and the mighty
who possess the dry ground. 13 For these waters of judgment (serve) for
the healing of the bodies of the kings, and for the lust of their bodies; but
they do not see and do not believe that these waters will change, and will
become a fire which burns forever”13
This text is confirmed by Josephus, Ant. 17.171-173:
“But though he (Herod) was suffering greater misery than could well be
endured, he still had hopes of recovering, and so he summoned his physi-
cians and made up his mind to use whatever remedies they might suggest.
He therefore crossed the river Jordan and took baths in the warm springs
at Callirrhoe, the water of which beside all their other virtues are also
good to drink… And when his physicians decided to warm his body there
and had seated him in a tub of (warm) oil he looked to them as though he
had passed away. But he was brought round by the cries of lamentation
12
See H. P. Houghton, “The Coptic Apocalyse of Elijah,” Aegyptus 39 (1939), pp. 43-67.
13
Knibb, The Ethiopic Book of Enoch, 2:157-8.
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uttered by his servants, and since he had not the slightest hope of being
restored to health he gave orders to distribute fifty drachmas apiece to all
his soldiers… Then he once more came to Jericho” (Trans. by R. Marcus
[Loeb Classical Library] 8:451).
The parallel text of Bellum 1.657-659 is somehow briefer, but essentially

the same. It is not necessary to spend a lot of time to find out that the com-
parative material – out of which some scholars deduce a specific allusion in
BP to Herod the Great – only mentions the therapeutic visit of the King to
Callirrhoe, which is not alluded to in BP, which speaks of a sort of Gehenna
valley (67:4-7) . Besides, even if the historical tradition insists on the helpful
influence of these waters, it only mentions that the king Herod almost died
because of having been put into a tub of warm oil, not by any good or bad
effect of the Callirrhoe waters. Therefore, I think that this argument cannot
help us to date BP soon after 5/4 B.C.E. Besides, the proverbial cruelty of
King Herod was indeed well known almost a century after his death (Gospel
of Mathew!).
Another minor argument that relates BP’s composition to the time of He-
rod the Great, also pre-Christian, is the claim that BP presupposes a setting
of persecution and oppression that fits well with the cruel reign of the latter.14
I think, however, that such a “period of oppression” fits equally well with the
epoch of Archelaos, Herod Antipas (cf. the slaying of John the Baptist and
the persecution of Jesus who escapes from him in Luke 13:32).
The third argument is the comparison of the Wisdom of Solomon, thou-
ght to have been composed before 50 C.E., with certain BP texts:
(a) Thus Wisdom 2:4-5 and BP 62-63, which could belong to a “common
ideological trend”; and
(b) Wisdom 4:10-15 and BP 71:14 concerning Enoch’s assumption.
But with regard to (a): We do not know when the book of Wisdom was
composed. It could very well be contemporary with Philo of Alexandria, and
therefore close to the first half of the first century C.E. It was very probably
written before the fall of the Temple. But I can not see a clear term of com-
parison between the two texts. Wisdom 2:4-5, is in my opinion, a clear com-
mentary on Pindar’s famous sentence: “The man is the shade of a dream”:
skiás ónar ánthropos (Pyticae 8.96). Actually, the idea itself is a Hellenistic
topos, and if there is some slight allusion to it in BP 62-63 it might be due
to its influence, or to clearly similar ideas found in the Hebrew Bible on the
uselessness of men before God.
As for (b): It must be said that Wisdom 4:10-11, 14 fits especially well
with Enoch’s image, inasmuch as he is the righteous one par excellence and
translated as such into heaven (cf. BP 70:2). Now, this is a popular concept
drawn primarily from Genesis 5 concerning this “prophet,” who was famous
for his justice (“You are the human being born for justice, BP 71:14) and
14
Nickelsburg and VanderKam, 1 Enoch 2, p. 63.
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had ascended into heaven (BP 70:2; not 70,1!). There is no direct, verbal
contact between the Wisdom of Solomon and BP in these passages. Con-
sequently one may argue that both authors thought independently of Enoch
as the prototype of the righteous human being carried off by God, since this
was a common concept understood by any Jew who had read or listened to
the recitation of the book of Genesis (5:18-24) hundreds of times. Therefore,
Wisdom 4:10-15 can be inspired by Gen 5 rather than by BP.
The fourth argument is as follow. After a comparison of the “Son of
Man” theology in BP with the “Son of Man” Christology of the Synoptic Go-
spels, one discovers that in the first we have a theology in progress, whereas
in the Gospels this theology is already well developed and fixed. Therefore,
taking for granted the axiom that, in any ideological construction, the sim-
plest form always precedes the more complex one, a usual, chronological
norm in Formgeschichte studies, it is deduced that BP predates the Synoptic
Gospels. Hence BP was written in the first century B.C.E. One could be in ac-
cord with this argument, but, in good logic, such argument would only prove
that BP is pre-Synoptic, not that BP was composed in the times of Herod,
i.e., ca. 40 B.C.E! (see also Nickelsburg and VanderKam, 1 Enoch 2, 60-63).
Apart from the fact that this formgeschichtliche “norm” is neither fixed nor
even generally accepted or applied, the argument presupposes what must be
proved. Consider, for example, the complexity and tediousness of many of
Jesus’ miracle narratives in Mark later lightened, simplified and synthesized
by Matthew.
II.
No other fully convincing arguments have been raised against the as-
sumption that BP was probably composed in the mid-first century C.E.15 This
assumption relies on one complementary argument, which is not at all new.
Its strength consists of supporting the previous ones: No BP fragments have
been discovered at Qumran.
This very well-known argument, hoisted by many experts, seems to me
decisive for dating BP after 68 C.E. more in fact than any of the other afore-
mentioned arguments. The import of what we now label as “1 Enoch” was
considerable for the Qumran “librarians.” Among the texts found at Qumran,
there are, at least, fragments of eleven manuscripts that cover all the pre-
vious works assembled in 1 Enoch. So the only exception is BP (Knibb; Ni-
ckelsburg). Such a high number of manuscripts devoted to 1 Enoch indicates
the extreme importance ascribed to this work by the Qumran sectarians. If BP
15
Nicklesburg, 1 Enoch 2, p. 4: “We cannot place the text and its author’s social context in
the exact time and place that are often the (d)elusive goal of our scholarly quest”. In pp. 62-63:
“I date the Parables between the latter part of Herod’s [the Great] reign and the early decades of
the first century c.e., with some preference for the earlier part of this time span”.
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had existed towards 30 B.C.E. (Sacchi’s date), that is to say, ca. 100 years be-
fore the destruction of the settlement in 68 C.E., there should have been found
traces of its text. In my opinion, therefore, it would be more likely to date BP
in the first century C.E., and even more likely to date it in its second half; the
opposite seems to me much more unlikely. It has been argued that the absence
of certain Enochic documents from Qumran (BP included) could be the result
of sectarian censorship due to the existence of possible internal, ideological
conflicts within the Essene movement concerning the primitive history of the
sect. It could be so. Likewise, J. J. Collins claims that the absence of many
important works from the Qumran library only proves that, as a matter of fact,
certain writings were not included in it. Strictly speaking, it can be so. But, in
my opinion, in ancient history-making we must admit hints as hints, and even
more so if they are cumulative. The fact that BP is absent from Qumran is only
a mere hint, but this unquestionable reality joins the set of hints that point to
the weakness of the arguments that support a pre-Christian date.
Synthesis up to the moment:
- It seems to me that there are no powerful reasons to regard BP as pre-
Christian (pace Sacchi and many others, Nickelsburg included).
- It seems to me much more reasonable to date BP ca. 50 C.E., certainly
before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. The similarities between the
theological atmosphere of BP and that of the Hellenistic Jewish-Christian
theology from Damascus and Antioch, the genuine Pauline letters writ-
ten between 51-58 C.E. and presupposing Jesus’ preexistence, the Jewish
apocalyptic works composed at the end of the first century C.E. (2 Baruch
and 4 Ezra: an a fortiori argument), and the book of the Wisdom (ca. 50
C.E.) support this view.
In the following pages I will try to offer a possible basis to my hypothesis,

