Aramaic Idiom and The Son of Man Problem: A Response To Owen and Shepherd

[JSNT 25.
1 (2002) 3-32]
ISSN 0142-064X
Aramaic Idiom and the Son of Man Problem:

A Response to Owen and Shepherd
Maurice Casey
Department of Theology, The University of Nottingham
University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD
Abstract
Aramaic was a relatively stable language for centuries before and after the
time of Jesus. This stable situation has been clari ed by the Dead Sea
scrolls. The Aramaic scrolls can safely be used to reconstruct sayings of
Jesus. However, they do not form a whole language, and there was no rm
barrier between the Aramaic of the time of Jesus and later Aramaic, nor
between East and West. We must therefore make careful use of later
sources too. Aramaic sources from before the time of Jesus provide
evidence of the optional use of the emphatic state in generic expressions.
This forms the cultural and linguistic context for the idiomatic use of rb
())#n()) in either the emphatic or absolute state, as attested in later sources.
The problems posed by the Gospel term o( ui9o_j tou~ a)nqrw&pou continue to
be debated among New Testament scholars. It is widely agreed that this
term is not natural Greek, and that it represents some form of the Aramaic
())#n()) rb. This basic point leads directly to a major problem. As it
stands in the Gospels, o( ui9o_j tou~ a)nqrw&pou is a christological title for
Jesus alone. The Aramaic ())#n()) rb, however, is an ordinary term for
‘man’, ‘human being’, unsuitable for use as a christological title without
signi cant quali cation. In several publications, I have proposed a solu-
tion to this and other aspects of the Son of Man problem.1 In particular, I
1. P.M. Casey, ‘The Son of Man Problem’, ZNW 67 (1976), pp. 147-65; ‘The Use
of the Term “son of man” in the Similitudes of Enoch’, JSJ 7 (1976), pp. 11-29; Son of
Man. The Interpretation and In uence of Daniel 7 (London: SPCK, 1980); ‘Aramaic
Idiom and Son of Man Sayings’, ExpTim 96 (1984–85), pp. 233-36; ‘The Jackals and
the Son of Man (Matt. 8.20 // Luke 9.58)’, JSNT 23 (1985), pp. 3-22; ‘General, Generic
and Inde nite: The Use of the Term “Son of Man” in Aramaic Sources and in the
© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002, The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX and 370
Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA.
Downloaded from jnt.sagepub.com at NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIV on April 15, 2015
4 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 25.1 (2002)
have argued that the historical Jesus used ())#n()) rb in accordance with
a normal Aramaic idiom, in general statements that referred especially to
the speaker, or the speaker and some of his associates. The dif culties of
translating this idiom into Greek led the translators of the Gospel
traditions to adopt a strategy: they used o( ui9o_j tou~ a)nqrw&pou for rb
())#n()) when they thought that ())#n()) rb referred to Jesus himself, and
they used something else when they thought that ())#n()) rb, or its plural
)#n()) ynb referred to other people.
In a recent article in this journal, Paul Owen and David Shepherd
attacked part of this solution.2 They argue that the proposed idiomatic
usage of ())#n()) rb is not attested suf ciently early in Aramaic docu-
ments. They focus speci cally on ‘Middle Aramaic’ as described in 1979
by Fitzmyer, who proposed approximate chronological limits of 200 BCE–
200 CE for this phase of the language.3 Their ground for this is that
surviving documents from this period re ect most closely the dialect
spoken by Jesus and his disciples. Thus a signi cant part of their argu-
ment is that, apart from any particular idiomatic usage of it, ())#n()) rb
itself was not common enough. They also believe that my proposed
solution requires the difference between the absolute and emphatic, or
de nite and inde nite, states to have completely broken down, and they
deny that this was the case. They further deny that the particular idiomatic
use of )#n()) rb in the emphatic state is to be found in reliable texts even
Teaching of Jesus’, JSNT 29 (1987), pp. 21-56; ‘Culture and Historicity: The Plucking
of the Grain (Mark 2.23-28)’, NTS 34 (1988), pp. 1-23, at 13-20; From Jewish Prophet
to Gentile God: The Origins and Development of New Testament Christology (The
Cadbury Lectures at the University of Birmingham, 1985-86. Cambridge: James
Clarke; Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991), pp. 46-56; ‘Method in
our Madness, and Madness in their Methods. Some Approaches to the Son of Man
Problem in Recent Scholarship’, JSNT 42 (1991), pp. 17-43; ‘The Use of the Term
())#n()) rb in the Aramaic Translations of the Hebrew Bible’, JSNT 54 (1994), pp. 87-
118; ‘Idiom and Translation. Some Aspects of the Son of Man Problem’, NTS 41
(1995), pp. 164-82; Is John’s Gospel True? (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 59-61, 95-
97; Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel (SNTSMS, 102; Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998), esp. pp. 111-21, 130-32, 211-18, 233-34.
2. P. Owen and D. Shepherd, ‘Speaking up for Qumran, Dalman and the Son of
Man: Was Bar Enasha a Common Term for “Man” in the Time of Jesus?’, JSNT 81
(2001), pp. 81-122.
3. J.A. Fitzmyer, ‘The Phases of the Aramaic Language’, in J.A. Fitzmyer, A
Wandering Aramean: Collected Aramaic Essays (SBLMS, 25; Missoula: Scholars
Press, 1979), pp. 57-84, a revision of a 1974 lecture.
© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002.

CASEY Aramaic Idiom and the Son of Man Problem 5
in what they call ‘Late Western Aramaic’. This leaves examples with the
emphatic state only in Syriac, which they de ne as ‘Eastern’ and regard as
irrelevant, apparently on grounds both of being the wrong dialect and
because the emphatic or de nite or determined state did in general lose its
force in Syriac.
The purpose of this article 4 is to respond to these criticisms, and to
clarify the relevant part of my proposed hypothesis in the light of recent
work.
The Development of the Aramaic Language

Aramaic was a relatively stable language over a period of centuries. It was
especially stable after being spread in standard form by the Persian
bureaucracy.5 Even before this, it had features that are found later in the
Talmuds and in Jewish midrashim. For example, the Se re inscriptions,
three steles set up c. 750 BCE, contain words still found more than a
millennium later in Talmud and midrash, including b), ‘father’, Nyb,
‘between’, rbg, ‘man’, Md()), ‘blood’, and ywh, ‘to be’. Linguistic features
in use for more than a millennium include the construct state. The term
())#n()) rb belongs here, for it occurs already at Se re 3.16 and it was
still in use centuries later.
Such evidence re ects the fact that Aramaic was the lingua franca of
the Assyrian empire as early as the eighth century BCE, especially in the
provinces ‘Beyond the River’. It superseded Akkadian as the main
language of communication even internally during the period of the
Babylonian empire, when many Jews were exiled to Babylon. Aramaic
was also the lingua franca of the whole Persian empire. This is the
cultural background of the replacement of Hebrew by Aramaic as the
normal language of communication between Jewish people. A language
spread in this way may naturally have features that may be perceived as
‘Eastern’, even when they turn up in documents from Israel or even from
Egypt.
4. This article was written as part of my work for a Leverhulme Major Research
Fellowship, awarded for the study of the Son of Man problem. I am extremely grateful
to the Leverhulme Trust for this fellowship, which is enabling me to complete a very
large piece of research.
5. On the emergence of distinctive Aramaic features, and standardization through
Of cial Aramaic, see especially J. Huehnergard, ‘What Is Aramaic?’, Aram 7 (1995),
pp. 261-82.

Over-literal interpretation of supposedly ‘Eastern’ features has caused

considerable trouble. For example, in his 1974 article on the Aramaic of
11QTgJob, Muraoka surveyed a number of the linguistic features of this
Targum. On the basis of a small proportion of them, including the use of
status emphaticus where he expected status absolutus, Muraoka con-
cluded that this Targum ‘was most probably prepared in the East’.6 This is
exactly what may not be inferred from such evidence. A small number of
supposedly ‘Eastern’ features may be found in any Aramaic document
written in the West because its author inherited a bureaucratized form of
Aramaic transmitted in the West but originating in the East. Moreover,
such features might be reinforced at any time by the presence in the West
of people from the East whose idiolect contained features of Eastern
dialects with which they were brought up. Muraoka’s use of status
emphaticus where he expected status absolutus is a doubly vulnerable
criterion, for we shall see that in restricted circumstances that he had not
uncovered it was more widespread in ‘Western’ documents than he
thought. In these circumstances, it is perhaps regrettable that scholars
have begun to call these linguistic features ‘isoglosses’. Isoglosses were
originally the linguistic equivalent of isotherms, and they can be drawn on
maps.7 If we had continued to label linguistic features as such and if we
had drawn accurate maps of supposedly Eastern isoglosses, their Western
distribution might have been clearer.
The language that resulted from this standardized expansion and
widespread usage remained relatively stable for a long time. Conse-
quently, many words found at Qumran before the time of Jesus were still
in use in the Talmuds and in rather late Jewish midrashim. As well as
those already mentioned, such words include r(z, ‘seed’, rbx, ‘com-
panion’, ll+, ‘to cover’, (dy, ‘to know’, and lk, ‘all, every’. Syntactic
features common for centuries include the narrative use of the participle.
The term ())#n()) rb belongs here too, for it occurs at Qumran in both
singular and plural, and it is quite normal in more extensive documents of
later date. Similarly, many words found in the Qumran texts are attested
abundantly centuries later in Syriac. As well as those already mentioned,
these include )l, ‘not’, Klm, ‘king’, lpn ‘to fall’, Pws, ‘end’, and ll(,
‘enter’. The placement of a suf x on a noun before the particle d or yd,
6. T. Muraoka, ‘The Aramaic of the Old Targum of Job from Qumran Cave XI’,
JJS 25 (1974), pp. 425-43 (443).
7. For a lucid introduction, see J.K. Chambers and P. Trudgill, Dialectology
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd edn, 1998), ch. 7.

