8
‘Who is this Son of Man?’
Vermes’ conclusion that, because none of the instances he uncovered were messianic in character, ())#n rb was unsuitable as a name or title.33
Finally, for o( ui(oj tou= a)nqrw/pou to become the term of honour that it did in Christianity and not have been a creation of the same, Vermes posits a conundrum. If the phrase was translated into Greek from Aramaic, then it was, according to Vermes’ argument, something ‘other than a title’. If it was natively Greek, one is confronted with the question of why a Hellenist would create ‘so alien an idiom’.34
Reaction to Vermes’ argument was swift and critical.35 Overall, respondents noted that all of Vermes’ examples were generic in nature and could thus include the speaker; one could not therefore be certain of the referent’s specifi city. As Jeremias notes in reply, )rbg )whh means ‘Myself and none other’ where
)#n rb denotes ‘The Man, so myself’.36 Vermes’ response to these criticisms in 1978 was that he was misunderstood; the circumlocution was not necessarily a direct synonym for direct speech but an evasive way of making a roundabout reference. Fitzmyer further noted that Vermes’ corpus consisted largely of later Aramaic texts.37 Later Aramaic dropped the initial ). As a consequence, the morphological aspect of Vermes’ study is skewed.38
Despite the lateness of the corpora and the morphological problems observed by Fitzmyer, Vermes’ argument was taken up, albeit with modifi cation, by 33. Vermes, ‘Use’, pp. 327–28. In support of his conclusions, Vermes fi nally refers to Syriac and Christian Palestinian Aramaic, wherein the expression o( ui(oj tou= a)nqrw/pou is rendered severally as )#n)d hrb, )#nrbd hrb, hrbgd hrb.
34. Vermes, ‘Use’, p. 328.
35. See Frederick H. Borsch, The Son of Man in Myth and History (London: SCM Press, 1967); Joachim Jeremias, ‘Die alteste Schicht der Menschensohn-Logien’, ZNW 58 (1967), pp. 159–72; and several works by Joseph A. Fitzmyer: Review of Matthew Black’s An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts (3rd edn) in CBQ 30 (1968), pp. 417–28; ‘The Contribution of Qumran Aramaic to the Study of the NT’, NTS 20 (1974), pp. 382–407; ‘Methodology in the Study of the Aramaic Substratum of Jesus’ Sayings in the NT’ in Jesus aux origines de la christologie (ed. J. Dupont; BETL, 40; Gembloux: Ducoulot, 1975), pp. 73–102. An additional, later, critique of Vermes is found in Bruce Chilton, ‘Son of Man: Human and Heavenly’, in The Four Gospels (ed. F. Van Segbroek, et al.; BETL, 100; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1992), pp. 203–18.
36. ‘Ich und kein anderer’ and ‘Der Mensch, also auch Ich’, respectively. Joachim Jeremias, ‘Die alteste Schicht der Menschensohn-Logien’, ZNW 58 (1967), pp. 159–72 (165, n. 9).
37. See Note 31.
38. Joseph
Fitzmyer,
A Wandering Aramean (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1979), pp. 143–60.
1. Issues Concerning the Aramaic Behind o( ui(oj tou= a)nqrw/pou 9
Barnabas Lindars and Maurice Casey.39 Lindars’ methodology was manifestly weak and his conclusions have been discounted widely as a result.40 Of the two, only Casey pursued the philological aspects of the Son of Man problem at length.
Over the course of several studies,41 Casey carries Vermes’ study on )#n rb forward, agreeing with his conclusion and employing it even when reverse translating large sections of Mark’s Gospel and Q.42 From Vermes’ work and his own, Casey concludes that ‘())#n()) rb is a normal term for “man”’.43
39. Barnabas
Lindars,
Jesus Son of Man (London: SPCK, 1983); Maurice Casey, Son of Man: The Interpretation and Infl uence of Daniel 7 (London: SPCK, 1979).
40. Lindars analysed a portion of Vermes’ corpus and concluded three means of self-reference involving the third person:
1. a generic statement in which the speaker is included with the hearers 2. an exclusive reference by which the speaker alone is referenced 3. a gentilic use of a generic article by which the speaker references a class of persons.