dating BP ca. 50 C.E., certainly before 70 C.E., by gathering together several
hints that join the previous arguments regarding the weakness inherent in the
arguments for BP’s early date.
First argument: BP’s messianism is somehow similar to that of the
Jewish-Christians, whether Hebrew or Hellenists, whose thought can be de-
duced from the Acts of the Apostles and from Paul’s genuine letters (written
before 58 C.E.). This would place BP in the first century C.E. rather then in
pre-Christian times.
In order to support this argument, I will briefly explain how I see the
beginnings of Christology and why I consider its content akin to the “Son of
Man” theology in BP:
The Jewish followers of the crucified Jesus concentrated in Jerusalem
and Galilee. It was a new but small apocalyptic group differing from other
Jewish groups in that its members believed that the executed convict, Jesus,
was indeed the Messiah, and that God had done justice to Jesus’ obedience
right up to his terrible death, by raising him from the dead. The first task of
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the new group was to give a satisfying explanation to the scandal of Jesus’
death on the cross. This explanation could only be sought in the Scriptures,
i.e., in God’s word. Yet prior to the time of the Messianic advent, the Spirit
had not revealed a right understanding of God’s plans. The Christians’ claims
were ignored because of what was judged to be a defective reading of the
Law and the Prophets.
The ideal and programmatic scene painted in Luke 24 clearly explains
this process. Luke tries to say that Jesus’ followers had found in the Scrip-
tures the solution to the mystery of the cross thanks to the inspiration of the
Spirit coming from the living Jesus: “He said to them: Oh, fools and slow of
heart to believe all that the Prophets have spoken; Ought not Christ to have
suffered these things, and to enter into his glory? And beginning at Moses
and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things
concerning himself”. Acts 3:18-19 expresses it as follows: “But those things,
which God before had showed by the mouth of all his prophets, that Christ
should suffer, he hath so fulfilled. Repent ye therefore, and be converted,
that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come
from the presence of the Lord”. There was, therefore, a divine plan which the
disciples had not properly understood, in spite of three Passion and Resur-
rection predictions! It was necessary that the Messiah suffered and that he be
raised before his immediate coming as the agent who would establish God’s
kingdom. This suffering Messiah, seemingly failed, had been resurrected by
God and was now seated at God’s right hand, according to a divine plan for
the salvation for mankind.
Luke 24:19 (“Jesus of Nazareth who was a mighty prophet in deed and
words before God and all the people…”), together with some other passages
such as Acts 3:22 (“For Moses said unto the fathers, A prophet shall the Lord
your God raise up unto you and unto your brethren, like me; him shall ye
hear in all things whatsoever he shall say unto you”) make us think that some
members of the group considered Jesus to be a messianic prophet with simi-
lar features to the prophets of Israel. Nevertheless, most of them saw Jesus
simply as the Messiah, with the special connotation of having suffered death
and having been resurrected: “This Jesus has God raised up, whereof we all
are witnesses… Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God
hath made that same Jesus, whom you have crucified, both Lord and Christ”
(Acts 2: 32, 36).16
These expressions of Peter in Acts allow us to understand that for the
early Jewish-Christian community Jesus was a mere human being, an excep-
tional one indeed, a prophet, a miracle worker, a preacher of the coming
of the Kingdom, but a mere human being as any other one.17 Nevertheless,
because of his divinely acted resurrection, this man had been exalted to the
16
See in general on that matter, M. Barker, The Risen Lord: The Jesus of History as the
Christ of Faith (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1996); L.W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to
Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2003).
17
See Ellens, Op. Cit., on the Synoptic Jesus (note 7).
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status of “Lord and Messiah,” that is, God has disposed that he would finally
be able to finish his mission on earth as Lord and Messiah. Jesus somehow
belonged already to God’s area. He was God’s assistant or agent and he could
be like Elijah, the prophet Enoch or Melchizedek. At the appointed time,
this Messiah would come down from heaven as the messianic Judge of the
twelve tribes of Israel and the whole world, to establish God’s Kingdom.
Because the Messiah, according to the common Jewish faith, had to be the
Son of David (Mark 12:35-37), Jesus was told that he had not been born in
Nazareth but in Bethlehem, which was David’s city (Matt 1-2; Luke 1-2), and
two different genealogies were formed to prove Jesus’ Davidic origin (Matt
1:1-18/Luke 3:23-38).
The news that Jesus, the Messiah, should come soon to the earth to con-
clude his mission ought to be announced to everyone. All the Jews had to join
this belief. The formation of the new Messianic congregation was therefore
equal to the formation of the true Israel which would be well prepared for
the establishment of the Kingdom, the end of all oppression of Israel, and the
triumph of the righteous. Acts 2 tell us that the first expansion of the Christian
faith took place at Pentecost, fifty days after Jesus’ death, among diaspora
Jews, from foreign lands. They were called “Hellenists” because their mother
tongue was Greek rather than Aramaic or Hebrew. They had a different menta-
lity not only for having been born outside of Israel but because of having been
educated in a Greek cultural environment. Nevertheless, these Hellenists were
very pious Jews; they had probably moved to Jerusalem because they hoped
that the Messiah should first appear in that city. They also hoped that if they
died they would be raised up by the Lord to take part in the messianic king-
dom, which would begin in Jerusalem. These Hellenistic Jews, who had their
own synagogues in Jerusalem (Acts 6:9), must have received with great joy
the religious program preached by Peter and his companions, which according
to Acts, signified the end of the oppression, the terrible political and religious
situation in which Israel was living. The end of all anguish would come soon,
not by the hands of men but by God’s own hand with the cooperation of Jesus,
who had been appointed Lord and Messiah after his resurrection.
Probably, the title “Son of God” was soon added to those of “Lord” and
“Messiah.” Initially, this “Son” was considered a human being adopted by
God, just as the king of Israel was adopted as God’s son in Psalms 2, 8, 110,
and later translated to the divine sphere. It is probable too that this latter no-
tion was introduced by means of certain theological categories readily avai-
lable, such as a human being changed into an angelic entity or spirit. One of
the first categories possibly used by these Jewish-Christians for re-imagining
Jesus, transformed into a semi-celestial being, was the figure of the “one like
a son of man” mentioned in the book of Daniel (Ch. 7 and 11). It was an easy
move, since Jesus had used this expression to refer to himself instead of the
troublesome “I.”
Jesus’ disciples probably thought that this symbol, translated into Greek
language as “the Son of the Man,” was not to be understood as referring to
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the Jewish people as a collectivity, as had been done frequently up to that mo-
ment, but to a concrete person, Jesus of Nazareth. It is also possible that the
Jerusalem community regarded Jesus as “Lord,” “Messiah,” “Son of Man,”
and God’s agent, who would come in the future to establish God’s kingdom
and to judge the mighty and the wicked. Another mythical category used
by the same disciples could be the identification of Jesus as God’s viceroy,
sitting on his right side or standing nearby him (Acts 7,56), a viceroy whom
God had charged with a messianic task for the future.
The Hellenistic Jewish-Christian communities settled outside of Israel
were formed by the dispersion of the “Hellenists,” expelled from Jerusalem
by force by the religious authorities of the city (Acts 8:1-2). Since Greek was
the preferential language of the Jewish Hellenists, the Jesus tradition origi-
nally gathered in Aramaic were translated into Greek. This version had the
great advantage that the Jesus story could be potentially used by all the in-
habitants of the East Mediterranean countries whose common language was
Greek. No doubt that the change of language involved a change of mentality
and an alteration of the tradition itself.
I take for granted that from the very beginning the “Hebrew” Jewish-
Christian communities used the titles “Son of Man,” “Lord,” “Messiah,” and
“Son of God” to place Jesus in the sphere of the divine, but without properly
considering him God. I also suppose that it is not surprising that in a Hellenist
environment, surrounded by gentiles for whom the contact of human beings
with the divine was much easier to conceive, such titles soon acquired much
more consistency. To Pagan ears such terminology would have an overtly
divine meaning.
Another important step toward the divinization of Jesus took shape in
the liturgical meetings of the Hellenistic Jewish-Christian communities that,
prior to the appearance of Paul, worshiped Jesus as Kýrios, “Lord,” in an
absolute sense.18 That is to say, with a deeper theological density than the one
corresponding title “Lord and Messiah” used by the Palestinian community.
“The Lord,” without modifiers, i.e., in an absolute sense, was a title which
the Hebrew Bible and the Qumran Scrolls normally attributed only to God,
although there are some exceptions. The utilization of this title in the genuine
Pauline letters indicates an already well-formed use that Paul took from the
Jesus tradition (Phil 2:11; Rom 10:9; 2 Cor 4:5). That tradition had deve-
loped in the Hellenistic Jewish-Christian communities from Damascus and
Antioch, where the Apostle was converted and developed as a Christian. This
absolute and forceful language, “the Lord,” confirms a change of perspective
in the consideration of Jesus as divine, that can be distinguished from the
shy and incipient terminology that had developed within the Jerusalem “He-
brew” community. Applying to Jesus this appellative, normally reserved for
God, was a still greater indication that Jesus belonged to the divine sphere.
18
See in general James Waddell, The Messiah: A Comparative Study of the Enochic Son of
Man and the Pauline Kyrios (Edinburg, T&T Clark, 2011).
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From this point it was quite easy to take the next step, i.e., to believe that
Jesus, already before his death, would have had a divine nature. The analogy
with the figure of the “divine men” of the Hellenistic culture was of great
help, no mater whether this figure existed as such or was only a rather nebu-
lous concept. We certainly know that the Pagans believed that certain men,
such as ambulant ascetics, preachers, miracle workers, healers, and mythic
heroes, had superior qualities and the ability to do amazing things in contrast
to common mortal men, since they somehow possessed a divine nature. The
same was applied to Jesus: he had to be divine prior to his death.
Initially this “Son” figure, human and divine at the same time, close to
God the Father, dead but raised up to God and sitting on God’s right hand,
greater than Melchizedek, Enoch or Elijah, must have possessed ambiguous
features. God was normally thought to be above his “Son”; the Son was su-
bordinated to the Father (subordinationism) and the Father was granted the
absolute primacy of a monarch (monarchianism). This is reflected in the New
Testament in a twofold manner. First, until John 1:1; 20:28; 2 Thess 1:12; Ti-
tus 2:13; and 2 Peter 1:1 we do not find any text where Jesus is named “God.”
One risked certain opposition to doing so. Second, the creation of the world,
the initiative of redemption, and the prayers addressed to the divinity, all go
back to God the Father, not to Jesus.
The same must have happened with the title “Lord” (Kýrios) in an abso-
lute sense: it became equal to “Son of God” later on.19 It is not strange that
this happened in Antioch as indicated in Acts 11:26, where the followers
of Jesus are first designated as “Christians.” Christians differed from main-
stream Jews in that they invoked Jesus as “Lord,” i.e., more or less as God,
thus using this appellative not only for the God of the Scriptures, but also for
his Son, Jesus. For the Christian Hellenists, the “Son of God” was a divine
being; the title “Lord” (Kýrios) expressed his high status in life and worship.
In short, between Jesus’ death (ca. April 30 C.E.) and the moment pre-
vious to the composition of the first draft of the first letter of Paul (1 Thes-
salonians, ca. 50/51 c.e.) we can observe a most remarkable progress in the
history of the Christian theology that leads to the heroization/exaltation and
divinization of Jesus. These consecutive steps are reflected with relative cla-
rity within the New Testament:
- The Palestinian or “Hebrew” Jewish-Christians re-interpreted Jesus’ life

and his post-resurrection destiny by applying to him certain features of
the traditional image of the Jewish Messiah. They also understood him
as a Son of Man, i.e., as a man exalted by God because of his obedience.
God declared him “Lord” and Messiah, that is, his viceroy and agent, who
would return to earth to establish a celestial Kingdom in God’s name.
According to God’s plan and before this event the Messiah would also
act as universal Judge of the living and the dead. The notion that a former
19
See Waddell, Op. Cit. in this regard.
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convict, executed by the Romans but raised up to a new, celestial life

by God, who had also appointed him “Lord and Messiah” according to
the Scriptures, was a new messianic concept in Judaism. This Jewish-
Christian move was actually a theological “jump” insofar as it made the
Crucified, Raised, and Exalted Jesus an eschatological and divine figure.
In a certain, yet not totally explained way, Jesus was divine.
- Another group, that of the Hellenistic Jewish-Christians of the Diaspora,

together with some former gentiles, most of them converts (phoboumenoi
ton theon) to the new faith, re-interpreted the resurrected Jesus an entity
of divine nature, a Son of God in essence, a Divine man according to the
schemes of the surrounding Pagan religions, and therefore invoked him
also as the “Lord”. Quite soon, the same group interpreted Jesus’ death as
a vicarious death, as an atonement for the sins of mankind, and saw in the
Cross the supreme act of redemption. They also believed that this Jesus
was a divine being already before his death.
Paul’s thought draws on these developments, since he was “catechized” and
worked as a preacher and missionary in the community of Damascus, and
then in that of Antioch, for more than fifteen years up to beginning of his
own independent pastoral mission in 48-49. His main task, apart from some
personal and novel ideas, was to give systematic theological consistency to
the basic ideas of the Jewish-Christian Hellenists who had preceded him.
Thus Paul gave Jesus full pre-existent status. He was also a messianic and
eschatological Jew. He defended unambiguously that the end of this world
was very near, that the remaining time was short, and that only the true
and restored Israel was to be saved if. That salvation was to be achieved
by means of the new faith in Jesus Christ and helped by divine grace. Thus
it appropriated for itself the benefits of Jesus’ expiatory death in the cross.
For Paul and his disciples, Jesus is Son of David according to the flesh
(Rom 1:3, passim), and as such The Chosen One (not directly but implicit
in Paul; cf. Luke 23:35), Messiah (Rom 1:1, 4, passim), Son of God (Rom
1:4, passim), Righteous One (again not directly but implicit in Paul; cf.
Matt 27:4), Crucified and Resurrected (1 Cor 15:4, Rom 1:4, passim).
This Messiah now lives forever, is fully preexistent (Phil 2:6), and is the
universal Judge. He will return to earth in the end time on the clouds of
heaven to judge the world (1 Thess 4:16). He will vindicate his loyal fol-
lowers, who will be always with him (1 Thess 4:17).
In Paul’s view, Jesus will inaugurate in this way a messianic kingdom on
earth. While this notion is very obscure in Paul, it can be deduced with
great probability from the analysis of 1 Cor 15:20-28. Jesus’ “Messianic
kingdom” thus precedes God’s kingdom. When the latter arrives, Jesus
the Son will surrender to the Father, so that he may be all and in all (1
Cor 15:28). Even with due reservations, this Jewish-Christian theology
has many points in common with the one supported by the members of
the community (on which see Nickelsburg and VanderKam, 1 Enoch 2,
65) behind BP, such as, for instance, the figure of the “son of man,” who
is also in BP the Anointed and Chosen One and the universal Judge of
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the wicked, a figure framed within what has been called “ascent apo-
calypticism.”
An equal ideological atmosphere postulates a similar time of composi-