‘of ’, followed by the noun anticipated by the suf x, is also found at

Qumran and common in Syriac. The term ())#n()) rb belongs here too,
for it occurs at Qumran in both singular and plural, and it is quite normal
in more extensive Syriac documents of later date, just as in later Jewish
sources.
As far as the development of Aramaic is concerned, the importance of
the Qumran discoveries is to make this stable situation clearer. This also
means that, as far as it goes, Qumran Aramaic can safely be used in the
reconstruction of sayings of Jesus. I have made this point before, only to
nd that Owen and Shepherd quote me, omitting reference to a book that
they left out of account, and misinterpret my comments. I therefore repeat
what I wrote about the importance of the Qumran material, and go on to
point out that it is essential to make careful use of later Aramaic material
too.
This task [i.e. the reconstruction of Jesus’ sayings] has traditionally been
very dif cult, since very little Aramaic survived from the time of Jesus.
This situation has now been completely altered by the publication of the
Dead Sea Scrolls. In Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel, I have sought to
lay down a methodology for this work, as it has now become possible…
The Scrolls now provide us with a core of Aramaic of the right period and
culture. Moreover, most of the words in the Dead Sea Scrolls are used in
other dialects too. This means that they are not speci c to the dialect of
Judaea as opposed to anywhere else, and can reasonably be used to
reconstruct the Galilean Aramaic of Jesus. Previous attempts to use
‘Galilean’ Aramaic suffered badly from the late date and corrupt nature of
the source material, and invariably used a high proportion of material which
was not Galilean at all. Now, however, the problem of dialect is much less
serious than it seemed previously. 8
Owen and Shepherd interpret this to mean that I have a preference for
earlier source material. This is true when earlier sources contain what we
need, because so much earlier Aramaic is also found in later sources that
we may reasonably infer that it was in use in Galilee in the intervening
period. They go on to suggest that this vitiates my use of later source
material. This dogmatic commitment to using only earlier source material
is in no way justi ed.9 The simplest point is that the Dead Sea scrolls do
8. P.M. Casey, ‘An Aramaic Approach to the Synoptic Gospels’, ExpTim 110
(1998–99), pp. 275-78 (275), partially quoted by Owen and Shepherd, ‘Speaking up’,
p. 97.
9. Casey, Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel, pp. 89-93; idem, An Aramaic
Approach to Q: Sources for the Gospels of Matthew and Luke (SNTSMS, 122;

not contain enough Aramaic to form a language. If therefore we con ne

ourselves to them, we do not have enough Aramaic to reconstruct the
whole language of anyone.
There are a number of somewhat more complex points. I begin with
dialect. Jesus and his rst disciples spoke rst-century Galilean Aramaic.
Hardly any of this survives. The reason that this does not matter as much
as scholars used to think is that Aramaic was a relatively stable language
with relatively small differences between different dialects. So, for
example, Cook, commenting on ‘Middle Aramaic’ in Fitzmyer’s sense,
argues for an extensive dialect continuum:
From Nabatean in the West, to Qumran Aramaic, Palmyrene, early Syriac,
and Hatran in the East, key morphological features fail to converge in any
strong clusters of isoglosses to mark a strong dialect boundary.10
More generally, taking account of the massive amount of fruitful work

done on dialectology in the modern world where in nitely more data can
be and have been gathered, Chambers and Trudgill make the important
point that even isogloss bundles do not necessarily form clear bounda-
ries.11 It follows that no linguistic feature should be excluded from con-
sideration in reconstructing sayings of Jesus merely because it cannot be
found in our negligible rst-century Galilean Aramaic sources. This is just
as well, since such a criterion would exclude Qumran Aramaic as securely
as Syriac. Jesus was not an Essene who spoke a very conservative form of
Aramaic in the rst century BCE, second century BCE or even earlier,
which is what we would get from Qumran Aramaic if it were very differ-
ent from everything else. His Aramaic has to be reconstructed, a task
made more possible by the Dead Sea scrolls because they show what a
stable language Aramaic was, not because Jesus spoke the same dialect(s)
as we nd in the scrolls, which he did not.
Moreover, scholars such as Boyarin and Cook have properly called into
question the term ‘Eastern’ as a description of Syriac.12 In the rst place,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 56-63.

10. E.M. Cook, ‘A New Perspective on the Language of Onkelos and Jonathan’, in
D.R.G. Beattie and M.J. McNamara (eds.), The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their
Historical Context (JSOTSup, 166; Shef eld: Shef eld Academic Press, 1994), pp.
142-56 (147): see further E.M. Cook, ‘Qumran Aramaic and Aramaic Dialectology’, in
T. Muraoka (ed.), Studies in Qumran Aramaic (Abr-Nahrain Supp., 3. Louvain:
Peeters, 1992), pp. 1-21.
11. Chambers and Trudgill, Dialectology, pp. 104-105.
12. D. Boyarin, ‘An Inquiry into the Formation of the Middle Aramaic Dialects’, in

going from Israel, the Syriac-speaking area begins to the north and then
covers a considerable area moving around the Fertile Crescent towards
the East. Consistent with this, while Syriac is on the Eastern side of some
isoglosses such as l/n rather than y as the pre x of the 3 sg. impf., it goes
with Western dialects in other isoglosses such as preformative m on
derived-stem in nitives. It therefore seems reasonable to call it a Central
rather than an Eastern dialect.
As much havoc has been caused by date as by geography. This applies
to both ends of Fitzmyer’s ‘Middle Aramaic’. The earlier limit of 200 BCE
was dif cult to set, and when Fitzmyer himself had moved it from 300
BCE, he commented, ‘But even that should not be pressed too rigidly’.13
This is right, because 200 BCE was not a watershed. The most obvious
problem liable to arise from over-literal interpretation of this limit is to
date too early the conservative Aramaic of the book of Daniel, which was
completed in 166–165 BCE:
In fact, the Aramaic throughout chs. 2–7 is clearly Imperial Aramaic, the
lingua franca of the ancient Near East between the sixth and second
centuries BC. If one follows J. Fitzmyer’s dating system, the Aramaic of
Daniel can not date later than 200 BC or earlier than 600 BC. This at least
means Dan 2–7 was written prior to the Antiochus Epiphanes debacle, and
perhaps well prior to it.14
This is exactly what should not be done with Fitzmyer’s classi cation.
Those isoglosses that link Daniel with earlier Aramaic show that the
lower limit should not be over-interpreted. It was no more a boundary
than the geographical dialectical continuum.
As far as sayings of Jesus are concerned, a major problem lies in
dogmatic refusal to utilize later sources. This entails the removal of most
sayings material in Jewish Aramaic, a quite catastrophic and unjusti able
loss. We must consider straightforward New Testament evidence of our
need to employ later source material.
At Mk 5.41, we have Jesus’ words in the original Aramaic transliterated
into Greek letters, and translated into Greek:
Y.L. Arbeitman and A.R. Bomhard (eds.), Bono Homini Donum: Essays in Historical
Linguistics in Memory of J. Alexander Kerns (2 vols.; Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1981),
II, pp. 613-49; Cook, ‘New Perspective’.
13. Fitzmyer, ‘Phases’, p. 77 n. 32.
14. B. Witherington III, Jesus the Seer: The Progress of Prophecy (Peabody, MA:
Hendrickson, 1999), p. 197.

