But in those cases,

predicate it need not lie in the subject. there must indeed be a mutual relation between the predicate and the subject, which tells us that He, in virtue of a certain quality, is able to do or suffer this or that. Now, if we look at the different declarations about the Son of Man,the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head, hath power on earth to forgive sins, is Lord of the Sabbath, can be blasphemed but in a way that may be pardoned, is come to seek the lost, is come to serve and give His life, will suffer many things and must be rejected, perishes as it is written of Him, will come again in the clouds of heaven, will sit on the throne of His glory, etc.,-all these widely-diverging utterances have one thing in common, they all treat of the official sufferings and doings of Jesus; they all speak of Him in so far as He has the task of setting up the kingdom of heaven upon earth. In a word, they are all in substance related to His Messiahship, so much so that in all these passages-with the exception of Matt. xvi. 13, where the riddle of the name Son of Man is really put so as to force them to a Messianic answer -Messiah might just as well be substituted for Son of Man. And, therefore, all parties are now at one in regarding the name Son of Man as a veiled indication of His Messianic calling. But as the name Son of Man has nothing to do with the Messiahship so far as language is concerned, it manifestly could only obtain this meaning through an allusion to something which lay within His hearers' knowledge, and which already included this meaning-an allusion to something in the Old Testament. Among all the passages in the Old Testament in which the expression Son of Man appears, there is only one (Dan. vii. 13) in which it has a Messianic sense: "I saw in the night-visions, and, behold, one like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought Him near before Him. And there was given Him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve Him; His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed." That this passage from Daniel must lie at the basis of Jesus' enigmatic self-designation is now recognised, not indeed universally, but by ever-increasing numbers.

And really when the Book of Enoch, that Jewish, and in part Jewish-Christian Apocalypse of the century of Jesus, has, in virtue of this passage of Daniel, directly stamped the name Son of Man as the name of Messiah; when our canonical Apocalypse twice applies Daniel's ὅμοιος υἱῷ ἀνθρώπου (i. 13, xiv. 14) to the glorified Christ, and Jesus Himself on two occasions unmistakably refers to Dan. vii. 13, when He speaks (Matt. xxiv. 30, xxvi. 64) of the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven-it is difficult to conceive how any one can object to that origin. The fact lies clearly before us, that the same passage of the Book of Daniel, a book much read and highly honoured in our Lord's day, furnishes the conception of the kingdom of heaven, the eternal kingdom to be received from God in the clouds of heaven, and the conception of the Son of Man, as the receiver and bearer of this kingdom. The mutual relation which we perceive, in all the declarations of Jesus, between His character as Son of Man and His calling as bringer of the kingdom of God, lies before us originally in that passage of Daniel. And therewith the whole riddle is at bottom solved. The Son of Man is the God-invested bearer of the kingdom that descends from above, that is to be founded from heaven; it is He who brings in the kingdom of God.

§ 6. CONCLUSION OF THE INVESTIGATION

There are still a few accessory circumstances to be considered, and first, the difference which certainly exists between the passage of Daniel and the self-designation of Jesus. There we have only "one like a Son of Man," conformable to the wavering and pictorial character of the vision, and this visionary form in the clouds of heaven is not, as one often hears, a symbol of the Nation of Saints of which mention is afterwards made in the brief exposition of the vision, nor is it the appearance of a personal Messiah of which this exposition knows nothing; but just as the four world-kingdoms are symbolised by beasts of prey, this is a symbol of the kingdom of the saints, that kingdom which is to come down from heaven to earth. On the other hand, Jesus has recast that wavering image into a definite per

sonal designation, the ὡς υἱὸς ἀνθρώπου into υἱὸς τοῦ ávoρárov. We may be in doubt as to whether this change was first made by Him, or had been made before Him through the developing tradition of His people;-that depends upon the question whether those parts of the Book of Enoch which contain the name Son of Man, as the name of Messiah, are to be regarded as pre-Christian or post-Christian. However that may be, the recasting of ὡς υἱὸς ἀνθρώπου into ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου' was quite natural and necessary as soon as the passage in Daniel was referred to the personal Messiah of the prevailing popular expectation, or as soon as an individual man recognised himself and his personal calling in that image of Daniel. Nevertheless, in the days of Jesus, Son of Man could not have been a current popular designation of Messiah, and the significance of Jesus' choice of the name rests on that very fact. In spite of the Messianic use of the designation in the Book of Enoch, we do not find in the Gospels that Jesus' self-designation as Son of Man would have been without hesitation interpreted in a Messianic sense. Nay, the question of Jesus (Matt. xvi. 13): “Whom do men say, and whom do ye say, that I the Son of Man am?" would scarcely have been possible if the name itself had already contained a formal confession of Messiah. Onl the contrary, the choice of the name is manifestly connected with the intention and need of Jesus to conceal His Messianic consciousness, lest He should stir up the perverted and passionate expectations of His people. By fixing on this passage of Daniel alone of all the Messianic passages of the Old Testament, a passage which does not originally contain the personal Messiah at all, He makes the whole question of Messiah rest formally on Himself, and not only propounds to His hearers the significance of His person as a riddle exciting to reflection, but at the same time turns their attention from the outwardness of the Messianic expecta