tion. I also suppose that the apocalyptic followers of Enoch could not
remain inactive before these theological Jewish-Christians pronounce-
ments which negated their own convictions about the mission and figure
of Enoch.20
The following point functions as an a fortiori second argument for not
placing the composition of BP in pre-Christian times: BP’s “messianic” the-
ology fits well into the messianic theology of several apocalyptic works da-
table in the last quarter of the first century C.E., such as 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra:
In PsalSol 17-18 (ca. 60/50 B.C.E.), a work displaying a most remarkable
messianic theology, the word “messiah” is rarely used in a technical sense, since
its author primary identifies The Messiah with the “King” (cf. 17:32; 18:5, 7).
Conversely, 2 Baruch always employs the word “messiah” in a technical
sense: according to its author, there can be many anointed ones different
from The Messiah (cf. 29:3; 30:1; 39:7; 40:1; 70:9; 72:2).
The Latin extant text of 4 Ezra, translated either from Aramaic or Hebrew,
also develops a kind of messianic theology. The word “messiah” appears
many times. A noteworthy messianic viewpoint is likewise found in the sce-
ne of the “man coming out of the sea” who can be compared to the Son of
Man in BP (4 Ezra13:2 in the Syrian and Ethiopian versions; there is a lacuna
in the Latin text at such point).
It is to be observed, however, that in chapter 13 of 4 Ezra the Latin version
nearly always uses “Man,” either with or without demonstrative, rather than
“Son of Man” (13:3, 5, 25, 51). The depiction of “this man” is undoubtedly
taken from Dan 7. It is an expression equivalent to that of BP, which, as we
shall see, excludes its use as a title. It is introduced in the context of a wider
description of the coming Judgment which recalls the final struggle of the na-
tions with the Messiah in BP and the book of Revelation (4 Ezra 13:5-11:49).
But 4 Ezra 14:9 contains another outstanding parallel to BP: God promi-
ses Ezra that he will be carried up to heaven and that he shall dwell there with
The Messiah, now simply called “Son”. This is likely a Christian gloss as in
7:28-29; 13:32, 37. M. Stone 1990:41 claims that, according to the author of
4 Ezra, the destruction of the wicked opponent (the Roman Empire) of The
Messiah will take place by means of the judicial functions of The Messiah
rather than in virtue of his military actions.
The Testaments of the XII Patriarchs must certainly be purged from their
Christian interpolations. Nonetheless their date is highly uncertain. Alterna-
tive dates range from the first century B.C.E. to the first century C.E. Yet one
also finds in them many significant allusions to The Messiah (TReuben 6:8;
TLevi 5:2; 8:14; 17:12; 18; TJudah 21:2), although he is never called “Son
20
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of Man.” His role is more that of a priest-king, which is not to say that the
Testaments develop a double-messiah notion. Such a notion is only neatly
expressed in the Qumran Scrolls.
Alexandrine Judaism around the beginning of the first century C.E. may
be regarded, on the other hand, as the ideological background of the Testa-
ments on account of the relevancy granted in them to the fulfillment of the
ancient rule requiring love to the neighbor (Lev 19:18) and given their uni-
versalism, which finds its best parallel in several Jewish-Hellenistic writings
of the period such as 4 Maccabees, Aristeas, Joseph and Asenet, and Philo.
Carlos A. Segovia, with whom I have largely discussed the present to-
pic, claims that, in contrast to 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra, there are no allusions
to the destruction of the temple in BP and thus opts to place its composition
within pre-70 Judaism. J. J. Collins also notes the absence of any reference
to the temple in BP (The Apocalyptic Imagination, 178). More recently, Ni-
ckelsburg and VanderKam have argued in the same way: “A date before 70
C.E. is almost certain. It would be odd indeed if in pseudepigraphic disguise
one predicted after 70 C.E. that the walls of Jerusalem would not be breached
by the Parthians and Medes but ignored the fact that the Romans devastated
the city. In view of the latter event, the former one would be irrelevant”.21
Nor is there in BP a theodicy similar to that of 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch.
They both claim that this absence is also relevant and impossible to ignore.
Whatever it could possibly be, the existing conceptual parallelisms and cor-
respondences between these three writings (BP, 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra), these
differences have to be taken into consideration. In the opinions of the authors
cited, these differences seem to indicate that the contexts and perhaps also
the periods of composition are altogether different.
Apparently, these contrasts speak against BP’s “post-synoptic” date,
though not against a date in the mid-first century C.E. On the other hand, they
form a single argument inasmuch as the theodicy of 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra is
substantially joined to the topic of the temple destruction in 70 C.E. I would
suggest, however, that BP can be read as a reply to a different and extremely
serious problem which also deserved an outright answer: Jewish-Christianity.
Its author focuses the challenging question raised by the Jewish-Christians,
i.e., Jesus’ divinization, joined to the Christian “Son-of-Man-as-a-messianic-
title” theology. This is why he or she obviates other possible topics.
Were the absence of any mention of the temple’s destruction and any
adjoined theodicy a conclusive argument for a pre-Christian dating of BP,
and this is my main point, the Mishna tractates Bikkurim and Temura, which
take the temple to be actually existing, would have also been composed be-
fore 70 C.E.!
Partial conclusion: apart from the fact that not even a single trace of
BP was found at Qumran, BP’s messianic theology seems to fit well into
the times when the Testaments, and especially 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra, were
21
Nickelsburg and VanderKam,1 Enoch 2, p. 60.
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composed, namely, the first century C.E.; although BP does not mention the
temple’s destruction and presents no concomitant theodicy. 4 Ezra also spe-
aks of a “man,” presumably bar nash in Aramaic or ben adam in Hebrew,
whatever its original language could be. That is highly remarkable. There are
hints, therefore, that the theological environment of BP is not pre-Christian.
Its setting can be thus placed after the turn of the era, especially in the mid-
first century C.E.
In addition, it could also be argued that it is possible to conceive the se-
cond half of the first century C.E. as the scenario in which different apocalyp-
tic groups, such as the Jewish-Christians, Pauline or not, and the authors of
2 Baruch and 4 Ezra, all presenting a high Christology or at least symptoms
of what can be labeled as binitarianism, were struggling and defending their
own theological positions.
III.
Does the BP consider the expression “Son of Man” as a proper messianic

title?
The answer to this question is important for my argument because if the
answer is “No,” we would have, in my opinion, an additional and compelling
argument supporting the idea that BP (without Chapter 71) was written in a
time when the expression “Son of Man” was still not regarded by the Helle-
nistic Jewish-Christians as a proper messianic title: sometime around 30-64
C.E., before the composition of Mark’s Gospel and before Paul’s death.
For many years, scholars have believed that there was a “Son of Man Con-
cept” in Second Temple Judaism. It was thought that the frequent public re-
ading of Dan 7 at the synagogues had driven the Jewish people to form the
concept of a mysterious “Son of Man,” a heavenly figure who plays the role of
God’s agent for the establishment of the messianic kingdom. The figure of this
Son of Man would have diverse traits, but the pious Jewish minds of the time
of Jesus would have thought that he was a semi-divine man appointed as Mes-
siah-King in the land of Israel and the assistant of God in the final Judgment.
In accordance with this belief, when Jesus applied the term to himself,
knowing in advance of his death and resurrection in a prophetic and almost
divine way, and when he explicitly or implicitly designated himself as the
final Judge of mankind, he did not need to explain his words to his Jewish
audience. The concept already existed.22 In other words, the Jewish people,
when hearing the words “Son of Man,” thought of a celestial divine figure
cooperating with God to establish his Kingdom.
For many years I have objected to this idea.23 The history of New Testa-
ment research shows that there is a great number of scholars who agree with
22
This is the claim that lies at the heart of Ellens’ The Son of Man in the Gospel of John.
23
See my Biblia y Helenismo: Pensamiento griego y formación del cristianismo, 511.
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the following opinion. It is highly improbable that in pre-Christian Judaism

there existed a “Son of Man Concept.” Being myself in this position, I came
across Maurice Casey’s The Solution to the “Son of Man” Problem. I knew
and esteemed Casey from his former publications. The title of his book is
perhaps too strong. A German would say: Angeber! It could be. But his book
has many interesting insights. My previous ideas have been reinforced by
reading it. Therefore, part of what follows will be a wide synthesis of Casey’s
own arguments (see pp. 56-115; spec. 82-115).
The basic documents on which the view of the Menschensohnbegriff that
is objectionably to me rests are Daniel 7, BP, and 4 Ezra 13. But the evidence
drawn from these documents is far from being conclusive.
A. Daniel 7:13
“I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like a son of man came with
the clouds of heaven, and came to the Head of Days, and they brought
him near before him”
This is interpreted by the author himself at 7:14 as a figure to whom “was

given dominion, and glory, and the kingdom, that all people, nations, and
languages, should serve him.” At 7:18, the author reveals that the Jews, i.e.,
God’s beloved people, will receive the kingdom for ever. “The saints of the
most High shall take the kingdom, and possess the kingdom for ever, even for
ever and ever.” The interpretation of the Four Kingdoms as the Babylonians,
the Medes, the Persians, and the Greeks, was apparently very clear for the
Jews who had suffered under Antiochus Epiphanes. The same could be said
regarding the final victory, which was granted by God to his chosen people.
Therefore one must conclude that for the author of the book of Daniel the
figure of “one like a son of man” is either the symbolic representation of the
Jewish people as a (singular) set of human beings (so Casey) or, as I would
rather suggest, the symbolic representation of a Jewish future prince or king
(instead of an angel, pace Nickelsburg) to whom God will grant everlasting
glory and dominion over all the nations (unto which of the angels will this be
granted by God?). The universal dominion of this prominent Jewish human
being, and accordingly the dominion of his people, shall not pass away. Ho-
wever it may be interpreted, it does not seem to me that the concept of a “Son
of Man,” understood as a messianic title, is found in the book of Daniel. He
is simply a concrete human being, a man exalted by God at the end of history
because he is also the Chosen One on account of his obedience to his Law.
Here is Casey’s conclusion a propos Daniel 7:
“The man-like figure is however described in such a way that he might

have been more likely an individual rather than a symbol, and there have
Moreover, there is no clear reason to claim that the Son of Man in Daniel 7 is a messianic
figure; certainly he is not enthroned, pace Nickelsburg and J. J. Collins.
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been numerous attempts to identify him on the assumption that he must

be an actual individual. Two have been specially important. One is the
traditional Jewish and Christian interpretation of him as The Messiah, and
so in the Christian tradition more specifically as Jesus Christ… (But) the
figure of ‘the Messiah’ had not crystallized out at the time when the book
of Daniel was written, and consequently he is not mentioned in the book
as a whole, nor in the interpretative section of this vision. These points
should be regarded as decisive… It follows that Daniel 7 itself does not
provide any kind of evidence of the existence of a ‘Son of Man’ Concept
in Second Temple Judaism” 24
B. The Similitudes of Enoch

The interpretation of BP since its modern discovery shows the great effort
that has been made by different scholars to demonstrate that “one like a son
of man” is to be understood in BP as an actual messianic title, that is, as the
expression of the existence of a fixed concept easily understood as such by the
Jewish people. The expression “Son of Man” corresponds in BP to the Greek
ho huiòs toû anthrôpou, a previously fixed term that had been translated into
the Ethiopian language in three different ways:
- “Son of Man”: 46:2, 3, 4; 48:2; Eth.: walda sab’e.
- “Son of the male”: 62:5; 69:29; 71:14; Eth.: walda be’esi.
- “Son of the offspring of the mother of the living ones”: 62:7, 9:14; 63:11;
69:26, 27; 70:1; 71:17; Eth.: walda ‘eguala’ emmaheiaw.
A direct relationship between BP and the New Testament was seen in the
fact that in the Fourth Gospel the Greek phrase ho huiòs toû anthrôpou was
translated into Ethiopic as walda ‘eguala’ emmaheiaw.
The difficulties began when scholars asked why the Ethiopian translators
of BP used these three different expressions for a single sentence which is
always identical in Greek and which should be translated with consummate
accuracy by reason of its messianic character.
Another great difficulty is why the Ethiopic version of BP included al-
most always a demonstrative before this expression: it does not say “the Son
of Man,” but “this” or “that” son of man. This use clearly indicates that the
expression refers to a concrete man. Therefore, it is very difficult to think
here of a title.
Casey argues, quite convincingly in my opinion, that the base language
out of which BP was translated was not Greek but Aramaic.25 This is in accor-
The solution to the “Son of Man” Problem , 91.