Taliqa koum, o# e0stin meqermhneuo&menon To_ kora&sion, soi_ le/gw, e1geire.
The rst word, )tyl+, is properly attested both in later Jewish Aramaic
and in Syriac. It is in the emphatic state because it is a form of address,
over-literally translated with the Greek de nite article. Would anyone
seriously suggest that Jesus did not say this because )tyl+ is not found in
the Dead Sea scrolls or in earlier Aramaic? One hopes not: it is straight-
forward evidence that Jesus’ speech included words not found in earlier
Aramaic because there is so little earlier Aramaic extant. The words soi\
le/gw are simply explicitative. The next interesting point is the form koum.
The verb Mwq is widely attested both before and after the time of Jesus. Its
2 f. sg. imp. is written ymwq (e.g. Dan. 7.5), to which some MSS of this
verse have corrected it. There is however ample evidence that nal vowels
after the tone syllable, including this one, were quiescent in Syriac and in
Christian Palestinian Aramaic, though they are written down in standard
texts and textbooks.15 This is accordingly straightforward evidence that
Jesus’ idiolect, and therefore surely his Galilean dialect, had this par-
ticular isogloss in common with these later dialects.
At Mk 7.34, another of Jesus’ words is transliterated and translated:
Effaqa, o# e0stin, Dianoi/xqhti
Here the form Effaqa caused scholars much trouble, and before we
learnt from the Dead Sea scrolls how much Hebrew in uenced the
Aramaic of our period, it was frequently suggested that this form was
Hebrew, not Aramaic. More recently, Wilcox has shown that the t of the
2 m. sg. imp. Ithpe‘el of xtp has been assimilated to the following p, just
as in the later source Vat. Ebr. 440 of Gen. 49.1.16 It follows that Jesus’
Galilean dialect had this feature in common with some later Jewish
Aramaic.
An important loanword not found in the scrolls or in earlier Aramaic is
farisai=oi, representing Ny#yrp or Ny#wrp. It is absent from early sources
because there were no Pharisees before the second century BCE. It is
absent from a few Dead Sea scrolls for the same reason and from the
others for two different reasons. Many of the scrolls do not concern such
15. T. Nöldeke, Compendious Syriac Grammar (trans. J.A. Crichton; London:

Williams & Norgate, 1904), pp. 35-36, 103-104; F. Schulthess, Grammatik des
christlich-palästinischen Aramäisch (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1924),
pp. 16, 62.
16. M. Wilcox, ‘Semitisms in the New Testament’, ANRW, II.25.2, pp. 978-1029
(998-99).

sectarian matters, and Hebrew ones that do call them by the polemical
term twklxh y#rwd. This is another important word which requires us to
study later source material, including in this case Josephus, who also uses
it as a loanword.
The Greek text of the Gospels also shows interference from Aramaic
found only in later sources. For example, at Lk. 14.18 the expression a)po_
mia~j is not satisfactory Greek. It is a literal translation of the idiomatic
Syriac expression )dx Nm, which means ‘all at once’, and which is found
also in Christian Palestian Aramaic. We must infer that )dx Nm was in use
in the Aramaic of our period.17 In some cases, a word that Jesus must have
used occurs in earlier Aramaic sources, but is found only in later sources
with a metaphorical meaning required by a Gospel passage. For example,
at Mk 14.21 u(pa&gei is used with reference to Jesus’ forthcoming death.
The Greek word u(pa&gw was not a normal term for dying, whereas the
equivalent Aramaic lz) was used with this reference. There are plenty of
examples of this in later Jewish Aramaic (including passage 6 below), and
in Syriac, and the word itself occurs in earlier sources with the mundane
meaning ‘go’. We must infer that this word was already used as a
metaphor for death in rst-century Galilee.18
Finally, some words are standard but rare because they refer to things
that are not normally discussed in extant texts. These words include )(nn,
‘mint’, )tb#, ‘dill’, )rb#, ‘rue’, )nwmk, ‘cummin’, which we need to
understand the Aramaic background of Mt. 23.23 // Lk. 11.42. In each
case, the word ought not to be in doubt, because there is only one Aramaic
word extant. None of them occurs at anything like the right period
because sources such as the Dead Sea scrolls do not contain any discus-
sions of herbs.19
Although the term ())#n()) rb is attested in earlier Aramaic, its
frequency belongs with this class of evidence. o( ui9o_j tou~ a)nqrw&pou
occurs no less than 14 times in Mark, and 8 times in Q: there are 69
occurrences in the synoptic Gospels as a whole, and when all parallels are
discounted, this still leaves no less than 38 independent sayings. It follows
that ())#n()) rb was as normal in rst-century Galilean Aramaic as it is in
later Jewish sources and in Syriac, and that its frequency should not be
guessed at by mechanical counting of earlier sources, a matter to which
we must return.
17. See further Casey, Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel, pp. 42-43, 53-54.
18. See further Casey, Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel, pp. 233-36.
19. See further Casey, Aramaic Approach to Q, pp. 57, 72-83.

All these points form a massive argument of cumulative weight.

Aramaic was a relatively stable language, as the Dead Sea scrolls have
helped us to understand. They do not however contain a whole language,
nor were they written in rst-century Galilee. The Gospels themselves
provide decisive evidence that Jesus’ Galilean dialect contained standard
Aramaic features that are extant only in later sources. In reconstructing his
sayings, and narratives written by his rst disciples, we must make careful
use of later source material.
Generic and Optional Use of the Emphatic State

Owen and Shepherd devote a section of their article to arguing that the
emphatic or de nite state had not lost determinate force in the Dead Sea
scrolls. We must therefore consider the development of its use. In
previously published work, I have used the metaphor of ‘breakdown’ to
describe the decreasing difference between the absolute and emphatic
states in some circumstances. 20 Since then, more very early texts have
been discovered, and more work has been done on early texts that were
already known. We still need the metaphor of ‘breakdown’ to describe
what happened over a period of centuries, because it remains clear that in
some late Jewish Aramaic texts and even more in Syriac, the distinction
between the absolute and emphatic states did to a large extent break
down. Two things are not however as clear as they seemed years ago.
First, it is no longer clear that the generic use of the emphatic state is part
of that breakdown, rather than a possibility from the earliest times. The
same applies to some unique items such as the heavens and the earth.
These have in common with generic expressions that the use of the
absolute or emphatic state cannot affect the meaning. We accordingly nd
variation in Aramaic, as we do with the presence or absence of the article
in Hebrew. Secondly, it is clear that the expectations of the earlier
secondary literature were never properly grounded in Aramaic usage.
Some variation is found even before the Persian period.21 For example,
in a letter of 605 BCE, we nd )qr)w )ym# for ‘heaven and earth’ in
line 2: one line later, however, we nd Nym# for ‘heaven’. This shows the
20. E.g. Casey, Son of Man, p. 228, referring exempli gratia to Muraoka, ‘Old
Targum of Job’, and quoted by Owen and Shepherd, ‘Speaking up’, p. 87 nn. 26-27.
21. On the origin of the emphatic state, or postpositive article, see J. Tropper, ‘Die
Herausbildung des bestimmten Artikels im Semitischen’, JSS 46 (2001), pp. 1-31, with
bibliography.

emphatic state already in use for the earth, and optional for the heavens.22
Among abundant examples of the generic use of the emphatic state from
before the time of Jesus, we nd in the proverbs of Ahiqar )t+nxw )ngd
for ‘grain and wheat’, )(y#r for a generically wicked person, and )ryt(
for a generically rich person (Ahiqar lines 129, 171, 207).23 Likewise, in
Biblical Aramaic we are told that the vessels of the house of God were
)pskw hbhd yd, ‘of gold and silver’ (Ezra 5.14), and before he sent for
them, Nebuchadnezzar drank )rmx, ‘wine’ (Dan. 5.1). Similarly at
Qumran, we nd )my for the sea at 11QTgJob 30.6, where MT (Job 38.8)
has the bare My: )(r) for the earth at 11QTgJob 31.2, where MT (Job
38.24) has the bare Cr): )r#n, ‘the eagle’, at 11QTgJob 33.8, where MT
(Job 39.27) has the bare r#n: )npk, ‘famine’ at 1QApGen 19.10, which is
based on Gen. 12.10 where we nd the bare b(r: )wzx for a vision at
1QApGen 21.8: )tqdc, ‘righteousness’ at 4Q542 1 i 12: and hsmx,
‘violence’ at 4Q Ena 1 iv 8 (1 En. 9.1).
The emphatic state was however optional for such expressions. So we
nd in the proverbs of Ahiqar Klm for a generic king, and qydc for a
generically righteous person (lines 107-108, 126): and at the end of the
fth century BCE, bhd and Psk for ‘gold’ and ‘silver’ (Cowley 30, line
28).24 Similarly in Biblical Aramaic, we nd bhd and Psk for ‘gold’ and
‘silver’ (Dan. 2.32), and hqdc for ‘righteousness’ (Dan. 4.24). At
Qumran, Noah’s vineyard produces rmx (1QapGen 12.13), and hmkx is
used in the absolute state for ‘wisdom’ (11QTgJob 30.2, MT Job 38.4
hnyb).
As far as we can tell, usage changed over time, with increasing use of
the emphatic state. This does not however mean that the emphatic state
lost its force in all kinds of expression, nor that it became necessary even
in generic expressions. It is especially important that there are documents
that have similar usages of both emphatic and absolute states, some of
them in close proximity. This leaves no doubt about the optional nature of
the use of the emphatic and absolute states in some kinds of expression.
For example, we nd both brq and )brq for ‘war’, ‘battle’, in the
opening lines of the Aramaic translation of the Bisitun inscription of
22. For the text, see J.A. Fitzmyer, ‘The Aramaic Letter of King Adon to the
Egyptian Pharaoh’, Bib 46 (1965), pp. 41-55.
23. For the text, see J.M. Lindenberger, The Aramaic Proverbs of Ahiqar
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983).
24. A. Cowley, Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century B.C. (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1923).