His conclusions, however, have been refuted by several scholars. See Matthew Black
‘Aramaic Barna4sha4 and the Son of Man’, ExpTim 95 (1984), pp. 200–206; Richard Bauckham,
‘The Son of Man: “A Man in My Position” or “Someone”?’, JSNT 23 (1985), pp. 23–33; Reginald Fuller, ‘The Son of Man: A Reconsideration’ in The Living Text: Essays in Honor of Ernest W. Saunders (ed. Dennis E. Groh and Robert Jewett; Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1985), pp. 207–17; Caragounis, The Son of Man, pp. 29–33. Lindars himself characterizes his conclusions as ‘a matter of guesswork’ (p. 53) and a ‘necessarily speculative reconstruction’ (p. 73). Casey would further omit the volume completely from his
‘State of Play’ review of the literature in Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel (SNTSMS, 102; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), only referencing it later en passant (p. 163, n. 17).
41. Casey,
Son of Man; ‘General, Generic and Indefi nite: The Use of the Term “Son of Man” in Aramaic Sources and in the Teaching of Jesus’, JSNT 29 (1987), pp. 21–56; ‘Method in our Madness, and Madness in their Methods’, JSNT 42 (1991), pp. 17–43; From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God (Louisville, KY: Westminster, 1991); ‘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.
42. Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel (SNTSMS, 102; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); An Aramaic Approach to Q (SNTSMS, 122; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). The several and severe methodological problems with Casey’s retroversions in particular have been taken up in detail in my own ‘A Viable Approach to the Aramaic of the New Testament’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation; University of St Andrews, 2005), pp. 88–99.
43. Aramaic Sources, p. 111.
10
‘Who is this Son of Man?’
Following Fitzmyer,44 he observes that the fi rst Aramaic reference similar to that under consideration is in the third Sefi re inscription, a diplomatic treaty dating from the middle of the eighth century BCE that includes the use of
#n) rb.45 Casey then references Aramaic phrases that involve the use of rb as a nomen regens and a form of #n) as a nomen rectum which he translates as ‘Son of Man’ and as equivalent to o( ui(oj tou= a)nqrw/pou. These ‘examples’ include a plethora of forms from disparate dialects and dates: #wn) rb,
)#nrb, )#n rb, #n) rb, #n rb and )#n) rb.46
Casey treats the linguistic issues inherent in the diachrony of these several forms with little regard.47 Rather , he states that once ‘we have reviewed the range of usage of ())#n()) rb in natural Aramaic, we can proceed to the reconstruction of Jesus’ Son of man sayings’.48 Given that the range of sources used in his survey extends from the Sefi re inscription c.750 BCE to possibly as late as 1200 CE, the latest dating for the writings of Christian Palestinian Aramaic, one may conclude that Casey views Aramaic grammar as being 44. Fitzmyer,
A Wandering Aramean, p. 147. Fitzmyer notes that #n) rb is used in the third inscription in the same way that #) is used in the second (Sf II B 16). The context in which
#n) rb occurs, in a list of treaty stipulations, is clearly not poetic. Contra Fitzmyer, however, it should be noted that diplomatic treaties typically do not refl ect ‘the ordinary daily usage of the time’ (p. 147). Therefore, while the phrase is clearly attested in a non-poetic document, it cannot be said therefore to represent the common vernacular. Further, Fizmyer discounts any difference between the aforementioned Hebraism, which is prefaced by a negative )l in the text, and the use of the Aramaic phrase in Sefi re III. The textual data, however, do not afford one perspective on whether the phrases #n) rb and #) )l are not idiomatic ways of referencing two slightly different entities.
45. Sf III 16–17.
46. Forms are presented in the order presented by Casey, Aramaic Sources, pp. 111–121.
It is worth noting that Casey himself
cites this discussion as illustrative of his assessment of the evidence related to ())#n()) rb and the Son of Man problem to date ( Aramaic Approach, p. 133).
47. Casey
confl ates the issues of lexicography and grammatology. In his methodology for rendering Greek into Aramaic, Casey maintains that one must turn to any dialect anywhere for words that are lacking in the provenance under consideration. Even on a lexicographical level, this methodology is fl awed due to considerations of external infl uence and diachrony that must be addressed whenever comparing Semitic dialects and languages – none of which Casey addresses adequately. Carrying that lexicographical misunderstanding into the grammar behind one’s translations renders Casey’s retroversions speculative at best.
48. Aramaic Sources, p. 111.
1. Issues Concerning the Aramaic Behind o( ui(oj tou= a)nqrw/pou 11
almost completely static for nearly two millennia.49 He maintains this view against massive textual evidence and several major studies to the contrary,50
and it is this relatively static view of Aramaic that he uses to support his several retroversions of Greek into Aramaic, including o( ui(oj tou= a)nqrw/pou.