24
25
Casey: “There is however no evidence that there was ever a Greek version of the
Similitudes of Enoch” (p. 93); Nickelsburg: “Although there is no extant Greek version of
the Parables, there appear to be two references to the Parables in the literature of the Greek-
speaking world, in the Apocalypse of Peter and Origin’s Contra Celsum…. Whether these
testimonies prove that the translator of the Ethiopic version of the Parables worked from a
Greek version is a question for which there is no definitive answer, but it adds plausibility to a
Greek Vorlage to the Ethiopic translation of the Parables. On the basis of the aforementioned
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dance with the fact that all the extant fragments of 1 Enoch found at Qumran
are written in this language. This fact does not prevent that, in some cases,
the translators could also have used a Greek text. This would explain certain
mistakes in the Ethiopic version that can be easily explained if it is born in
mind that, in those cases, the base language could be that of a Greek text26.
In general, the hypothetical Aramaic text lying behind the three Ethiopian
expressions (walda sab’e; walda be’esi or walda ‘eguala’ emmaheiaw) must
always be reconstructed as bar (’)nash(’). This is the only reasonable possi-
bility according to the context in which the three variant sentences appear in
the Ethiopic translation, though it is not always possible to explain the exact
reason for such variants. It has been supposed that there could have been
several translators. Conversely, if the translators had in mind a fixed Christo-
logical title already existing as such in Greek (ho huiòs toû antrôpou), such
variants are difficult to explain, not to speak of the different demonstrative
adjectives used in each.
Casey reconstructs, and comments as follows on, the Aramaic text behind
the Ge‘ez:
- 46:1-3, in an explicit but indirect way, not naming him, the passage
refers to Enoch’s individual figure, which has the following featu-
res: he is the righteous par excellence; he is the revealer of all divine
treasuries and mysteries; he is the Chosen One and the strongest one
before the Lord of Spirits. Accordingly, he is designated as “this or
that son of man”.
- 48:2-7: “The name of ‘this son of man’ is named before the Lord of
Spirits.” This means that his name exists before the creation of the
universe; he is the Chosen One, the Support of the righteous and the
Light to the gentiles.
- 61:8: “This son of man” is the Chosen One and the eschatological Judge.
- 62:5-9: The mighty, the powerful and the exalted on earth will be terri-
fied when they come to see “that son of a woman” sitting in the Jud-
ge’s throne (v. 5). “From of old this son of man was hidden… and the
Most High revealed him to the elect (v. 7). “That son of man” (v. 9).
- 69:26-29: The primacy in God’s Judgment is granted to “that son of
man,” whose name was revealed to the elect. That son of man has
appeared and sits on his glorious throne. “And He (God) will go and
speak to ‘that son of man’ and he (‘this son of man’) will be strong
before the Lord of Spirits.”
- 70:1 “And after this, while he was living, his name was lifted up into
the presence of that son of man, and into the presence of the Lord of
the Spirits.”
considerations, I work from the hypothesis of an Aramaic (most likely) original of the Parables,
translated into Greek, and from Greek into Ethiopic” (p. 33).
26
See the 10 suggested cases in F. Corriente - A. Piñero, Apócrifos del Antiguo Testamento
IV 26.
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It seems clear that the case here is of a concrete person, not of a title. Ca-
sey’s conclusion on the Similitudes is fundamental to my argument:
“In the vision of Ch. 46, before the description which would alert devotees
of Enoch to the identity of the son of man figure, he is first of all described
in more mysterious terms with some reminiscences of Dan. 7.13. This is
where the term bar (’)nash(’) was originally drawn from. Throughout
the Similitudes, this term (’)nash(’) was used in accordance with normal
Aramaic usage as an ordinary term for ‘man’. In every case, something
makes clear reference back to the original appearance of this figure at the
beginning of ch. 46. Much the commonest device is the anaphoric use of a
demonstrative. It follows that this work, The Similitudes, does not provide
evidence of a ‘Son of Man Concept’. It is however the central work on
which the existence of this figure has been based”27.
C. Casey aptly argues that 4 Ezra 13 has also been traditionally used as
evidence for the existence of a “Son of Man Concept.” But this work must
be dated ca. 100 C.E., so it requires the support of earlier works to be taken
seriously as evidence for a “Son of Man Concept” already existing by the
time of Jesus. This is Casey’s final analysis:
“The chief character in chapter 13 is the figure of a man. It is unfortunate

that there is a lacuna in the Latin in his first appearance, where the Syriac
reads i’n demwtah dbarnasha’. The use of barnasha’ was important in
leading some traditional scholarship to the view that here was further evi-
dence of a Son of Man Concept […]. This view should not be accepted.
In the first occurrence, the Latin has homo and the Gee’z has be’esi. In the
subsequent descriptions of the man-like figure in the vision (13,3b.5.12),
the Latin has always homo, the Syriac barnasha’ and the Ge’ez be’esi.
In the interpretative section (13,25.32.51), the Latin always has vir, the
Syriac gabrah, and the Ge’ez be’esi. It follows that the Latin and the
Syriac translated ánthropos from the Greek version in the visionary sec-
tion, and that this, like the Ge’ez be’esi represents ‘adam in the original
Hebrew. Similarly in the interpretative section, the Greek translation used
anér, representing ish in the original text. The use of Syriac barnasha’ to
translate ánthropos is entirely natural, because it was so common. Conse-
quently it is also found where the Latin has homo in several passages of 4
Ezra, both in singular (e.g. 6.10 bis), 7.29, 8.6) and in the plural (e.g. 3.36,
5.12, 6.26). It should not therefore be used as evidence of a Son of Man
Concept in (first century) Judaism”.28
In spite of this overwhelming evidence, the scholarly communis opinio

still maintains that 4 Ezra refers to a messianic figure whose title would be
“Son of Man.” Thus for instance in the recent (2009) Spanish edition of 4
27
The Solution to the “Son of Man” Problem, p. 111
28
The Solution to the “Son of Man” Problem, p. 112.
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Ezra (AAT I 335, footnote 109) the commentary of the translator/editor, which
is normally good, reads as follows:
“La visión sexta es un testimonio de finales del siglo I del empleo de la figu-
ra de el Hijo del hombre de Dn 7 con los siguientes elementos: a) El Hijo del
hombre es el mesías (13,26: aquél a quien el Altísimo reserva); b) El Hijo
del hombre es el “Hijo” de Dios o el “Servidor de Yahvé” (13,32.37). Véan-
se las notas a estos lugares; c) Sale de lo profundo del mar para indicar su
origen misterioso (13,52); d) Viene sobre las nubes del cielo (13,3) para mo-
strar su identificación con la figura daniélica; e) Vence en el combate esca-
tológico (13,33-38.49); e) Restaura las doce tribus de Israel (13,39-50)”.
I will not spend time in the analysis of other passages as Tg. Ps. 8:5 or
Tg. Ps. 104:14-15, occasionally endorsed by some scholars to reinforce the
idea that in first-century Judaism the expression “Son of Man” worked as a
messianic title. A careful examination shows that these two targumim use the
term bar(‘) nash(‘) as a generic designation for the human being.
M. Casey’s general conclusion deserves to be quoted at this juncture:
“There was no ‘Son of Man Concept’, in Second Temple Judaism. The

scholarly view that there was such a concept has been based on inadequa-
te study of the primary source material.”29
G.W.E. Nickelsburg30, in his excellent excursus “The Chosen One of

Righteousness and Faith – Also the Righteous One, the Son of Man, and the
Anointed One,” also deals with this theme.31 His arguments, to which I fully
subscribe, can be summed up as follows:
a) The three expressions that designate in BP the “son of man” (walda

sabe’; walda be’esi; walda ’eguala ’emmaheyaw) can easily be under-
stood as translations variants of a common Greek huios tou anthropou,
which would reflect the Aramaic bar ’enash, and indeed most translations
render them uniformly as ‘s/Son of m/Man’” (p. 114b)32.
b) These expressions are accompanied by qualifiers that almost always

precede or follow such expressions: zekku (that), or zentu (“this”). This
raises a few interpretative problems, since Ge‘ez has no definite article.
Thus we must ask: When should we translate this as “the Son of Man”

29
1 Enoch 2, pp. 113-123

30
31
Nickelsburg and VanderKam do no seem to be aware of Casey’s work. Yet they reach a
similar conclusion, since they contend that the composite expression “Son of Man” does not
function in BP as a messianic title.
32
No precise rules can be discerned regarding these variations, just as no rules can be
discerned regarding God’s designation as the “Head of the Days,” the “Lord of Spirits,” and
the “Lord” (e.g. in 62:1).
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and when should we literally translate the qualifier? When we transla-

te “the Son of Man,” does this indicate that the expression is a formal
messianic title? Rather than a proper traditional messianic title, “Son of
Man” appears to be in BP a designation that refers to a character who has
already been introduced alongside the terminology incorporated into such
designation. It simply alludes to someone who looks like a human being.
Hence the qualifiers “this” and “that” should be translated literally wi-
thout a definite article that would rather point to a “figure known outside
the depicted scene…”
Therefore, Casey’s conclusion is:
“Although the Parables employ ‘Son of Man’ as a designator for the mes-
sianic… judge and they allude to a figure known from Daniel 7, they do
not employ the expression as a formal messianic title nor do they indica-
te that ‘Son of Man’ was a traditional messianic title. To quote Sjöberg:
‘There is a heavenly entity that is thought of as a heavenly human being,
and after it has been seen in chap. 46, this heavenly entity can be desi-
gnated as ‘that son of man’, or only ‘the son of man’ and (it) is thereby
adequately specified. In this context it can be named ‘the son of man’, and
one knows what is being spoken of’” (my emphasis).
In sum, it seems to me that to capitalize the expression “Son of Man,” as