Darius I: in a letter of 407 BCE, we nd pillars of )nb), ‘stone’, and

gateways of Nb) in the very next line (Cowley 30, lines 9-10). In biblical
Aramaic, we nd bhd ‘gold’, and #xn, ‘bronze’ at Dan. 2.32, and )bhd
and )#xn at Dan. 2.38-39: even more strikingly, in Dan. 7 the rst beast
was given #n) bbl, a human heart (Dan. 7.4), whereas the little horn was
given eyes )#n) yny(k, ‘like the eyes of a man’ (Dan. 7.8). Similarly at
Qumran we nd )+#wqb at 1QApGen 2.5 and +#wqb at 1QApGen 2.10,
both meaning ‘in truth’: )xm#, ‘joy’, at 4Q542 1 i 3, and xm# at line 11:
+#q, ‘truth’ at 4Q212 4.12 al (1 En. 93.10) and )+#wq at 2.20 (1 En.
91.19).
In 11QTgJob, we nd Ny(#r #n) (11QTgJob 11.3) for (#r Md) (Job
27.13), as well as )y(y#r #n) (11QTgJob 25.6) for Pnx Md) (Job 34.30).
A particular decision was required by the translator whenever a one-
consonant preposition was attached directly to the front of a noun,
because in such cases the presence or absence of the article is not marked
in a consonantal Hebrew text. In a devastating review of scholarship on
the Hebrew article, Barr showed that the vocalization of the MT produced
far more occurrences of the article in some texts than their authors had
written in front of nouns without attached prepositions.25 It follows that
the vocalization of the MT is no guide to how our translator understood
the text. It is accordingly signi cant that there are several cases where he
took different decisions about the same or similar generic nouns. So we
nd r+m (11QTgJob 28.5) for r+m (Job 36.27), and )r+ml (11QTgJob
31.3, 5) for P+#l (Job 38.25) and for r+ml (Job 38.28): Nylpr(
(11QTgJob 30.7) for lpr( (Job 38.9) and )lpr( (11QTgJob 29.8) for
Myqx#l (Job 37.18): xwr[k (11QTgJob 16.4) for xwrk (Job 30.15) and
)xwrl (11QTgJob 13.6) for xwrl (Job 28.25): Nn(k (11QTgJob 16.4) for
b(k (Job 30.15) and )ynn(l (11QTgJob 3.8) for b(l (Job 20.6).
Owen and Shepherd’s approach to the relationship between the absolute
and emphatic states has three major problems. One is their standard of
judgment. They repeatedly seek to establish whether the emphatic state
had lost its determinative force and become moribund as in Syriac. For
example, they discuss the rendering of b(kw at Job 30.15, where the
Peshitta ()nn( Ky)w) and the late rabbinical Targum ()by( Kyhw) both have
the emphatic state, whereas 11QTgJob has the absolute state (Nn(kw). They
correctly regard this as evidence that the absolute state was still in normal
25. J. Barr, ‘“Determination” and the De nite Article in Biblical Hebrew’, JSS 34
(1989), pp. 307-35 (325-33).

use for the author of 11QTgJob as it was not in Syriac, and that the
emphatic state had not lost its force to the extent that it did in some later
Jewish texts. 26 I have not however suggested otherwise. For example,
Fitzmyer suggested that the determinate character of the de nite state was
‘on the wane’, and I argued that ‘the breakdown of the difference between
the absolute and emphatic states of the Aramaic noun was already under
way…’27 Both opinions are much milder than the one that Owen and
Shepherd seek to refute, and they are not undermined by examples like
this one.
Secondly, Owen and Shepherd are too dependent on existing secondary
literature. One effect of this is that they do not discuss enough of the
evidence that does not support their frame of reference: more of it is
produced above than was noted by them. The other effect is that they do
have expectations about the use of the absolute and emphatic states, but
the grounds for these expectations are never made clear. So they rely on
Kutscher for determination being used ‘correctly’, Muraoka for deviations
from ‘classical usage’ and apparently also for ‘deviation from the expec-
ted use of the states’, and Kaufman for the two noun states being used
‘quite properly’.28 This is especially regrettable because the discussion of
these matters in existing secondary literature is not satisfactory. In 1987, I
pointed out the hazards of using antiquated de nitions of such things as a
generic article, and in 1989 Barr used a comment on the Hebrew article
from the same part of Gesenius-Kautzsch as a platform for his critical
comments:
The article is, generally speaking, employed to determine a substantive
wherever it is required by Greek and English…29
One fault of this is that it encourages understanding of the Hebrew article

in terms more appropriate to Greek and English. The other is that it cannot
be properly applied to the actual usage of the Hebrew article, as Barr
26. Owen and Shepherd, ‘Speaking up’, p. 101.

27. J.A. Fitzmyer, The Genesis Apocryphon of Qumran Cave I: A Commentary
(BibOr, 18A. Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 2nd edn, 1971), p. 221; Casey, Son of
Man, p. 228; both quoted by Owen and Shepherd, ‘Speaking up’, p. 99 with n. 71.
28. Owen and Shepherd, ‘Speaking up’, pp. 100, 103, 104.
29. Casey, ‘General, Generic and Inde nite’, pp. 28, 54-55 n. 6, citing Gesenius’
Hebrew Grammar (ed. E. Kautzsch, rev. A.E. Cowley; Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2nd edn, 1909), pp. 407-408, § 126q ff.; Barr, ‘Determination’, pp. 307-308,
with the above quotation from Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar, p. 404 § 126d.

demonstrated. The standard grammar of Biblical Aramaic by Rosenthal

has the same fault:
Use of the abs.st. and the det.st. agrees by and large with the non-use or use
of the de nite article in English. 30
This is an unsatisfactory standard of judgment, for English had not been

invented when our texts were written, and there are too many exceptions
for this to be more than a loose generalization. Rosenthal also notes that
‘The det.st. may also be used for the general designation of species’,
citing )rmx at Dan. 5.1 and )pskw hbhd at Ezra 5.14: both examples
differ from English usage.
The grammar of Egyptian Aramaic by Muraoka and Porten, published
as recently as 1998, is still in dif culties in this area. They note the
generic use of st. abs., and the use of st. det., ‘as reference to a speci c,
but representative member of a class’, comparing this with the generic use
of the st. abs.31 Nonetheless, confronted with )rmx in the expression
)rmx ht#y yz, ‘one who drinks wine’ (Ahiqar 92), they formulate a
special explanation: ‘One may think of the wine served on a speci c
occasion’.32 This completely misses the point. The term )rmx may be
described as ‘generic’, or as Rosenthal put it, ‘the general designation of
species’. Again, Muraoka and Porten cannot explain )xryl, ‘per month’,
at Cowley 37 line 3, preferring xryl, as in line 4 and elsewhere.33 But this
too may be thought of as generic, and the use of the absolute or emphatic
state is optional, which is reasonable when the use of either state cannot
make any difference to the meaning. Moreover, we can see what has gone
wrong when Muraoka and Porten refer to more general work on generics:
all they produce is a book by Jespersen published in 1924!34
Recent work on generics and de niteness in general has begun to be
illuminating. It cannot be surveyed here for reasons of space, but I take
some main points from the 1999 book of Christopher Lyons.35 Lyons
bluntly declares on the basis of the study of many languages:
30. F. Rosenthal, A Grammar of Biblical Aramaic (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz,

2nd edn, 1963), p. 24 § 46.
31. T. Muraoka and B. Porten, A Grammar of Egyptian Aramaic (Leiden: E.J. Brill,
1998), pp. 179, 181 with n. 812.
32. Muraoka and Porten, Egyptian Aramaic, p. 181 n. 813.
33. Muraoka and Porten, Egyptian Aramaic, p. 182 § n.
34. Muraoka and Porten, Egyptian Aramaic, p. 179 n. 797, citing O. Jespersen, The
Philosophy of Grammar (London: Allen & Unwin, 1924).
35. C. Lyons, De niteness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

Most languages do not have ‘articles’, and in those that do they vary
strikingly in both their form and their range of use.36
It follows that having expectations of the use of any article in one

language on the basis of unrelated languages is asking for trouble.
Differences naturally include general or generic expressions. For example,
in English ‘detective novels’ must not have a de nite article: in French
‘les romans policiers’ must have one. In English you may read them ‘in
bed’ with no article, but in Spanish ‘en la cama’ must have the article. In
general, Lyons notes that ‘generics admit exceptions, since they express
general tendencies’.37 It follows that on the basis of our knowledge of the
ways in which de niteness and genericity are expressed in different
languages, we have no reason to expect Aramaic to be consistent nor to
expect it to be quite like any other language, least of all an unrelated
language. When therefore we nd that in general, generic and some other
expressions the emphatic state is optional, we nd something that ts into
human linguistic behaviour in general. We should not respond by making
up strict rules and excogitating inventive explanations for exceptions.
The third fault in Owen and Shepherd’s handling of Aramaic states
follows from the second: they have a number of quite unexplanatory
comments on passages which the traditional secondary literature cannot
explain. For example, in discussing +#wqb and )+#wqb, they comment
that this ‘involves an adverbial use of an abstract…in which this
uctuation is not unexpected’. Nothing is explained by ‘expecting’ it on
the basis of a very partial noticing of earlier examples.38 Again, the
emphatic )npk at 1QApGen 19.10 is not explained by describing it as ‘a
functional parallel to the sort of anticipatory determination found in
Hebrew’. For this, Owen and Shepherd cite Muraoka quoting a formu-
lation by S.R. Driver that is neither satisfactory nor concerned with a
genuinely similar text.39 This repetition of antiquated secondary literature
cannot provide an explanation of data unknown to older scholars. Again,
36. Lyons, De niteness, p. xv.