Despite his manifest view that one can retrovert Greek using ‘Aramaic of any period and dialect’ to develop a lexical register, Casey does not defi ne the corpus from which his grammar is developed. Representing the morphological variety attested in the literature with the grammatically ambiguous construction ())#n()) rb, Casey reconstructs o( ui(oj tou= a)nqrw/pou with similar variety 49. ‘Aramaic Idiom and the Son of Man Problem: A Response to Owen and Shepherd’, JSNT 25 (2002), pp. 3–32 (5): ‘Aramaic was a relatively stable language over a period of centuries.’ Casey’s perspective ignores the plethora of linguistic changes that have occurred and continue to occur in Aramaic as a living language with an ancient history. Indeed, Casey’s attempted justifi cation of his dialectal confl ation by citing words found in both the Talmud and the Sefi re inscription is comparable to saying that an English speaker of the twentieth century would understand an English speaker of the eleventh because they both use the word ‘good’
(albeit spelt differently).
50. See
Fitzmyer,
A Wandering Aramean, pp. 57–84; Klaus Beyer. Die aramäischen Texte vom Toten Meer (Göttingen: Vandenhöck & Ruprecht, 1984), pp. 23–155; Lukaszewski,
‘Viable Approach’, pp. 12–32, 103–240. Finally, one may refer to perhaps the most comprehensive treatment on the sundry differences between the Aramaic periods and dialects in Franz Rosenthal, Die aramäistische Forschung (Leiden: Brill, 1964).
Extant Aramaic texts date as early as the fi rst half of the tenth century BCE (Fitzmyer, A Wandering Aramean, p. 60). Prior to the mid-eighth century BCE, Aramaic is likely to have been relatively indistinguishable from Ammonite – thus the ongoing dispute over the language of the Deir ’Alla inscription. From that point until the late seventh century BCE, the language became progressively standardized as it grew in popularity, eventually displacing Akkadian as the diplomatic language of choice. It is only at this point that the textual evidence allows one to assemble more than a patchwork of grammatical phenomena.
This relative standardization of Aramaic lasted to the end of the third century BCE, when Greek replaced Aramaic as the diplomatic language of choice and the various Aramaic speech communities became increasingly Balkanized. The grammatical trends of the dialects thus grew more disparate with time. The resulting differences in speech were increasingly manifest in written communication. At the time of Jesus, fi ve different dialects of Aramaic are attested: Nabataean and Judaean in the west and Hatran, Palmyrene, and Edessene in the east. These represent the major areas of Aramaic usage under the former period which then became the regional centres of their respective dialects. Their grammatical differences are manifest in later dialects, Edessene through later Syriac and Judaean through later Jewish Literary Aramaic.
The third century CE then sees the beginning of the Late Aramaic period, wherein Aramaic shifts from being a native dialect to being increasingly a learned second language in the latter centuries, after being supplanted by Arabic. Arabic gradually infl uenced even this usage of Aramaic to the point that Kurds and other minorities in the modern Near East speak an Arabicized dialect commonly called Neo-Aramaic.
12
‘Who is this Son of Man?’
as #n) rb, #n rb,51 )#n) rb, and then #n rb again without justifying any of them.52
The anachronism of #n rb is worth noting in light of the aleph dropping from the phrase much later than our period.53 The remaining two reconstructions, however, illustrate Casey’s perspective on the coalescence of the emphatic and absolute states. This ultimately represents Casey’s understanding of how the construct phrase was formed at the time.54
It was this understanding that was addressed by Paul Owen and David Shepherd in 2001.55 In a carefully nuanced argument, the authors address Casey’s assertion that the emphatic and absolute had coalesced in form and, therefore, meaning. In a survey of the Aramaic of 11Q10 ( TgJob) and 1QGenesis Apocryphon, the authors note several times in Qumran Aramaic when the emphatic has a defi nitive force.56 Further, they note that ‘the distinction between the absolute, construct and determined forms was maintained’
in the Palestinian Targum fragments found in the Cairo Geniza which would have been written much later.57 Consequently, Casey’s ambiguity between the absolute and emphatic forms is concluded to be unsupported.