Nickelsburg does from ch. 62 onwards though not in chs. 46-48, confuses the
reader. In other words, the ordinary reader, before coming to the Excursus
about the “Son of Man”33, believes that Nickelsburg thinks that this expres-
sion functions in BP as a messianic title.
From the former considerations we may conclude that that BP could have
worked as a response to a Hellenistic Jewish-Christian theology which ex-
alted Jesus’ figure up to his divinization but did not consider the expression
“Son of the Man” to be a strict messianic title. There is no proof of its use as
a messianic title in any extant Jewish-Christian document or in the genuine
letters of Paul:
“The term ‘Son of Man’ never occurs in the writings of Paul; the Semitic
expression would not have been understood by Paul’s Gentile audience.
Nonetheless, at least two Pauline passages reflect the Apostles’ knowled-
ge of an early stage of Synoptic Son of Man tradition: first Thessalonians
1:10; 4:13-18…. This Pauline description is followed immediately by an
admonition to vigilance, which also echoes Synoptic Son of Man tradi-
tions of (5:1-11). In 1 Cor 15:23-28, Paul argues from Christ’s resurrec-
tion to the Christians’ resurrection at the manifestation of the parousia…
Paul’s special nuance interprets the Danielic nouns to refer to angelic
powers…. Different from Daniel 7, the enthronement here envisioned is
33
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temporary; final kingly ruled will belong to God… The subduing of death
parallels the references to resurrection… in 1 Enoch 51-62… Other Pau-
line texts refer to the judicial function of Christ (2 Cor 5-10 and Rom 2:1-
11,16), where Christ is the agent of the judgment first ascribed to God.”34
Nevertheless, Paul had the theological audacity of making Jesus a fully

divine entity. From the point of view of any first-century pious Jew this would
have been considered blasphemous. The author of BP, leaving aside ch. 71,
shaped his response by insisting that Enoch is a “son of man,” that is, he is a
man, a human being, but he is also the agent of God’s Judgement against the
Kings and the Mighty. His future function (“his name”) was “thought of” by
God before the creation of the world, although he was himself merely human.
This is my second tentative idea. Can BP be read as a Jewish reply to the
boldness of the Christian claims regarding Jesus as the Son of Man, in the
same way as we may read 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra as a response to the intra-
Jewish fears and to the extra-Jewish (Christian) doubts regarding whether
God had abandoned his chosen people? These doubts were raised after the
cruel defeat of the Jewish people and the annihilation of Jerusalem and its
temple in 70 C.E. Furthermore, Ezra’s response in 4 Ezra could also be a
Jewish response to the Christians, who unanimously considered the fall of
Jerusalem a divine punishment against the “wicked Jews” who had killed
their messiah. Ezra defends himself in an impressive way by appealing to
the supposed revelations communicated to Ezra after the fall of Jerusalem in
587 B.C.E. He seems to have no need to expressly mention any contemporary,
concrete doubting Jews and/or Jewish-Christian critics. It is at the same time
a direct and indirect response set forth from within Judaism.
As I have indicated above, direct replies to the adversaries were not the
norm in the first century C.E. The anonymous author of BP, who probably
wrote in the mid-first century c.e., proceeded accordingly. By composing
new visions of Enoch he opposed the Christians without naming them. They
had unduly exalted their Messiah and granted him several messianic quali-
ties, including preexistence, as can be legitimately deduced from Philippians
2:6-11.35 The Enochic Jews had already applied preexistence to their own
hero. 1 Enoch 48:2 can be read as a response to such Christian claims.
In turn, BP’s indirect refutation of the competing Christian views on The
Messiah promptly spread among the Enochians. I can very well imagine
Enochic Jews reading with no little delight ch. 46 through 70, i.e., all the
marvelous things written by the author of BP about their hero and against the
boldness of those early Christians who had blasphemously dared to proclaim
Nickelsburg and VanderKam, 1 Enoch 2, pp. 74-75

34
35
As it is well known there are many interpretations of these verses. In my opinion
they contain a clear statement of the preexistence of Jesus. See the options discussed in
Ch. Strecker, Die liminale Theologie des Paulus: Zugänge zur paulinischen Theologie aus
kulturanthropologischer Perspektive (FRLANT 185; Göttingen: […], 1999), pp. 159-177.
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about Jesus what they already knew by tradition, though probably not with
so much precision, of Enoch.
Yet there was no need for the author of BP to focus his reply on Jesus,
since the falsehood of his proclaimed messianism was evident to any pious
Jew: he had died on the cross.
IV.
In sum up to moment:
1. There is no convincing argument against the view that BP was probably
composed in the mid-first century c.e.
2. Nor was there a Son of Man concept prior to Mark’s Gospel. In Mark
14:65 the use of the expression as messianic title is extremely clear. There-
fore no messianic figure had carried such title up to that moment. But these
conclusions also raise a difficult question. On the one hand, in the Aramaic
of the time of Jesus:
a) There is only evidence for a “normal” use of the expression “son of
man,” either in undetermined/indefinite state or in a definite/determinate
state, since it is a generic expression36 meaning “human being” and also a
specific designation for a concrete human being. In Aramaic such a term
is normally used when the speaker wants to designate himself as a human
being in special circumstances, e.g. in an ironical or humiliating manner,
which prove applicable to any other human being as well. Hence it has
been held that such term was never used as a messianic title.
b) But, on the other hand, it is obvious that, in the Synoptic Gospels,
Jesus does not always use that very term according to its normal Aramaic
use. Some times he seems to use it himself as a messianic title. Accor-
ding to the Synoptic tradition, this title expresses Jesus’ almost divine
foreknowledge, which enables him to reveal his future death and resur-
rection with all necessary details and also his future role as the divine
universal Judge (Mark 8;9;10: ). Moreover, the Synoptic Jesus does not
feel the need to explain such titular use of the Son of Man expression to
his disciples or to the people. The very same happens with the “kingdom
of God” concept, a term which Jesus never clarifies to his listeners. Does
this mean that his Jewish audience would have understood the expression
“Son of Man” as a proper messianic title, just as they were able to under-
stand the expression “Kingdom of God” without any further explanation?
There could be several possibilities to explain this odd situation:
A. The “Son of Man” concept existed before Jesus and was widely known
among pious Jews. Jesus simply indicated that he was that “Son of Man.”
36
See the 52 cases documented in Casey, The Solution to the “Son of Man” Problem, pp.
61-80.
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B. The “Son of Man” concept was Jesus’ own creation, but the Synoptic
writers forgot to present any scene in which Jesus himself explained its me-
aning to his audience. The historical Jesus, as a powerful religious personality,
created this concept after Daniel 7, which he knew by heart and which he inter-
preted in light of an apocalyptic exegetical tradition that he knew equally well.
If so, the Synoptic evangelists would have faithfully transmitted his thought.
C. The “Son of Man” concept was created by the Synoptic writers by
reflecting upon real scenes such as that contained in Mark 8:27-31, which
partly contained a nucleus of historical truth, i.e., the dialogue between Jesus
and Peter, according to whom the former was in fact the Messiah; and partly
not, e.g., Jesus’ cursing Peter as Satanic and explaining to his disciples alone
[“Messianic Secret”!] that he is the Messiah.
With regard to A. As said above, we have no evidence that such a concept
existed within first-century Judaism. So this hypothesis is to be rejected. For
it is extremely improbable if we agree with the arguments developed in II
and III.
With regard to B. One cannot deny Jesus being a religious, creative genius;
nor that he used the term “Son of Man” with all the nuances that his native
Aramaic language could afford. Likewise, it cannot be excluded that Jesus fo-
resaw his own death, especially during his last trip to Jerusalem. His radical
opposition to the temple authorities, to the Herodians, to the Sadducees/Scri-
bes, his implicit refusal to pay the tax to the Caesar, an exegesis confirmed by
Luke 23:2 and accepted by many scholars after S. G. F. Brandon, his preaching
of God’s kingdom, which totally excluded the Romans, all this made his death
easily predictable. Indeed, Jesus’ religious preaching had many indirect and
direct political consequences and implied very serious risks.
As for his future resurrection, I am also sure that the historical Jesus could
have spoken about it, but not as something exceptional. The righteous and
chosen ones, and especially the assassinated martyrs who died before the
coming of the Kingdom, should be revived to take part in it. All pious Jews
believed in this. In the New Testament we have the most brilliant testimony
to this belief (Rev 20:4-6).
However, as we shall see later, none of the sentences of Jesus, whether
Synoptic or Johannine, containing the expression ho huiòs toû anthrôpou
used as a Messianic title, expresses Aramaic thought-forms. They are all
native Greek. They all express very probably, a theology that fits very well
into the post-Easter Church. Conversely, the historical Jesus ignored, very
probably too, such development.
With regard to C. That all Jesus sentences containing the expression “ho
huiòs toû anthrôpou” and predicting a suffering/triumphant messianism and/
or the assimilation of Jesus to the figure of the divine Judge awaited at the
end time are a post-Easter product of the Church has been often pointed out
in New Testament scholarship in the past hundred years. It would be non-
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sense to repeat arguments surely well-known for all readers. Yet it seems
worthwhile to mention Rudolf Bultmann’s own words:
At any rate, the synoptic tradition contains no sayings in which Jesus says
he will sometime (or soon) return. Neither was the word parousía, which
denotes the “coming” of the Son of Man, ever understood in the earliest
period of Christianity as “return,” but correctly as “arrival, advent.” The
apologete Justin in the second century was the first to speak of the “first,”
prôte, as “second coming” deutera parousía (Dial. 14:8; 40:4) and of the
“coming back” pálin parousía (Dial. 118:2). And how would Jesus have
conceived the relation of his return as Son of Man to his present historical
activity? He would have had to count upon being removed from the earth
and raised to heaven before the final end, the irruption of God’s Reign, in
order to come from there on the clouds of heaven to perform his real of-
fice. But how would he have conceived his removal from the earth? As a
miraculous translation? Among his sayings there is no trace of such a fan-
tastic idea. As departure by natural death, then? Of that, too, his words say
nothing. By a violent death, then? But if so, could he account on that as an
absolute certainty – as the consciousness of being raised to the dignity of
the coming Son of Man would presuppose? To be sure, the predictions of
the passion (Mk. 8:31; 9:31; 10:33f.; cf. Mk. 10:45; 14:21, 41) foretell his
execution as divinely foreordained. But can there be any doubt that they
are all vaticinia ex eventu. Besides, they do not speak of his parousia! And
the predictions of the parousia (Mk. 8:38; 13:26f.; 14:62; Mt. 24:27, 37,
39, 44 par.) on their part, do not speak of the death and resurrection of the
Son of Man. Clearly the predictions of the parousia originally had nothing
to do with the predictions of death and resurrection; i.e. in the sayings that
speak of the coming of the Son of Man there is no idea that this Son of
Man is already here in person and must first be removed by death before
he can return from heaven.37
Briefly: all sentences announcing the death and resurrection of the Son of
man are ex-eventu prophecies. Besides, the Judge who is to come is not Jesus
but a different celestial figure that is not yet on earth. These Jesus’ “prophe-
cies” are the product of the Gospel’s author.
I think it is unnecessary to spend any more time on these well-known
arguments. For more details on the Synoptic creation of the “Son of Man”
theology I suggest the reader carefully read M. Casey’s book38. Casey regards
as authentic the following sayings: Mark 2:10; Matthew 8:19-20/Luke 9:57-
58; Luke 12:8-9/Matthew 10:32-33 + Mark 8:38; Luke 22:48 and Mark 8:31.
The exceptions he thinks are those details clearly added by the evangelist,
which must in turn be understood as indicated above, that is, as alluding
to the possible death of the martyr and to his resurrection, which is taken
37
Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, pp. 29-30.
38
The Solution to the “Son of Man” Problem, pp. 211-245.
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for granted as also is that of those elect who died before the coming of the
kingdom.
Conversely, he labels as secondary the following sayings: Mark 13:26;
14:62; Matthew 10:23; 16:27; 19:28; 24:27.37.39; Luke 17-18:8 and 21:27).
The main reason for pushing back these last sentences as inauthentic
sayings of the historical Jesus is twofold:
a) They reflect Greek thought forms, with allusions to and echoes from
the LXX Greek text; and secondly
b) They seem to reflect an urgent theological need of the primitive Church.
Casey claims:
“This dominant eschatological reference was the need for it. One of the
church’s most profound needs was to believe in the second coming of
Jesus. In Matthew, we can see the creative stage of this need in full flow,
and in Mark we can see its clear beginnings”.39
The years of publication of the last two synoptic Gospels were momen-
tous for the theological and social relations between Christ-believing and
“normal” or “normative” Jews. The new messianic title applied to Jesus
reinforced his divine and mediatorial character. To be sure, this idea beca-
me intolerable to first-century mainstream Jews. It seems probable, on the
other hand, that the partings of the ways between Judaeo-Christianity and
first-century mainstream Judaism was further hastened with the publication
of the Fourth Gospel. That gospel exhibits with maximum clarity the role
of Jesus as the preexistent Logos incarnated in a human being. The Fourth
Gospel also contends that Jesus was the true “Son of Man” (John 1:51; 3:13-
15; 5:27; 6:27, 53, 62; 8:28; 9:35; 12:23, 34; 13:31-32). The creators of the
term ho huiòs toû anthrôpou were the first Greek translators of the “genuine
(Aramaic) sayings of the Lord.” They committed no mistake by choosing
this term, however. In fact, they did the best possible work.40 The chosen
translation, ho huiòs toû anthrôpou, with two articles, fulfilled the semantic
requirements of the Aramaic expression bar (’)nash(’), by which Jesus had
doubtless intended to say something about himself. He used it at the very
same time as an expression that included a more general meaning.
“They rendered bar with its precise perceived equivalent huiós, and bar
(’)nash(’) with its precise perceived equivalent anthrôpou. They had to
take a decision about whether to use Greek articles, because the original
Aramaic might use either state of (’)nash(’). They decided to use both def-
inite articles, to give the Christological title ho huiòs toû antrôpou. This
was a wonderful creative outburst, not some sort of mistake. It selected in
the target language the most important reference of the original idiom, the
reference to Jesus himself. Any other decision would have been a failure,
39
40
The Solution to the “Son of Man” Problem, pp. 246-273.
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because the reference to Jesus himself would have been lost, and it would
not have been in accordance with the needs of the earliest Christians. Bi-
lingual translators suffering from interference could continue to see both
original levels of meaning in their translation, because the articles could
both be interpreted generically, as the second one always must be”.41
But even though the translators leveled the way, the creator of the title ho
huiòs toû anthrôpou (“Son of Man”) was properly, both in my opinion and in
that of many other scholars, the Gospel writer Mark. He coined it:
(a) From real sentences of the historical Jesus which contained this term
devoid of any eschatological meaning, a Jesus who repeatedly thought that
his death was possible. As a pious Jew, he simultaneously believed in his
resurrection as a martyr;
(b) from the well-known eschatological references to Dan 7:13 that had
spread within the apocalyptic milieu, some of which should be regarded as
authentic and some of which should not. This can be demonstrated by the
editorial work of the evangelist on the authentic material nonetheless con-
tained in Mark 13; and
(c) from his need to construct a “messianic secret.” Likely Mark drew
upon the common Jewish notion of a hidden messiah, such as is found in BP,
where we read, for instance, that “this Son of a Man” is hidden in the bosom
of the Lord of the Spirits [48:6; 62:6-7])42. The awareness of this construction
of a “Messianic Secret” is extremely important for properly understanding
the beginnings of the Son of Man Synoptic theology. In my opinion, shared
as well by many New Testament scholars, the scene of the “Secret” (Mark
8:27-33) is the key pericope of Mark’s Gospel, and it directly concerns the
creation of the Son of Man term as Christological title. In that Gospel it ap-
pears for the first time. The construction of the “Messianic Secret” reveals
itself as a fictitious, literary creation of Mark43.
41
42
Likewise, 1 En 12:1 says that Enoch was hidden and nobody knew where he was. See in
this respect Paolo Sacchi, Gesù e la sua gente (San Paolo: Milano 2003), p. 103.
43
The topic is very well known. I will simply sum up the main reasons traditionally
adduced to explain it: First, to claim a complete lack of comprehension on the part of a few
disciples regarding their Master’s messianism is both absolutely improbable and inexplicable.
Jesus was an excellent teacher, and it would have been immoral to maintain that his disciple,
those very disciples to whom, according to Mark 4:11, he explained the secrets of the kingdom,
were totally ignorant of his Messianism They had lived together with Jesus, after all, for at least
two years and a half, according to the Gospel of John.
Second, through the insistence on the roughness, intellectual inefficiency, and lack of
understanding of Jesus’ disciples, one can perceive the interest of the evangelists, especially
Luke, in emphasizing the work of the Holy Spirit after the resurrection, since it is only the Holy
Spirit who finally makes them understand. Yet this is theology, not history.
Third, neither such “secret” nor the warnings about the passion, death and resurrection
of Jesus left any fingerprints in the memory of Jesus’ own disciples. After the Easter event,
they rather refused to believe that Jesus was resurrected and continued believing that he was a
Davidic, traditional Messiah (Luke 24:21), the restorer of Israel’s kingdom on earth (Acts 1:6).
In fact, and in spite of so many warnings, they did not even believe that he had been raised
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As a hypothesis, too, I contend that this Synoptic “Son of Man” theology