37. Lyons, De niteness, pp. 51, 179.
39. Owen and Shepherd, ‘Speaking up’, pp. 99-100 with nn. 74-75, citing
T. Muraoka, ‘Notes on the Genesis Apocryphon’, RevQ 8 (1972–74), pp. 7-51 (12),
quoting S.R. Driver, Notes on the Hebrew Text and the Topography of the Books of
Samuel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2nd edn, 1913), p. 6, on 1 Sam. 1.4 Mwyh ; cf. Barr,
‘Determination’, pp. 312-16.

commenting on 11QTgJob 28.2 )#n) for Md) and )#n) ynb for #n) (Job
36.25), and 11QTgJob 22.6 )#n) for #wn) (Job 33.12), ‘This might be
mysterious had Kaufman not recognized that the distinction between )#n)
“man, mankind” and #n) “a man” is simply a particular example of the
abstract-concrete differentiation already encountered generally in Qumran
Aramaic’.40 It is dif cult to see what usages that is supposed to refer to. It
goes further than the comments of Kaufman, and it does not explain the
work of the translator, whereas recognition that the emphatic state may be
used in generic expressions does so.
It follows that Owen and Shepherd’s account of the emphatic state is
completely unsatisfactory. It is based on antiquated secondary literature,
and does not take full account of the varied usage in the primary source
material. Of especial importance are generic and other terms where either
the emphatic or absolute state may be used, and there is no difference of
meaning because no difference of meaning is possible. This forms the
cultural and linguistic context for the idiomatic use of ())#n()) rb in
either the emphatic or absolute state.
Counting: None, Rare, Normal and Common

Owen and Shepherd attach decisive importance to the fact that the
emphatic singular )#n()) rb and the particular idiomatic use of it central
to my hypothesis do not occur in Middle Aramaic as de ned by Fitzmyer,
nor in earlier Aramaic. The trouble with this is that the quantity of
Aramaic text that survives from this time is too small for such inferences
to be valid. First, we have seen that words and idioms including )tyl+
Mwq, Ny#yrp, )dx Nm, and lz) used metaphorically of death, were part of
Jesus’ idiolect and therefore part of rst-century Galilean Aramaic, even
though none of them occurs in Qumran Aramaic or earlier.41 This shows
that the absence of any item from the Dead Sea scrolls and earlier Ara-
maic does not mean that it was unusual in rst-century Galilean Aramaic,
let alone that it was not to be found. Secondly, it follows that anything
that occurs once or twice in earlier Aramaic may nonetheless have been
normal in rst-century Galilean Aramaic. For example, rb), ‘limb’, and
N+b, ‘to be pregnant’, occur with certainty only once each in the Aramaic
Dead Sea scrolls (4Q561 frag. 1 i 4; 4QEna 1 iii 16 [1 En. 7.2]
40. Owen and Shepherd, ‘Speaking up’, pp. 111-12, referring to S.A. Kaufman,
‘The Job Targum from Qumran’, JAOS 93 (1973), pp. 317-27 (324 n. 38).
41. See pp. 9-12 above.

respectively), and not at all in earlier Aramaic.42 Both however occur

more commonly in some later dialects. It is therefore much more likely
that they were normal rather than rare in rst-century Galilean Aramaic.43
Thirdly, many normal words are not common. I have noted )(nn, ‘mint’,
)tb#, ‘dill’, and )nwmk, ‘cummin’. These will have been normal words
wherever such herbs and spices were used. They are rare in extant
Aramaic texts because these texts contain very few discussions of herbs.
Useful statistics can be obtained from later documents. For example, in
Jacob of Serug’s Three Poems on the Apostle Thomas in India, )#n())rb
does not occur until line 671 of the rst poem, and only four times in over
2,500 lines: this may be compared with )#nynb 11 times, ())#n) 27,
h/)rbg 26, and with commoner words such as lz) 110, rm) 134, and )zx
166.44 Moreover, the four uses of )#n())rb are absolutely normal. Take,
for example, line 671:
)#nrb Ky) )nr(ws Nm lxdd )wh yhyzx
He [Jesus] saw that he [Thomas] was afraid of the event as a (son of ) man.
Here the term )#nrb is generic, referring to a normal human being as

such. It follows that ())#n()) rb may be used normally by an author who
uses both its plural )#nynb, and the closely related ())#n), more often. In a
small corpus of texts, as with a single author, we should never infer from
normal use of )#n()) ynb or ())#n()) that the author(s) were averse to
())#n()) rb.
Owen and Shepherd’s discussion of the frequency of the occurrence of
words has three major faults. First, they confuse ‘normal’ and ‘common’. I
have consistently claimed that ())#n()) rb was a normal term in rst-
century Galilean Aramaic, and that the particular idiomatic use of it was
normal too. For example, Owen and Shepherd quote me in their footnotes
writing in 1987 that #n) rb ‘is quite suf ciently well attested in the very
meagre Aramaic sources of the Second Temple period’, and that from
evidence surveyed ‘It follows that general statements using the term rb
42. rb) is now reported from a scorpion spell written in demotic script, which I
regret that I do not read: R.C. Steiner, ‘The Scorpion Spell from Wadi H¹ ammamat;
Another Aramaic Text in Demotic Script’, JNES 60 (2001), pp. 259-68.
43. See further Casey, Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel, pp. 35-36.
44. W. Strothmann (ed.), Jakob von Sarug: Drei Gedichte über den Apostel
Thomas in Indien (Göttinger Orientforschungen, 1. Reihe; Syriaca, 12. Wiesbaden:
Otto Harrassowitz, 1976).

#n) were normal in Aramaic at the time of Jesus’.45 In their text, however,
they attribute to me ‘the fundamental assumption [sic] that during the time
of Jesus )#n) rb was simply a common term for “man”’, and even that
‘From Vermes they [sc. Lindars and myself] derived the view that the
Aramaic idiom by which a person might speak of himself in the third
person as )#n) rb during the time of Jesus was common during the time
of Jesus’.46 This is a misleading shift of meaning. The pragmatic con-
straints of this idiom were described by Vermes in 1967. As I put it in
1995:
The circumstances in which Aramaic speakers might use this idiom were
correctly de ned by Vermes: ‘In most instances the sentence contains an
allusion to humiliation, danger or death, but there are also examples where
reference to the self in the third person is dictated by humility or modesty’.47
Given these pragmatic constraints, it may be that this idiom was neither
commoner nor less normal than idioms such as the indirect use of ‘one’
with reference to oneself in English.
Secondly, Owen and Shepherd argue from the use of the plural ynb
)#n()), and from the use of other words for ‘man’, that Qumran authors,
especially the author of 11QTgJob, preferred these terms to ())#n()) rb.
For example, commenting on 4QEnAstb frag. 23 line 8, they declare that
‘while the expression chosen appears in the emphatic )#n) ynb, it is
clearly a plural that has been required rather than the singular )#n) rb’.
Again, they nd it important that #wn) lwk rather than a form of rb
())#n()) is used with the negative at 1QapGen 6.12.48 There are three
things wrong with the use that Owen and Shepherd make of such infor-
mation. First, there really are circumstances in which Aramaic authors
generally prefer terms other than ())#n()) rb. Pointing them out in no
way removes the evidence of the use of ())#n()) rb when it was felt to be
appropriate. Secondly, the inference that the use of one appropriate
locution means that an author was not prepared to use another locution
never follows in such short documents. We may recall the evidence from
Jacob of Serug, using ())#n) rb perfectly normally four times, but using
45. Owen and Shepherd, ‘Speaking up’, p. 86 nn. 18, 24, quoting Casey, ‘General,
Generic and Inde nite’, pp. 21-22.
46. Owen and Shepherd, ‘Speaking up’, pp. 86, 88.
47. Casey, ‘Idiom and Translation’, pp. 167-68, quoting G. Vermes, ‘The Use of
#n rb/)#n rb in Jewish Aramaic’, App.E in M. Black, An Aramaic Approach to the
Gospels and Acts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 3rd edn, 1967), pp. 310-28 (327).
48. Owen and Shepherd, ‘Speaking up’, pp. 108, 114.

other terms for ‘man’, including the plural )#nynb, more often. We can
never know whether authors of short or fragmentary documents in which
())#n()) rb is used little or never were just like him. Thirdly, the usage of
an author should not be attributed to another author without more ado. I
illustrated this in drawing attention to the massive variety of usage among
Aramaic translators of words for ‘man’ in the Hebrew Bible.49 What is
true of translators should be even more obvious of authors writing freely.
This leads directly to Owen and Shepherd’s third serious fault: they
argue from the usage of a small number of Qumran documents to rst-
century Galilean Aramaic. This kind of argument is completely invalid.
We have seen that rst-century Galilean Aramaic had various features not
found at Qumran. For small details this is natural, since the Qumran
scrolls were not written in rst-century Galilean Aramaic. This entails that
the detailed usage of ())#n()) rb may have been different in rst-century
Galilee from the examples found in the small corpus of Qumran texts.
We must therefore turn next to later Jewish Aramaic examples of the
idiomatic use of ())#n()) rb, before returning to the small number of
examples of it in earlier sources.
The Idiomatic Use of ())#n()) rb and the Son of Man Problem

There are important examples of the proposed idiomatic use of rb
())#n()) in later Jewish sources. Owen and Shepherd use comments
written by Kutscher some 50 years ago as grounds for excluding from
consideration the whole of Talmud and midrash.50 This procedure is quite
illegitimate, and in going through with it, Owen and Shepherd do not
offer a proper discussion of the main primary source material. They
simply appropriate Kutscher’s warning that corruption of documents from
Israel by Babylonianized scribes is a problem. It is, but excluding from
consideration the main corpus of idiomatic Jewish sayings material is not
a satisfactory response to it.
Moreover, Owen and Shepherd’s description of the attestation of the
Yerushalmi is seriously awry. They refer to ‘the sole extant MS Vat. Ebr.
133 (Leyden) and the editio princeps (Bomberg 1523–4) on which it was
49. Casey, ‘Aramaic Translations of the Hebrew Bible’.