1 The genitive of the article rou dvěρázov is nowhere, so far as I see, explained by expositors. Weiss (Bibl. Theol. of the N. T., Trans. T. & T. Clark) thinks the genitive of the article might designate the man according to his genus(?). The late Dr. Hupfeld gave me an explanation of it founded on the Hebrew rule of grammar, that if a concept composed of a nominative and genitive is to have the article, it is placed before the genitive. BEYSCHLAG.-I.

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In the

tion to its kernel. He simply and concisely, with His everrepeated self-designation as the Son of Man, answers the importunate question of the people, "Who art Thou?" I am what the prophet saw in that vision, the bringer and bearer of the kingdom of heaven; hold to that, and it will carry you further. But Jesus preferred this self-designation to every other, not only from considerations of necessity or formal teaching. It also answered positively better than any other to His self-consciousness, and in its peculiarity and the fulness of its relations it reveals to us an instinctive harmony with a whole series of tones which blend, as it were, in a perfect melody within this self-consciousness. first place, this title, which is no title but the avoidance of every such thing, reveals the purpose of Jesus to allow His person to recede as far as possible behind the divine cause which He represents. It is enough that the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God which He brings, is contained in the name Son of Man; the choice of the most unassuming name is like a confirmation of what is repeatedly expressed in the Fourth Gospel: "I seek not Mine own honour, but that of Him who sent Me." But the essential character and nature of this kingdom and its setting up is also given in that watchword of Daniel. The human figure appearing in the clouds of heaven is in Dan. vii. contrasted with beast forms, beasts of prey which rise out of the depths of the sea. They represent the mighty world - kingdoms which precede the kingdom of God, and therefore signify human, but brutal, nay bestial human character, while there is kept in reserve for the kingdom of God, in the human figure, the true ideal human character with its heavenly descent. As the beasts of prey are far superior to the child of man in physical power, though he is still more superior to them in his higher origin and God-related character, so the kingdom of God is not to enter into the combat of brutal power and physical strength with the kingdoms of the world, but to overcome. them by the ascendency of the spirit and the power of God.

1 How far this method of Jesus agrees with the famous saying of Melanchthon, which is worth pondering: "To know Christ is to know His benefits, not to dispute about His nature," is only incidentally noted here.

Thus Jesus with His ideas of the kingdom of God stood over against the world, outwardly impotent but strong in God, strong in the persuasion of a higher mission and heavenly powers; and here we may see how the symbol of Daniel could express at once the two sides of His Messiahship, its lowliness and its loftiness, one or other of which is so often onesidedly sought in it. For this does justice also to the thought of the ideal humanity which has been too abstractly and exclusively sought in the "Son of Man." For although the entire expression, and especially the choice of the word "enasch" (Aramaic for the Hebrew "enosch," which describes man in his weakness and frailty), emphasises mainly the weakness and natural impotence of the divine bearer of the kingdom, yet His full loftiness and glory is marked by contrasting Him as appearing in the clouds of heaven with the beast forms springing out of the deep. The Father had been able to intrust Him with the setting up of His kingdom, and He knew Himself to be superior to the world and all its powers, not because He was a man like others, but because He was the man who, borne on the clouds of heaven, stood before the Eternal, at home in heaven, and looking on the face of Godthat is, the man after God's heart. These are elements or deductions from the idea of the Son of Man in Daniel, which we can, of course, only conjecture here but cannot prove, but that they lived in the soul of Jesus is certain from other facts of His self-consciousness. The one most essential, but also the most certain, is, that in calling Himself the Son of Man, He knew Himself to be that man who bears in Himself the power of the kingdom of heaven, in which the dominion of God and communion with God come down from heaven to earth.

§ 7. THE NAME SON OF GOD

Yet it is not the name Son of Man, but His self-designation as the Son of God, which leads us into the heart of the self-consciousness of Jesus. But this likewise needs a thorough investigation, as still deeper misunderstandings have been attached to it.