might be the mature and definitive response of Mark’s Gospel to the Book
of Parables, a response followed by other Synoptic authors who belonged as
well to the Pauline school. The Book of Parables bestows to a certain “son
of man” the titles of Messianic Judge, Anointed One, and Chosen One. For
Mark, however, this Enochic figure is incomplete and false. Enoch’s follow-
ers think him to be a divine agent but Enoch is only the universal Judge, not
the Messiah (Chap. 52). For Mark Jesus, is the complete Messiah and uni-
versal Judge who has already appeared on earth. Mark therefore enhances,
concretizes and mythifies the Son of Man figure by equating him with Jesus
of Nazareth. Mark’s sources are the same as those of BP (Isa 11; 14; 42; 52-
53, etc.; Ps 2, 110) though re-interpreted in a different way and now applied
to Jesus.
Here I shall quote at length the recent Commentary by Nickelsburg, which
deals with the correspondences between the Gospel of Mark and BP44:
“Like its parallel in Q (Matt 10:33-33//Lk 12:8-9), Mark 8:38 envisions

the Son of Man as the future judicial functionary who will act in accor-
dance with human reactions to Jesus. In context, it follows Peter’s con-
fession of Jesus and his rejection of Jesus’ announcement that the Son of
Man must suffer and die. The major elements in this verse (“comes, glory,
Father, angels”) – all missing from the Q parallel – have counterparts in
Mark 13:26-27,32 which may indicate Markan redaction.
In context, the reference to the future “Son of Man” in Mark 14:62 paral-
lels Mark 8:27-29. Different from Simon, who confessed Jesus as Mes-
siah, Caiaphas cynically asks about Jesus’ status as the Messiah (14:61).
The high priest’s implied rejection, which will be explicit in v. 63, leads
to the threat that Caiaphas and his court ‘will see’ the enthroned Son of
Man as their judge. Although Daniel 7:13 is the source of the idea that
the clouds of heaven will convey the Son of Man, in Mark from the he-
avenly throne room rather than to it, as in Daniel, other elements in the
description parallel the tradition in the Parables and Wisdom 2:5. The Son
of Man is also the Messiah (Mark 14:61), seated at God’s right hand (Ps
110:1). He will be seen (1 Enoch62:1-3) by those who have rejected him
(Wis 5:1-2) not only as Messiah but as God’s son (Wis 2:16-20; 5:5).
The context of Mark 13:26-27 is a description of the end-time. When false
messiahs have been proclaimed, the Son of Man will appear on clouds, as
predicted in Dan 7:13-14, but coming from heaven, with the power and
from the dead! It must be insisted at this point that the whole crucial scene of the wayfarers
to Emmaus (Luke 24:17-27) completely ignores such a secret. Finally, the Markan Jesus
constantly breaks such claimed “secret,” which is also ignored by the whole set of the Gospels:
on many occasions Jesus published his Messianism before his resurrection!
44
“Although the Parables were not composed as a Christian text, the parallels between
the Parables’ and the Gospels’ teaching on the Son of Man suggest a common milieu for one
branch of the early Jesus movement and the community that generated the Book of Parables”
(Nickelsburg and VanderKam, 1 Enoch 2, p. 66).
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glory he has received there (Dan 7:14). Although the judicial function
described in 1 Enoch is not explicit, the influence of that tradition is sug-
gested by two elements not found in Daniel 7. Certain unnamed persons
“will see” the Son of Man, who will send angels to gather “the chosen
ones” (cf. 1 Enoch 51; 61:2-5; 62:14-15).
Alongside the Markan texts about the eschatological Son of Man is a set
of texts that predict that the Son of Man will die and rise again (8:31;
9:9-12,31; 10:33-34,45). Each of these passages uses a verb that occurs in
Second Isaiah’s last Servant passage (52:13-53:12). The pattern of suffe-
ring and vindication will be embodied in chaps. 14-16 in a genre whose
prototype is found in the recasting of Isaiah 52-53 in Wisdom 2 and 5. The
use of the term “Son of Man” in these predictions plays on the ambiguity
of the expression. Jesus the man will be vindicated in his resurrection and
will then appear as the glorified Son of Man. The term is further legitima-
ted in the present usage because of the traditional conflation of Servant
and Son of Man materials in the Parables of Enoch. Mark identifies the
vindicator with the persecuted one, as in Wisdom, but he parallels the
Enochic form of the tradition by using the term ‘Son of Man’ as a desi-
gnation for the unique future champion of the chosen”.45
V.
I would suggest further that the Enochians’ response to the Synoptic Son
of Man theology was its re-attribution to Enoch the glorifying contents of the
added Chapter 71 to BP22.
By using anaphoric terms and a vocabulary similar to that of BP, this
Chapter implicitly assumes all the trappings accorded to Enoch, even his full
preexistence (48:2-3). He is the true and preexisting Son of Man.
As a possible response to Christian theology, Chapter 71 adds some inno-
vations, yet the principal elements are taken from the Book of the Watchers,
chs. 14-18. For our purpose the most important texts of Chapter 71 are:
71:1ss, which tells Enoch’s final translation to heaven: “And it came to
pass that after this my spirit was translated (taken away) and ascended to
heaven.”
71:14-17: These verses identify Enoch again as the Chosen One and the
eschatological Judge. V. 14 reads: “And he (the angel) came to me and kissed
me with his voice and said to me, ‘ You are the Son of man (walda be’esi: ‘
they are of the male ’) who is born to righteousness and righteousness dwells
with you, and the righteousness of the Head of Days will not leave you’ ”.
45
Nickelsburg and VanderKam, 1 Enoch 2, pp. 71-72. Nickelsburg aptly proves that
Matthew is also a Christian response to BP. But this does not prove that BP is pre-Christian.
In my opinion, we are facing here a theological dispute between two first-century apocalyptic
groups; for behind BP and the Gospel of Mark we must see two Jewish sectarian/apocalyptic
communities.
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A. That Chapter 71 is a text added to the core of BP is also argued by

Nickelsburg in his Commentary, in the excursus “The relationship of Chapter
71 to the Book of Parables” (1 Enoch 2, 330-32). I now sum up his arguments:
a) “The recasting of material from 1 Enoch 14 (and Daniel 7) presents a
graphic, vivid view of the heavenly world that the author(s) of the body of
the Parables avoided even though they had the prototype in front of them.
That the authors of the Parables responded to the traditional material in this
understated manner makes it, in my view, unlikely that it was they who re-
presented in chap. 71 the terrifying reality previously described in chap 14.
b) A second notable difference between chap. 71 and the body of the Pa-
rables is in the portrayal of the Son of Man. In the body of the Parables the
Righteous One/ Son of Man/Chosen One/Anointed One is almost exclusi-
vely God’s agent of judgment against the kings and the mighty… In chap.
71, the kings and the mighty are never mentioned, and the Son of Man…
is solely the eschatological companion of the righteous.
c) Its vocabulary (chap 71) has more in common with the conclusion of
the Epistle of Enoch
d) One may ask about the logic of the relationship between the parts. First,
if 70:1-2 describes Enoch’s final departure from the earth in third person,
how, after he is gone, does the same author suppose that the recipients of
the book got a first person narrative of his post-final ascension adventures?
B. The opposite opinion – Chapter 71 belonged to BP’s original compo-
sition – to that defended by Nickelsburg is presented by Casey in his above
mentioned work. I sum up his arguments.
a) Casey offers a different reconstruction and translation of the corrupt
text of 70:1-4:
“And it came to pass… that the living name of this son of man was exal-
ted with (i. e. raised up to) the Lord of Spirits more than those who dwell
on the ground” (70:1).
Casey adopts for his translation the reading of Ms U, supported by V and