50. Owen and Shepherd, ‘Speaking up’, pp. 89-93, citing E.Y. Kutscher, Studies in
Galilean Aramaic (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University, 1976), a translation of Hebrew
articles originally published in Tarbiz 21–23 (1950–52).

based’.51 The editio princeps published by Daniel Bomberg was based on

Ms Leiden Or. 4720, which is dated by two colophons to 1289, but which
was by this time much glossed. Other manuscript evidence of parts of the
Yerushalmi includes Vat. Ebr. 133, which appears to be somewhat older,
and which may well have been used by the nal glossator of Leiden Or.
4720 when it was being prepared for Bomberg to produce the editio
princeps. I propose accordingly to discuss the three examples of the
idiomatic use of ())#n()) rb at y. Ber. 2.8, with the four MSS that survive
for this part of the Yerushalmi. In all cases I quote Leiden Or. 4720 from
the synoptic edition of the Yerushalmi.52 MSS variants do not affect the
points at issue, except for the one presented and discussed. I then proceed
to the Babylonian spelling #(y)ny) rb.
1. y. Ber. 2.8/3 (5b)

hyrbk hyl( bybx )#n rbd hydymlt
The disciple of a (son of ) man is as dear to him as his son.
Two other MSS have )#n rb: Vat. Ebr. 133 has h#n rb, a different
spelling of the emphatic state. Thus all four manuscripts have the
emphatic state in this example of the idiom. It is a general statement in
which )#n rb refers especially to R. H¹ iyya bar Adda.
2. y. Ber. 2.8/10 (5c)

hyl lzyy Nhl hyl )rqwm yhwb)d hytty)w hyl )rsbm hymy)d #n rb
A (son of ) man whose mother despises him and (another) wife of his father
honours him, where shall he go?
In this example, all four MSS have the absolute state #n rb. It is a general
statement referring especially to the speaker, R. Kahana.
3. y. Ber. 2.8/12 (5c)

hyl wxmd d( dpwqd )r+yl #n rb lyk) )ld )khd )ghnm #yb hm ,Nnbr
.Msrwq dx

52. P. Schäfer and H.-J. Becker with G. Reeg et al. (eds.), Synopse zum Talmud
Yerushalmi. yml#wryh dwmltl syspwnys (7 vols.; Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul
Siebeck], 1991–2001).

Rabbis, how evil is the custom of this land, that a (son of ) man cannot eat a
pound of meat until they have given him a lash!
In this example too, all four MSS have the absolute state #n rb. It is a
general statement referring especially to the speaker, R. Ze‘ira.
Owen and Shepherd’s argument entails that the emphatic state of rb
)#n in all four manuscripts of passage 1 was due to Babylonianized
scribes who had no effect on passages 2 and 3 such a short amount of text
further on. This is not plausible in itself. It also ignores the Babylonian
spelling #(y)ny) rb. In the Yerushalmi, ())#n()) rb is almost always
written without the prosthetic ) because this was no longer pronounced,
as probably already at the time of Jesus.53 In the large Syriac-speaking
area to the north and then east, ())#n()) rb might be written with or
without the prosthetic ). When it is written with it, however, fully written
MSS and texts have a linea occultans, to indicate that it was not pro-
nounced. The Babylonian #(y)ny) rb is written with a prosthetic )
followed by y, to show that the ) was pronounced, with a vocal shewa. An
example of this is given as passage 4:
4. b. Suk. 53a
.hyty Nylybwm Nmt y(btymd rt)l hyb Nybr( Nwny) #yny) rbd yhwlgr
The feet of a son of man are a surety for him. To the place where he is
wanted, there they take him.
This saying occurs twice. In the rst instance, it is attributed to R.

Joh¹ anan, and it appears to be quite general. It is followed by a story of
two Ethiopians who attended Solomon, and who died when they reached
the appointed place. The story ends with Solomon applying this general
statement to the two Ethiopians. This is accordingly another example of
the Aramaic term ‘son of man’ in a general statement applied to people
made obvious by the context. The Babylonian spelling makes no differ-
ence to this idiomatic usage, as is well illustrated by the spelling ())#n rb
in the western parallels at y. Kil. 9.4/19 (32c) and Ber. R. 100.2.
All 16 examples of #(y)ny) rb in the Babylonian Talmud are written in
the absolute state with the pronunciation of the prosthetic ) with a vocal
shewa indicated by the y after it. In view of this rather small number of
occurrences, it is noteworthy that there are a large number of examples of
53. Casey, Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel, pp. 54 (with bibliography at n. 185),
90.

the simple #(y)ny) spelt with a prosthetic ) followed by y. Passage 5 is one

of them.
5. b. Sanh. 107b
xpty)w ymxr )(bw (#yl) )t)w xptymd #ylx #yny) hwh )l (#yl) d(
Until Elijah, there was not a man sick who recovered. And Elisha came and
prayed and recovered.
Here #yny), in the absolute state, is as general as possible, and it combines

with the negative to be the equivalent of the English ‘no one’.
It is probable that the few occurrences of the spelling #ny) rb in the
Yerushalmi are due to the in uence of Babylonianized scribes. This is
illustrated in passages 6 and 7. In each case, I quote Leiden Or. 4720, and
comment on the variants.
6. y. Kil. 9.4/4(32b)
yt) )wh lyz) #ny) rbd hmk )l
It is not as a son of man goes that he comes (again).
The editio princeps follows Leiden Or. 4720 with the spelling of the
absolute state #ny). MS Vat. Ebr. 133 has h#n rb, a western spelling of
the emphatic state: Paris Bib. Nat. Heb. 1389 has #n rb, the standard
Yerushalmi spelling of the absolute state: and the London Ms. Or. 2822
has #n) rb. The parallel passage y. Ket. 12.3/4 (35a) is less well attested.
Here Leiden Or. 4720 has )#n rb, the standard Yerushalmi spelling of the
emphatic state, and it is followed by the editio princeps. It is dif cult to
sort out the text of passages like this. It is however surely probable that
the distinctive Babylonian spelling #ny) rb is secondary, and that the
prosthetic ) in #n) rb of London Or. 2822 is due to it. Since the
following saying of the rabbis has #n rb in the absolute state in most
witnesses including Leiden Or. 4720 of both passages, with only Vat. Ebr.
133 having the emphatic state h#n rb, it is surely more probable than not
that the original text of the rst saying had the emphatic state )#n rb in
both passages.
7. y. Ter. 8.9/5 (46a)

)tyymdq l( ydwm )whd )l) hny) rm) #n rb tylw

And no son of man says ‘that’s not [the case]’ unless he agrees with the rst
[opinion].
The context is an attempt to determine a particular rabbinical opinion. The

term #n rb is quite general, and refers to anyone conducting a rabbinical
debate. All the witnesses have #n rb in the inde nite state. The rst hand
of the London MS Or. 2823, however, wrote #ny) rb, and a corrector
deleted the rst two letters of #ny) to give the correct Yerushalmi spelling
#n rb.
Neither passage 6 nor 7 is typical of the transmission of ())#n()) rb in
the Yerushalmi. In particular, passage 7 has several parallels that have not
been affected in this way (y. Šab. 2.3/5 [4d]; 19.3/4 [17b]; Pes. 1.8/11
[28a]; Suk. 1.2/2 [52b]; 3.4/2 [53c]; H¹ ag. 1.1/12 [76a]; Yeb. 8.1/21 [9a];
Git. 9.7/5 [50c]). Owen and Shepherd have completely misconstrued the
nature and extent of Babylonian in uence on the transmission of rb
())#n()) in the Yerushalmi. It should be accepted that the idiomatic use of
())#n()) rb which is at the centre of my proposed hypothesis is found
with ())#n()) rb in the emphatic state in passages such as 1 and probably
6, and in the absolute state in passages such as 2 and 3, as well as in the
absolute state in genuine Babylonian Aramaic in passage 4.
Moreover, Vermes and I have brought forward other examples of this
idiom that use the emphatic state. For example, I drew attention in 1994 to
passage 8, in which the reference is to a character in the story, rather than
to the speaker.54
8. Neof. Gen. 40.23