Casey subsequently responded to Owen and Shepherd in 2002.58 In his reply, he appears to have noted their textual data but refuses to address the problems of method noted by his opponents. Attacking Owen and Shepherd as approach-ing the problem too traditionally and rigidly, Casey again cites a series of references to support his position: four from Talmud Yerushalmi ( y.Ber. 2.8/3, 2.8/10, 2.8/12, y.Kil. 9.4/4), two from Talmud Bavli ( b.Suk. 53a, b.Sanh. 107b), two from Targum Neofi ti (Gen. 9.6, 40.23), one from the Sefi re treaty (3.14-17), 51. Aramaic Sources, p. 138.
52. In
Aramaic Sources, see respectively pages 121, 138, 194, and 220.
53. The aleph in ())#n) rb did not coalesce into the n in Western Aramaic until the rabbinic writings ( post-200 CE). See Fitzmyer, A Wandering Aramean, p. 149.
54. As will be noted, Casey’s grammatical register is, at best, unduly ambiguous, possibly even confused. See Note 47.
55. ‘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.
56. The authors further observe Casey’s lack of attention to dialectal and diachronic issues (‘Speaking Up’, pp. 95, n. 61; 105, n. 93).
57. ‘Speaking Up’, p. 95, n. 60. The statement is made with reference to S. Fassberg, A Grammar of the Palestinian Targum Fragments from the Cairo Genizah (HSS, 38; Atlanta: Scholars, 1990), pp. 136–37.
58. ‘Response to Owen and Shepherd’.
1. Issues Concerning the Aramaic Behind o( ui(oj tou= a)nqrw/pou 13
two from 11Q10 (9.9, 26.2-3), and one from 1QGenesis Apocryphon (21.13).
Casey thus concludes that the emphatic has coalesced with the absolute, thus legitimizing his use of either when reconstructing the Son of Man sayings.
Justifying an Aramaic Vorlage
As is plain in the brief review above, scholars have approached the Son of Man problem from a myriad of angles even within the usually narrow confi nes of philology. Was o( ui(oj tou= a)nqrw/pou coined by the early Christians as a titular term? Or was it adopted from the apocalyptic vision of Daniel 7, complete with apocalyptic and messianic trappings? Or was it adopted from the Hebrew of Ezekiel? Was it common fi rst-century idiom in either Judaea or Galilee? If so, was it a direct substitute for the third person, a more general substitute, or a circumlocution for the fi rst person? For such a breadth of alternatives to arise from four Greek words is no less than astounding. Such a multitude of choice arises more from methodological i
ssues than ambiguity in the sources, unfortunately.
In the early twentieth century, J. H. Moulton commented on the sundry studies that appeared at the turn of the century and the sundry problems of method: ‘The fascinating pursuit of Aramaic originals may lead to a good percentage of successful guesses; but they are mere guesses still, except when a decided failure in the Greek can be cleared up by an Aramaic which explains the error, and this acts as corroboration.’59 This statement crystallizes the most fundamental problem with any attempt to assert that o( ui(oj tou= a)nqrw/pou is appropriated from a non-Greek language. While the phrase is used in an obvious titular fashion in the Gospels and may therefore seem unusual – even stilted – in certain contexts, it remains grammatically consonant with known Greek of the time. Consequently, the fi rst question that must be answered by any attempt to revert the phrase into any hypothetical source language is: Why must it not be Greek in origin? Before any meaning of the phrase can be asserted, one must establish the context from which a meaning is to be distilled.
As noted above, the majority of scholars who have written on this topic have accepted Coccejus’ assertion of an Aramaic, rather than Hebrew, origin 59. A Grammar of New Testament Greek. Vol. 2: Accidence and word-formation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1920), p. 16.
14
‘Who is this Son of Man?’
of the phrase. However, the only scholar since Coccejus that has taken up the question to the point of writing an explanation is Maurice Casey. To be sure, Coccejus’ assertion was made in passing, but Casey’s apology reads with dogmatic force. Working under the constraints of a four-language paradigm, he concludes the following:
1. Jesus is not likely to have known Latin.
2. Greek, where used among the Jews, would have been used only by the aristocracy.
3. Hebrew was a literary language, not a living one.
4. Aramaic was the lingua franca of Jews in Israel.
It naturally follows, according to Casey, that Aramaic must be associated with any phrases posited to be authentically from Jesus. This paradigm is fl awed on several levels, not least of which is the number of languages involved. In Coele Syria, the textual record bears witness to not four but fi ve languages in use: Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, and the pre-Arabic dialects.60
Who Is This Son of Man Page 3