W. According to Casey, this verse does not refer to Enoch’s assumption,
as it is commonly understood, but to the exaltation of his name (the name
of this son of man). Therefore, it only tells us about Enoch’s outstanding
reputation before God, which should not be confused with his final as-
sumption in 71:1. The difficulties of this chapter made me think at for-
mer times (AAT IV 93, footnote to 70:1: my Spanish edition of 1 Enoch
together with F. Corriente) that this text was corrupt or an interpolation,
since Enoch’s assumption could not be repeated twice - in this chapter
and in the following one. With Casey’s new reading the passage acquires
a different meaning.
b) The very first comments to make use of the term ‘son of man’ (46:1-3;
especially 46:3) point to 71:14:
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- “And he (one of the angels) answered and said to me: ‘This is that (son
of) man who has righteousness, and righteousness dwells with him, and
he reveals all the treasuries of the mysteries, for the Lord of the Spirits has
chosen him, and his lot is stronger than all before the Lord of the Spirits
in truth for ever” (46:3)
- “And he (either an unnamed angel or the Head of Days) came to me
and kissed me with his voice and said to me: ‘You are the son of man
who is born to righteousness, and righteousness dwells with you and the
righteousness of the Head of Days will not leave you’”.
c) 69:29 was already aiming at this last section of the book. At the end of
the third vision, there are deliberate pointers to Enoch’s translation in Ch.
71. Casey excludes Sacchi’s opinion that “this sentence belongs probably
to an added fragment”.
d) Enoch had had (from Ch. 46 onwards) visions referring to himself, just
as Levi in TLevi 8:1. There it is said that Levi saw in a vision that seven
men in white clothing covered him with the vestments of the priesthood,
the crown of righteousness, the oracle of understanding and the robe of
truth. Something similar happens to Enoch himself in another section of
1 Enoch 85-90. In 90:40, Enoch affirms that “This is a vision which I
saw while I was sleeping,” that is (90:31): three men wearing snow-white
(clothes)… grabbed me by my hand… and I ascended; they set me down
in the midst of those sheep prior to the occurrence of this judgment, the
elect ones who will be saved in the Great Judgment.
e) To Casey’s own arguments one could add 46:3: “This is that/the son of
man who has righteousness and righteousness dwells with him and all the
treasuries of what is hidden he will reveal”. Nickelsburg’s commentary to
this verse reads as follows:
“In addition to being the executor of divine justice, the Son of Man (capi-
talized) will be the revealer of all hidden treasures. The expression is a bit
surprising since it is Enoch in his writing who is shown and then reveals
the hidden things of the universe, some of them described as treasures”46.
This difficulty would be solved if one accepts that the author of BP is

already here thinking of Chapter 71: Enoch is this Son of Man.
The author of BP paints only a few new visions in which Enoch, as Levi
in TLevi, sees himself in his glorious future role, a role that, in his case, is not
specified with absolute clarity until the end of the history (i.e. untils Chs. 70
and 71). An accurate reading of the initial words of Ch. 70 proves that there
is no need to suppose that this chapter is a later gloss or an interpolation. Nor
the following one. Ch. 70 emphasizes Enoch’s reputation and narrates his
46
Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 2, p. 158.
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translation to the Garden of Eden. Ch. 71 describes his assumption before

God and his solemn designation as Messiah, universal Judge.
Between these two options (Nickelsburg vs. Casey) I side with that of
Nickelsburg, though not without some doubts. Chapter 71 is a probably an
addendum to the main bulk of BP composed before the destruction of the
Temple. According to its author Jesus is not the true ‘son of man’. The au-
thor’s response is crystal clear at 71:14, “You (Enoch) are the Son of Man
who is born to righteousness, and righteousness dwells with you, and the
righteousness of the Head of Days will not leave you”.
Sacchi, Charlesworth, Collins, and Boccaccini have already claimed that
71:14 could be a Jewish response to the Christian identification of Jesus as
“the Son of Man” while sustaining at the same time a pre-Christian date for
BP (save chap. 71). I am not persuaded by this twofold position.
The texts could be interpreted in the following way: If it is God who spe-
aks to Enoch at 71:14, this passage could be interpreted as an acceptance of
what was earlier said about “that son of man” at 69:27-29. “And he (Enoch
as that son of man – chap 71) sat on the throne of his glory, and the whole of
judgment was given to that son of man […] and evil will vanish from before
his face. And the word of that son of man will go forth (Nickelsburg; And
he [God] will go and speak to that son of man: Casey), and he will be strong
before the Lord of Spirits”. In Ch. 70 Enoch is taken to Eden. In Ch. 71:10
he is translated before the Head of Days together with Michael, Raphael,
Gabriel and Phanuel. The use of the expression “Son of Man” in the Gospels
points to Jesus as a truly divine, preexisting entity – the Logos –, which was
regarded as an authentic blasphemous utterance. Here, only Enoch’s name
and the concept of his Messianism preexist together with seven other things,
as it is well known. If read from this perspective, BP 48:2-7, can be taken
to be a clear counterpart to the Synoptic conception of Jesus as the real Son
of God. As the immediate future would demonstrate, this Enochic reaction
was really necessary. Two decades later, even more clearly insulting from a
Jewish perspective, the Prologue of the Fourth Gospel maintained that Jesus
was the preexistent Logos (cª 95/100 c.e.)!
After the catastrophic result of the Great Revolt against Rome and the fall
of Jerusalem and its temple, the Enochic Messiah of BP’s Chapter 71 ought
to be depicted not as a warrior, as the “Son of David” who would restore
Israel, but both as the final Judge in the Great Final Judgment against the na-
tions, that is, against the enemies of God and Israel, and as the eschatological
patron and companion of the righteous (see 38:2; 39:6-8; 48:4-7 and 62:7-
8,14” (Nickelsburg, 327b).
The composition of BP led to other later well-kown Jewish apocalyptic
developments after the first century c.e: Enoch’s exaltation as Metathron in
the Slavonic Enoch and the Hebrew Enoch. Note for example, 2 En 22 where
Enoch is also taken before God and is given clothes of glory. It was a logical
progress and a subsequent response to the Christian faith in which the exal-
ted Jesus stands up before the Most High or sits at his right hand.
2.Pinero.indd 39 19/05/2013 02.55.32

VI.
As a final hypothesis I propose that the ultimate Jewish-Christian respon-

se to the theological pretensions of the Enochians could very well be John’s
Revelation, a work whose last draft could have been composed at the end of
Domitian’s reign (c ª 96 c.e.), although it may contains previous and diverse
materials such as, for example, the one contained in Chapter 11. This is not
a book of personal visions, though it is not impossible that several visions
could be found in it. It is rather a book intended for liturgical reading and
a literary and artificial mixture composed in the loneliness of an author’s
scriptorium. The language, allusions, words and expressions of the Hebrew
Bible appear throughout the work, although without explicit quotations. It
is clear that the author draws upon scripture both in form and content, espe-
cially upon the books of Exodus, Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and Zachariah.
A careful literary analyses also reveals that its author used other previous
apocalyptic texts not belonging to the Hebrew Bible and that he incorporated
them into his book. Commentators have claimed that the following passages
were re-written by the author: 7:1-12; 11:1-14; 12:1-18 + 13:1-18; 17:1-17;
20:1-22,5. In my opinion, he knew BP’s text and emended its conceptions.
I quote again Nickelsburg, with whom I agree:
“The Revelation of John of Patmos, also from the end of the first Century
C.E., provides the closest parallel to BP. Although it is framed roughly
by a pair of passages that are reminiscent of the framing of Daniel 10-12
(an epiphany, Rev. 1:10-20; cf. Dan 10:2-20; a reference to the sealing
of the revelation, Rev 22:10; cf. Dan 12:9), aspects of the content of the
book approximate those of the Parables. John ascends to heaven (in the
spirit, 1:10;4:2), to the divine throne room, where he sees the four living
creatures and hears the praises of the heavenly choruses (Rev 4), inclu-
ding a version of the Trisagion (4:8; cf.. 1 Enoch 39:11, 12), as well as
the cry of the dead pleading for vindication (6:9-11). From the heavenly
vantage point he sees events connected with the endtime and the coming
judgment. This judgment and the revelations that embody its prediction
respond to persecution by imperial Rome (cf. 6:9-11 with 39:5; 47:1-4).
The enactor of the judgment is the counterpart to the Parables’ Son of
Man/Chosen One/Anointed One. He is ‘one like son of man’ (Dan 7:13; 1
Enoch 46:1), who is the depicted with traits of the servant of YHWH (the
lamb who is slain, 5:6; cf. Isa 53:7) and the Davidic king (11:15, 18; 12:5;
19:15,19; cf. Pss 2:2,9 and 19:13,15; cf. Isa 11:4), who shares the throne
of God (22:1) and is given power and might, honor and glory (5:12; cf.
Dan 7:14). Although the final locus of salvation is a newly created earth
beneath a newly created heaven (21:1-4), John receives the revelations
about this future during an ascent to heaven.
Taken together these features suggest some knowledge of the Parables,
though certainly not anything resembling quotation. The otherworldly
apocalyptic viewpoint of the Parables reemerges here providing the au-
2.Pinero.indd 40 19/05/2013 02.55.32

thor a good number of motifs. One could even say that both texts kind of
breath together. On the other hand, John’s wording is also reminiscent of
other canonical and pseudepigraphic texts such as Daniel 7 and 4 Ezra.
A single revelatory atmosphere embraces all these texts and it is within it
that John plays out his own song of salvation” (p.69).
My hypothesis then is that different marginal and competing Jewish

groups refuted one another. The New Testament either mentions or paral-
lels the Enochic corpus in at least in 60 passages (cf. Nestle-Aland, Novum
Testamentum Graece, 27 ed., 804-05). John’s Revelation could be the last
Jewish-Christian response to the claims of the Enochians: Jesus of Nazareth,
not Enoch, is the Son of David, the Anointed One, the Chosen One, the Ser-
vant of YHWH, the Lamb of God, and the Son of Man. The coming Christian
Jerusalem fulfills all the expectations of Israel’s faith in its future restoration.
Summing up: I have tried to depict a possible 1st-century C.E. scenario

in which several apocalyptic, marginal Jewish groups quarreled about who
was to be regarded as the true Messiah, i.e. as the agent of God who would
save and vindicate the righteous in the imminent end of time. According to
the Enochians, Enoch played that very role. According to the Jewish-Chri-
stians, however, only Jesus could be properly identified with God’s Messiah.
All groups had their own esoteric and exoteric books which functioned as
their ideological pennants. Each group urged its members to defend their
own views and to refute all rival claims. Yet they refuted these in an indirect
manner by producing new writings.
As for the different stages of this theological struggle that silently deve-
loped throughout the first century c.e. they might be summarized as follows:
1. The Jewish-Christians who quickly developed their faith in Jesus of
Nazareth as Lord and Messiah initiated a process of a Spirit-guided reinter-
pretation of their own hero after his death. Such reinterpretation was suppor-
ted by their belief in his resurrection and ascension to heaven and pointed
toward Jesus’ divinization. About three or four years after Jesus’ death, Paul
felt himself “called” by God, stopped persecuting the Christ-believing Jews,
and became the chief propagator of the theological conceptions originally set
forth by the Hellenistic Jewish-Christians. These conceptions included Jesus’
preexistence as a divine entity
2. The Enochians reacted by composing the Book of Parables up to ch.
70. Enoch, not Jesus, was to be regarded as the ‘Son of man’. Yet this ex-
pression was used to designate a concrete person rather than to denote a kind
of messianic qualification, and in fact such a person was considered human
rather than divine, his designation as the agent of God notwithstanding.
3. The Jewish-Christians replied with the composition of the Synoptic
Gospels, whose authors were all followers and supporters of Paul’s theology
of the cross (Mathew included): Jesus’ divinization now becomes clearer.
2.Pinero.indd 41 19/05/2013 02.55.32