…ryb( r#bb hygwzm brb Cyxrt)w …(rld )dsxw l(ld )dsx Pswy qb#
Cxrt yd )#n rb ywhy +yyl … yyyd )tyrw) rpsb bytkd )btk rkd) )lw
…)r#bb
Joseph abandoned the grace which is from above and the grace which is
from below…and he put his trust in the chief of the butlers, in esh which
passes away…and he did not remember the scripture which is written in the
book of the Law of the Lord… ‘Cursed be the son of man who puts his trust
in esh…’
Here, Neof. uses )#n rb in a general statement which is applied

particularly to Joseph. The quotation appears to be a free version of Jer.
17.5, with )#n rb where that text has rbgh. Owen and Shepherd declare
54. Casey, ‘Aramaic Translations of the Hebrew Bible’, p. 104.

that the translation with the emphatic state is ‘entirely expected’.55 But the
use of the emphatic state in this idiom does not somehow disappear
because Owen and Shepherd have a frame of reference for ‘expecting’ it.
The switch from rbgh to )#n rb is a major change, because the Hebrew
rbg(h) was normally translated with the Aramaic ())rbg, perceptibly the
same word. In the translations that I surveyed in 1994, this was true no
less than 106 times out of 125. I also noted that ‘Apart from the closely
related )rbng and )rbyg, ())#n()) rb is the only alternative translation to
be used more than once’. I argued that in every case this was due to a
deliberate choice of rendering of general statements, ve of them referring
especially to the speaker.56 The free rendering of Jer. 17.5 in passage 8 ts
into this pattern. It is therefore most improbable that the use of the
emphatic state )#n rb is due to thoughtless rendering of a text so far away
from the context, so the passage remains straightforward evidence of the
use of the emphatic state in this idiom.
This should be compared with the behaviour of the translator at Gen.
9.6.
9. Neof. Gen. 9.6

yyy Mdq Nm wmdb Mwr) hymd) Kpt#y #n rb ydy l( #n rbd hymd) Kp#d Nm
.Md) ty )rb
Whoever sheds the blood of a (son of ) man, by the hands of a (son of ) man
shall his blood be shed, for in the likeness from before the LORD He
created man (Adam).
Here, after using the emphatic state )#n rb three times in the previous
verse, for #y) without the article as well as for Md)h with it, the targumist
uses the inde nite #n rb twice, for the clearly de nite Md)h as well as in
rendering Md)b. We must infer that he followed his own idiolect in
general statements when this was different from equating the Hebrew
article with the Aramaic emphatic state, and the absence of the Hebrew
article with the Aramaic absolute state. This is surely because he knew
both languages well enough to notice that such an equation would be too
literal. This makes it all the more unlikely that his use of the emphatic rb
)#n in his insertion at Gen. 40.23 is due only to such literal equivalence.
Finally, in 1994 I brought forward another example of the emphatic

56. Casey, ‘Aramaic Translations of the Hebrew Bible’, pp. 113-17, with a
quotation from p. 114.

state )#n rb idiomatically used with particular reference to the speaker in

a freely written insertion at Gen. 2.23.57 This completes decisive evidence
that Neo ti I, like the Yerushalmi, bears witness to the use of the emphatic
state )#n rb in general statements that refer especially to the speaker or to
whoever is clearly from the context particularly in mind.
Before turning to the earliest example of this idiom, we must discuss
the regrettable frame of reference used by Owen and Shepherd to consider
the earlier examples of ())#n()) rb. They take this from Dalman about a
century ago, before the publication of the Dead Sea scrolls and other
Aramaic documents. Two major points that they quote are veri ably false
in the light of these discoveries:
The singular number #na)v rb@a was not in use; its appearance being due to
imitation of the Hebrew text… 58
We now know that the singular #n) rb was in use, because apart from
Dan. 7.13, we have four examples extant. The earliest is at Se re 3.16,
where imitation of a Hebrew text is quite out of the question, and one of
the Jewish examples (1QapGen 21.13) has it as the equivalent of the
Hebrew #y), so that is not due to imitation of the Hebrew text either. It is
accordingly quite wrong of Owen and Shepherd to try to judge examples
by whether they would t Dalman’s expectations, which cope with some
details but not with the very existence of all the examples. For example,
they suggest that the verbatim translation of Md) Nb (Job 25.6) with rb
#n) (11QTgJob 9.9) ‘would not have surprised him’.59 But we now know
from Se re 3.16 and 1QapGen 21.13 that #n) rb was in normal use, and
we must infer that this is why it was used to render Md) Nb, not merely
because its component words are literal equivalents of the component
words of Md) Nb. It is also used quite normally in #n) rbk at Dan. 7.13,
where Dalman conjectured a Hebrew Vorlage and understood #n) rb as a
translation of Md) Nb.60 This is not supported by any features of the
Aramaic text of Dan. 7, and it is contrary to the structure of the Aramaic
57. Casey, ‘Aramaic Translations of the Hebrew Bible’, p. 116.

58. Owen and Shepherd, ‘Speaking up’, p. 106, quoting G.H. Dalman, The Words
of Jesus Considered in the Light of Post-Biblical Jewish Writings and the Aramaic
Language. I. Introduction and Fundamental Ideas (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1902),
p. 237. For the original German, see Die Worte Jesu; mit Berücksichtigung des
nachkanonischen jüdischen Schrifttums und der aramäischen Sprache. I. Einleitung
und wichtige Begriffe (Leipzig, 1898. There was no second volume), p. 194.
60. Dalman, Words of Jesus, p. 238.

section of the book: it is accordingly good that no one still believes it.61
The mere existence of all these texts entails that we should not use
Dalman’s formulation as a frame of reference: it is out of date.
We may now consider the early examples of #n) rb, beginning with
Se re 3.16.
10. Se re 3.14-17

)#yw Krb rb bbl l( qsyw yttmhl Kytp# l( )#tw Kbbl l( qsy Nhw
hwtp# l( )#yw Krq( bbl l( qsy Nh w) yrb rb ttmhl hwtp# l(
#n) rb twmy yz hm lkb dpr) yklm bb[ l] l( qsy Nhw yrq( ttmhl
.hnz )rpsb yz )yd( yhl) lkl Mtrq#
‘And if you think of killing me and you put forward such a plan, and if your
son’s son thinks of killing my son’s son and puts forward such a plan, or if
your descendants think of killing my descendants and put forward such a
plan, and if the kings of Arpad think of it, in any case that a son of man
dies, you have been false to all the gods of the treaty which is in this
inscription’.
This example was written c.750 BCE, in the name of Bar-ga’yah, king of
Kittik.62 It uses #n) rb in a general statement which refers particularly to
the king and his descendants. Owen and Shepherd argue that ‘the usage
here is not the generic “man”, but the inde nite “a (son of ) man”.63 Like
several of their comments, this suffers from transmuting Aramaic usage
into English. It seems to imply that inde nites cannot be generic. This is
not the most fruitful way of de ning terms, nor is it normal. For example,
Fitzmyer commented on #n) rb in this passage in 1967: ‘This inscription
attests the early use of this phrase in a very generic sense’. He repeated
this in 1995, dropping only the word ‘very’. He further commented on the
proposed idiom in 1981: ‘I personally think that Jesus did use bar ’enas of
himself in a generic inde nite sense…’ Outside our eld, Heim in 1988
drew attention to ‘a substantial body of literature on generic inde nites’.64
61. A full discussion of this text cannot be given here. I commented on it at length
in Son of Man.
62. E. Lipi ski, The Aramaeans: Their Ancient History, Culture, Religion (OLA,
100. Leuven: Peeters, 2000), ch. 9, ‘Kittik or B t-S¹ ullul’.
64. J.A. Fitzmyer, The Aramaic Inscriptions of Se re (BibOr, 19. Rome: Biblical
Institute Press, 1967), p. 115; idem, The Aramaic Inscriptions of Se re (BibOr, 19A;
Rome: Biblical Institute Press, rev.edn, 1995), p. 154; idem, CBQ 43 (1981), p. 477,
reviewing C.F.D. Moule, The Origin of Christology (Cambridge: Cambridge

When considering whether such terminology may be fruitful, passage 10

is as good an example as any. The expression #n) rb is inde nite in the
sense that the person who may die is not speci ed. Equally, it may be
regarded as generic in that it is someone of the species ‘man’ who has to
die to void the treaty: the death of a horse or damage to a building would
not do so. Owen and Shepherd also declare that my argument ‘depends on
the generic use of the expression’.65 If however examples such as passage
10 are de ned as not generic, this is not true, and ‘generic’ is not the term
that I have used most often to describe this idiom. I have usually referred
to ‘general statements’, to sidestep the chaos that usually descends when
genericity is discussed. Lindars did use the term ‘generic’ at the centre of
his description of the proposed idiom, and I corrected rather than rejected
his usage because if used carefully it could be fruitful.66
Owen and Shepherd produce their own meaning of #n) rb: ‘a son of
man’ and so a ‘descendant’ of the royal line.67 This excludes the death of
the king himself, as mentioned in lines 14-15, from voiding the treaty. It is
therefore quite contrary to the context of this stele, as well as to known
Aramaic usage. It appears to have been produced by over-literal
understanding of a normal English translation. We should not proceed like
this.
It should therefore be accepted that the occurrence of #n) rb in this
early text establishes that by the time of Jesus it had been a normal term
for centuries: and that its idiomatic use in a general statement, which
refers especially to its author and his successors, establishes that such
idiomatic use of ())#n()) rb had also been available for a long time.
11. 1QapGen 21.13: MT #y) (Gen. 13.16)

hynmml #wn) rb lwk xk#y )l yd )(r) rp(k K(rz hg#)w
‘And I will multiply your seed like the dust of the earth which no (son of )
man can count…’
Here the fact that #wn) rb represents the Hebrew #y) must mean that it
University Press, 1977), and quoted at Casey, ‘General, Generic and Inde nite’, p. 54
n. 3; I. Heim, The Semantics of De nite and Inde nite Noun Phrases (London:
Garland, 1988), p. 193.
66. Casey, as in n. 1 above: B. Lindars, Jesus Son of Man (London: SPCK, 1983);
discussed critically by Casey, ‘General, Generic and Inde nite’, pp. 28-34.

