39 " Note," says Meyer, " the climax — the angels, the Son, the Father." A. J. Mason {Conditions of our Lord's Life on Earth, 120), on the other hand, thinks " there is no express triple ascent, from men to angels, from angels to the Son " — but the ovdk — obdi is in a sort par- enthetical : " None knoweth — no not the angels in heaven, nor yet the Son — except the Father." " All the same," he adds, " the sentence is a climax, and a pointed one. Our Lord does not say (what would have been good Greek) oixVe ol ayyeXoc cure 6 ulog^ as if the Son were in the same class of beings with the angels in heaven, only the highest of them. He says ovdk — audi; as if to say, ' You might suppose that the secret was only a secret from those on earth; but it is kept a secret even from those in heaven. You might suppose that the secret was only a secret for created beings, but it is a secret for the uncreated Son Himself. The Father alone knows it.'" Cf. Swete: "No one . . . not even . . . nor yet." Dalman, Words, p. 194, arbitrarily sup- poses that the closing words, " nor the Son but the Father only," may be an accretion, while Zeller (Z. fiir iv. Th., 1865, p. 308), on the ground of this ascription to Christ of a superangelic nature wishes to assign Mark to the second century (see Meyer's reply, Mk. and Lk., E. T., I, 205 note). From all which it is at least clear that the passage confessedly assigns a superhuman nature to Jesus.
24 The Designations of Our Lord
self Is also one peculiar to Himself — ' the Son of Man.'*** That this designation Is actually employed as a Messianic title, Is apparent not only from its ob- vious origin In the vision of Daniel 7^^, to which ref- erence Is repeatedly made (8^^ 13-^ 14^-)," but also from the easy passage which Is made, In the course of the conversations reported, from one of the other des- ignations to this, whereby they are evinced as its synonyms. Thus In 8^^ In sequence to Peter's confes- sion of Him as ' the Christ,' we are told that Jesus began to teach that " the Son of Man must suffer many things." Similarly In 13'^ our Lord notifies us that although many " false Chrlsts " shall arise who may deceive men, yet when certain signs occur, " then shall they see the Son of Man coming." Again when ex- horted to declare whether He Is " the Christ, the Son of the Blessed" (14^^), He responds In the affirmative and adds : " And ye shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power." Evidently If we are to ask, ' Who Is this Son of Man,' we must give answer,
40 210,28 831,38 o9,12,31 jq33,45 j,26 ij^21, 41,62^
*''■ The reference to Daniel 7^^ seems indisputable. But it is in some- what wide circles not allowed. Even conservative writers are occa- sionally found seeking another explanation of the phrase, although this involves treating the passages mentioned as unhistorical. Exam- ples may be found in Volkmar Fritzsche, Das Berufsbewusstsein Jesu, 1905, pp. 17 sq.; Siegfried Goebel, Die Reden unseres Herrn nach Jo- hannes, 1906, (following his note on Jno i^^) ; and Zahn in his Com- mentary on Matthew. (Zahn is directly refuted by Fritz Tillmann in the Biblische Zeitschrift, 1907, vol. i., 348 seq.). Critics like VVell- hausen and N. Schmidt, of course, assume that ' Son of Man ' is merely Aramaic for " Man," and deny all reference to Daniel. W^hat may be made of the term, and of the Danielle passage itself, from this point of view may be conveniently read in Dr. Cheyne's Bible Problems, 1904; or with a great display of hypothetical learning in Hugo Gressmann's Der Ursprung der israelitisch-'jiidischen Eschatologie, 1905.
The Designations in Mark 25