4. The Enochic group reacted again adding to the bulk of the Book of
Parables ch. 71, in which they claimed for their hero the fullness of power
belonging the Son of Man figure. They explicitly or implicitly accepted all
the trappings and prerogatives of this figure already expressed in BP’s core,
such as Enoch’s preexistence and his messianic and judicial functions.
5. The ultimate Jewish-Christian reaction to this Enochian addendum was
John’s Revelation.
To make this hypothesis commendable I have argued:
1. Against a pre-Christian date for BP. The hypothesis of a post-Christian
composition is much more probable.
2. Against the notion that a Son of Man concept can be found in any
Jewish text prior to the appearance of Mark’s Gospel.
3. That Mark, even if he did not created it himself, was responsible for
spreading by means of his Gospel the new “Son of Man” theology, which
must be furthermore read with and awareness of the literary device of a
“messianic secret”.
4. That the theology of the Son of Man as developed in BP was the Eno-
chian, Jewish response to the blasphemous theological boldness of the Chri-
stians. According to the literary habits of the moment, however, such respon-
se was not a direct one.
5. That the Synoptic Son of Man theology might be seen as a response to
the core of BP (without chapter 71)
6. That, in turn, the Enochic response to this consisted in the addition of
chapter 71 to the bulk of BP.
7. And that the last Jewish-Christian response to the Enochians was
John’s Revelation.
General Conclusion
I would like to insist that all that is said in this paper should be regarded as
a modest, though perhaps reasonable, hypothesis. My point is a general one
and calls for further reconsideration of the entire issue. I am completely awa-
re that to fully prove my hypothesis I would need to carefully contrast BP’s,
the Synoptic, and the Johannine “Christology.” Therefore I do not pretend to
have resolved the fascinating issue one is forced to deal with when reading
together BP and the New T.
As a general conclusion let me quote again Nickelsburg’s commentary
(my additions in italics):
“Daniel 7,13-14 plays an important role in both BP and New Testament

eschatology…, most notably is the transformation of ‘one like a son of
2.Pinero.indd 42 19/05/2013 02.55.32

man’ into a title of Jesus, and consonant with the Danielic text, he is de-
picted as en exalted eschatological figure. However, different from Daniel
and like the Son of Man in the Parables, the Son of Man in the Gospels
is the executor of the final judgment rather than the bearer of God’s eter-
nal reign. ‘Son of Man’ occurs in the Gospels, first in Mark, also as the
title of Jesus that governs statements about the death and resurrection (a
suffering Messiah totally unknown in Jewish circles)47 that contain verbs
drawn from the last Servant song of Second Isaiah…
“From this I conclude that, although the NT speaks in the language of
Daniel 7, it construes Jesus’ identity as Son of Man in terms in the inter-
pretation of Daniel found in the Parables…
This could be true, according to my hypothesis for Mark’s Gospel and his
successors – the Synoptic Gospels, and partially John’s Gospel –, but not
for the first reinterpretations of Jesus by his followers, after their belief in
his resurrection. As I have tried to explain in the previous pages about the
Hellenist Jewish-Christians of Damascus and Antiocheia and the writings
of Paul, they developed their own understanding of the Scripture, they
were Jews, they knew the Scripture by heart, they knew the hermeneutical
principles as well, they did not need to copy from anyone. A different thing
is the Mark’s Gospel, an arduous task, the first ‘biography’ of Jesus accor-
ding to the general theological lines derived from Pauline cross theology.
The situation is more complex, however, since some NT Son of Man
passages are more consonant with the form of the Deutero-Isaianic Ser-
vant tradition as it is expressed in Wisdom 2 and 5. When taken together,
the Book of Parables, the Wisdom of Solomon and the ideas48 about the
Son of Man in the Gospels and Revelation attest a complex and shifting
set of exegetical49 traditions about Son of Man, Servant and Messiah…
This whole set of texts (Wisdom, Paul, Parables, four Gospels, 4 Ezra,
47
One idea that does not seem to be prominent in pre-Christian Judaism is that of the suffering
Messiah; no early Jewish text speaks of such a figure. To Christians the idea of a suffering
Messiah seems natural, but that is because it is so deeply rooted in a Christian understanding
of the OT. In Judaism, however, the Davidic Messiah is associated with triumph, not defeat and
death; Peter’s shocked reaction to the Markan Jesus’ announcement of his coming passion (Mark
8:31-32), therefore, is realistic. Deutero-Isaiah, to be sure, speaks of the Lord’s Servant, who
suffers and dies an atoning death (Isa 50:4-9; 52:13-53:12), but this figure is not identified with
the Messiah. Indeed, while the Targum sees references to the Messiah in Isaiah 53, it assigns
the suffering in the Isaian passage to the Messiah’s enemies rather than the Messiah himself (cf.
Mowinckel, He That Cometh, 330–33). The later rabbinic traditions that speak of the death of
the Messiah-Son-of-Joseph were probably influenced by Christianity and/or the death of the
leader of the Second Jewish Revolt, Bar Kochba, rather than by a preexisting Jewish concept of
a suffering Messiah (cf. Klausner, Idea, pp. 483-501). The NT notion of suffering messiahship,
therefore, is a mutation of previous Jewish messianism rather than a straightforward continuation
of it (cf. Brown, Christology, p. 160) (J. Marcus, Op. Cit. n. 4 , p. 1106).
48
Nickelsburg: “traditions”.
49
As I have defended for many years, the birth of Christian Christology, i.e., the birth of
Christianity is a philological, exegetical issue. The very first Christian theologians were exegetes
who dared to find out new meanings, just like modern interpreters do. ‘Ein Altphilologe’, as a
German would say, always dared to interpret ancient texts with ideas from his own time.
2.Pinero.indd 43 19/05/2013 02.55.32

Revelation)50 should be read together as variant testimonies to an ongoing

expression of Jewish eschatological hopes”…(p. 75) However, the varia-
tions among the texts… indicate that their authors were working with and
were themselves molding flexible religious tradition, that was not limited
to the written word.51 ‘Scripture’, if we use that term, was Scripture inter-
preted in diverse ways. Seen in this broader context, the Parables provide
one window into the world in which ‘Judaism’ and ‘Christianity’ would
go their separate ways” (p. 112-123).
In the same way I would suggest that one read both 2 Baruch and Joseph
and Aseneth as two Jewish responses to Pauline theology, particularly as a
response to Paul’s doctrine about justification by “the works of the Law” and
Paul’s Christology, plus the Pauline interpretation of the Eucharistic Meal52,
respectively. Finally, the Testament of Job (probably date: final I century;
begin II century), which offers an amazing amount of vocabulary similar to
the Deutero-Pauline corpus, could be considered a general Jewish response
to Pauline theology.
ABSTRACT
This essay argues against a pre-Christian date for the Book of Parables
(1Enoch). Afterwards it explores the possibility that the Son of Man concept
set forth in the Parables of Enoch contains an Enochic response to the Son
of Man Christology developed in different strata of the New Testament, spe-
cially in the Synoptic Gospels. Moreover, as a final hypothesis, it considers
the possibility that the Chapter 71 of the BP – an addition to the Book of Pa-
rables – could be a Jewish response to the Book of Revelation. The possible
scenario of the Jewish-Christian thesis and their Jewish responses are the
discussions of rival groups of pious apocalyptic Jews and Jewish-Christians
at the final quarter of the first century C.E. The responses are always indi-
rect, as it was usual between Jews: a new narrative about the Messiah, not a
direct argument against the adversaries’ proposals.
50
Nickelsburg: Wisdom, Parables, 4 Ezra, four Gospels Revelation and Paul.
51
See Nickelsburg’s Introduction, “Orality and the Parables,” pp. 34-7.
52
Pace G. Bohak, Joseph and Aseneth and the Jewish Temple in Heliopolis (Atlanta GE:
Scholars Press, 1996)
2.Pinero.indd 44 19/05/2013 02.55.33

Enoch As Mediator, Messiah, Judge, and Son of Man in The Book of Parables, A Jewish Response To Early Jewish-Christian Theology - Antonio Piñero

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Pinero – Enoch as Mediator, Messiah, Judge and Son of Man 1

La figura e le funzioni di Enoc: messia, mediatore, giudice, Figlio

ENOCH AS MEDIATOR, MESSIAH, JUDGE,

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This state of affairs presupposes the following possible scenario imme-

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placed by him in a different context, thus giving birth to a different, pu-

There are dozens of other examples of the same phenomenon:

2.Pinero.indd 7 19/05/2013 02.55.29

I The arguments for a pre-Christian date of BP are extremely weak.

In the following pages I intend to expand these points (I-VI)

Dating BP in pre-Christian times depends on the following presumption:

2.Pinero.indd 8 19/05/2013 02.55.29

2.Pinero.indd 9 19/05/2013 02.55.29

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This text is confirmed by Josephus, Ant. 17.171-173:

2.Pinero.indd 11 19/05/2013 02.55.29

The parallel text of Bellum 1.657-659 is somehow briefer, but essentially

2.Pinero.indd 12 19/05/2013 02.55.29

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In the following pages I will try to offer a possible basis to my hypothesis,

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- The Palestinian or “Hebrew” Jewish-Christians re-interpreted Jesus’ life

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convict, executed by the Romans but raised up to a new, celestial life

- Another group, that of the Hellenistic Jewish-Christians of the Diaspora,

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An equal ideological atmosphere postulates a similar time of composi-

2.Pinero.indd 20 19/05/2013 02.55.30

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Does the BP consider the expression “Son of Man” as a proper messianic

2.Pinero.indd 22 19/05/2013 02.55.30

the following opinion. It is highly improbable that in pre-Christian Judaism

This is interpreted by the author himself at 7:14 as a figure to whom “was

“The man-like figure is however described in such a way that he might

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been numerous attempts to identify him on the assumption that he must

B. The Similitudes of Enoch

The solution to the “Son of Man” Problem , 91.

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“The chief character in chapter 13 is the figure of a man. It is unfortunate

In spite of this overwhelming evidence, the scholarly communis opinio

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“There was no ‘Son of Man Concept’, in Second Temple Judaism. The

G.W.E. Nickelsburg30, in his excellent excursus “The Chosen One of

a) The three expressions that designate in BP the “son of man” (walda

b) These expressions are accompanied by qualifiers that almost always

The Solution to the “Son of Man” Problem, p. 114.

1 Enoch 2, pp. 113-123

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and when should we literally translate the qualifier? When we transla-

Therefore, Casey’s conclusion is:

In sum, it seems to me that to capitalize the expression “Son of Man,” as

2.Pinero.indd 28 19/05/2013 02.55.31

Nevertheless, Paul had the theological audacity of making Jesus a fully