was felt to be especially suitable for a general statement. Owen and

Shepherd suggest that ‘the term ‘son of man’ is chosen… due to the focus
on Abram’s descendants’.68 As with the previous example, however, this
is contrary to normal Aramaic usage and appears to be dependent on over-
literal interpretation of a standard English translation of the term. They
also deny that it is generic, declaring it to be the negative of the inde nite.
That it is negative is obvious, but negative general uses of ())#n()) rb are
just as much evidence of its normal use as a general term as are positive
ones. Moreover, the classi cation of it as generic is entirely reasonable. It
is characteristic of people that they can count, whereas sheep and trees
cannot: it therefore means something to say ‘like the dust of the earth
which no (son of ) man can count’, a straightforward hyperbole that
should not be dif cult to understand.
12. 11QTgJob 9.9 (MT Job 25.6 Md) Nb)

] (lwt #n)r[ bw
Here, although just enough of the term survives at the edge of a small
fragment, it is evident that #n)rb has been used to translate Md) Nb in a
very general comparison of people to worms. The use of the absolute state
is perfectly sound. Owen and Shepherd suggest that my hypothesis should
lead us to expect the emphatic state, 69 but I have never suggested that
there is anything unusual in the continued use of the absolute state in
general statements at this time or later. Indeed, I have discussed several of
them (e.g. passages 2, 3, 9, 10 and 11 above) and argued in consequence
that the idiomatic use of ())#n()) rb in general statements referring
especially to the speaker himself, or to whoever is most particularly in
mind, may use either the emphatic or the absolute state.
13. 11QTgJob 26.2-3 (MT Job 35.8 Md) Nb)

…Ktqdc #n) rblw Ky+x K[ …
Here #n) rb has been used to translate Md) Nb in a very general comment
on the effect of Job’s behaviour on other human beings.
Passages 12 and 13 are accordingly straightforward evidence of the use
of ())#n()) rb in a very general sense long before the time of Jesus. Owen
and Shepherd seek to exclude them as mere translations of Md) Nb,

69. Owen and Shepherd, ‘Speaking up’, pp. 108-109.

referring back to Dalman. We have however seen that their view cannot
be reconciled with the other occurrences of this term at this date or
earlier.70
Finally, I have argued in many publications that examples of the
idiomatic use of ())#n()) rb in general statements referring especially to
the speaker himself, or to whoever is most particularly in mind, may use
either the emphatic or the absolute state. Owen and Shepherd repeatedly
dispute this, but with so little evidence or argument that it is dif cult to
know how to respond. For example, they comment on my 1987 article that
‘Casey…seems to rely on an earlier discussion of Vermes to show that
there was no functional distinction between the emphatic form (rb
)#n[ )] ) and its absolute counterpart (#n[ )] rb)’.71 Yet the whole purpose
of the discussion to which they refer was to note from primary sources
examples of the emphatic and absolute states in this idiomatic usage: to
point out that this did not and could not affect the meaning of ())#n()) rb
in this idiom, and to relate this to other optional uses of the emphatic and
absolute states, citing notably #n) at Dan. 7.4 and )#n) at Dan. 7.8.72
They repeat this kind of comment with reference to my 1995 article, even
while discussing my treatment of primary sources, some rst brought
forward by me.73 I hope the grounds for my view are now clear. In the rst
place, the primary source material contains examples of this idiom with
())#n()) rb in the emphatic state, and other examples with it in the
absolute state. Secondly, the nature of the idiom is such that this cannot
affect the meaning of it. Thirdly, this ows naturally from the optional use
of the emphatic and absolute states in generic and some other uses.
Conclusions
The following conclusions may therefore be drawn. Aramaic was a
relatively stable language for centuries before and after the time of Jesus.
This stable situation has been clari ed by the Dead Sea scrolls. The
Aramaic scrolls can safely be used to reconstruct sayings of Jesus,
because almost everything in them is found in later Aramaic and Syriac
sources too, and must therefore have been in use in rst-century Galilee.
70. Owen and Shepherd, ‘Speaking up’, pp. 108-109.

72. Casey, ‘General, Generic and Inde nite’, esp. pp. 24-31.
73. Owen and Shepherd, ‘Speaking up’, p. 91, referring to Casey, ‘Idiom and
Translation’, with the main point quoted from p. 169.

The words and constructions in the scrolls, however, fall a long way short
of forming a whole language, and in detail they are not in the dialect
spoken by Jesus or by the rst people who transmitted traditions about
him. Moreover, there was no rm barrier between the Aramaic of the time
of Jesus and later Aramaic, nor between East and West. We must there-
fore make careful use of later sources, as words such as Mwq )tyl+ (Mk
5.41) illustrate.
Aramaic sources from before the time of Jesus provide clear evidence
of the optional use of the emphatic state in generic and some other uses.
This forms the cultural and linguistic context for the idiomatic use of
())#n()) rb in either the emphatic or absolute state. Examples of both are
found in later sources such as y. Ber. 2.8. Distortion from the Babylonian
#(y)ny) rb is of no real importance and does not affect the state of
())#n()) rb in this idiom. Earlier examples of #n) rb show that it had
been a normal term for ‘man’ for centuries, and Se re 3.16 shows that its
idiomatic use in general statements that referred especially to the speaker
or to the speaker and some of his associates had also been known for
centuries. It follows that later examples of this idiom may legitimately be
used to illuminate those sayings of Jesus which may be reasonably
regarded as examples of it.


Aramaic Idiom and The Son of Man Problem: A Response To Owen and Shepherd

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Aramaic Idiom and The Son of Man Problem: A Response To Owen and Shepherd

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[JSNT 25.

Aramaic Idiom and the Son of Man Problem:

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002.

The Development of the Aramaic Language

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002.

Over-literal interpretation of supposedly ‘Eastern’ features has caused

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002.

‘of ’, followed by the noun anticipated by the suf x, is also found at

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002.

not contain enough Aramaic to form a language. If therefore we con ne

More generally, taking account of the massive amount of fruitful work

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 56-63.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002.

Taliqa koum, o# e0stin meqermhneuo&menon To_ kora&sion, soi_ le/gw, e1geire.

15. T. Nöldeke, Compendious Syriac Grammar (trans. J.A. Crichton; London:

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002.

All these points form a massive argument of cumulative weight.

Generic and Optional Use of the Emphatic State

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002.

Darius I: in a letter of 407 BCE, we  nd pillars of )nb), ‘stone’, and

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002.

One fault of this is that it encourages understanding of the Hebrew article

26. Owen and Shepherd, ‘Speaking up’, p. 101.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002.

demonstrated. The standard grammar of Biblical Aramaic by Rosenthal

This is an unsatisfactory standard of judgment, for English had not been

30. F. Rosenthal, A Grammar of Biblical Aramaic (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz,

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002.

It follows that having expectations of the use of any article in one

36. Lyons, De niteness, p. xv.

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Counting: None, Rare, Normal and Common

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respectively), and not at all in earlier Aramaic.42 Both however occur

Here the term )#nrb is generic, referring to a normal human being as

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002.

The Idiomatic Use of ())#n()) rb and the Son of Man Problem

49. Casey, ‘Aramaic Translations of the Hebrew Bible’.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002.

based’.51 The editio princeps published by Daniel Bomberg was based on

1. y. Ber. 2.8/3 (5b)

The disciple of a (son of ) man is as dear to him as his son.

2. y. Ber. 2.8/10 (5c)

3. y. Ber. 2.8/12 (5c)

51. Owen and Shepherd, ‘Speaking up’, p. 90.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002.

This saying occurs twice. In the  rst instance, it is attributed to R.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002.

the simple #(y)ny) spelt with a prosthetic ) followed by y. Passage 5 is one

Here #yny), in the absolute state, is as general as possible, and it combines

It is not as a son of man goes that he comes (again).

7. y. Ter. 8.9/5 (46a)

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002.

The context is an attempt to determine a particular rabbinical opinion. The

8. Neof. Gen. 40.23

Here, Neof. uses )#n rb in a general statement which is applied

54. Casey, ‘Aramaic Translations of the Hebrew Bible’, p. 104.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002.

9. Neof. Gen. 9.6

‘of ’, followed by the noun anticipated by the suf x, is also found at

not contain enough Aramaic to form a language. If therefore we con ne

Darius I: in a letter of 407 BCE, we nd pillars of )nb), ‘stone’, and

36. Lyons, De niteness, p. xv.

This saying occurs twice. In the rst instance, it is attributed to R.

10. Se re 3.14-17