We may observe, in taking leave of this sub- ject, that before the historical realization in Jesus
hrist, and apart from belief in Him, it must have been extremely difficult to combine the idea of suffering with the conception of the promised king derived from the representations of OT prophecy generally. It can have been possible at all only for men of unusual depth of spiritual insight and sympathy with the sorrows of their people
(c) The use of the name ‘the Son of Man,’ the Messianic interpretation of the vision in Dn 7, and the doctrine of the Messiah’s pre-existence.—The Messiah was certainly not called ‘the Son of Man’ by Jews with that fulness of signification which Jesus gave to the name. The use of this title for the Messiah among Jews, if it was used by them at all, is closely associated with the interpretation of Dn 7, and the discussion of the two points may conveniently be connected.
From Jn 12% it appears that the Jews were puzzled by the designation ‘the Son of Man,’ and
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that it was not with them a recognized title for the Messiah. Indeed, if it had been, the use of it by Jesus could hardly be reconciled with His course οὗ action as a whole. We gather from the records generally, that He refrained till the very end of
is ministry from claiming before the multitude to be the Messiah, and till within a few months of the close from making this claim before even the innermost circle of His disciples. Yet He re- peatedly and openly designated Himself from an early period by the name ‘the Son of Man.’ It is true that, in connexion with this early and public use of it, He does not introduce imagery taken from, or similar to, that of the vision in Dn 7, as He does in later sayings addressed to His disciples which contain this title. From the first, however, His use of it was marked and empliatic, and such as would not have been consistent with the rest of His conduct, if it already commonly denoted the Messiah.
With respect to the vision in Dn 7 it has to be observed that he who is brought to the Ancient of Days is described not as ‘the Son of Man,’ but as ‘one like unto @ son of man.’ Further, the vision is accompanied by an interpretation, from which it appears that this human form represents ‘the saints of the Most High’ (vv.'* 33. 31) in con- trast with the earthly kingdoms represented by forms of beasts. Nevertheless, from the relation between the form of the vision in 4 Ezr, to which allusion has already been made, and that in Dn 7, we may clearly infer that the writer of the later Apocalypse saw a reference to the Messiah in the language of his prototype. But it should be noted that he described the Messiah not as ‘the Son of Man’ or as ‘like unto a son of man,’ but as ‘like untoa man.’ In Rabbinic literature, from the 2nd cent. onwards, indications of the Messianic inter-
retation of the vision in Dn7 are not wanting,
ut they are not prominent. There is nothing in this literature to lead us to suppose that ‘the Sonu of Man’ was ever in common use as a name for the Messiah.
The employment of imagery such as that of Daniel’s vision in describing the advent of the Messiah implies Ais existence before his appearing, in some extra-terrestrial region. But this view could, as we have seen, be harmonized with the belief that he would be of David’s line, by sup- posing that a descendant of David had been first caught up from the earth, or that David himself or one of the kings of his house would reappear. And as the Davidic lineage of the Messiah was a thoroughly established Som and there is no reason to suppose that any doubt on the point was entertained, or would have been tolerated, in the Rabbinic schools, we must conclude that any pre- existence of the Messiah before his manifestation to men which they thought of, was only such as was consistent with a previous human birth.
Harnack indeed (Dogmengesch. i. 755) asserts that, as a way of representing to themselves the Divine foreknowledge, the Jews were in the habit of ΟΡ DOSE that every important person or thing which has successively appeared or is to appear on earth has first existed in heaven, and that such a heavenly pre-existence was assumed in the case of the Messiah in accordance with this mode of thought. But G. Dalman, the chief expert in Jewish literature among recent writers, emphati- cally denies that this was a Jewish, or at all events a Palestinian, principle. He does not allow that the familiar instances of the heavenly ale? types of the holy city and the temple establish it (Worte Jesu, p. 245). We may at least say that it must be difficult for us to understand exactly ana fully what such a notion imported, even where we seem to find it and that consequently it must be
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rash for us to imagine it in the case of persons and objects with which it was not plainly associated. The older Rabbinism at least seems to have con- tented itself with the idea of the pre-existence of the Name of Messiah (Ps 72"), (See Dalman, ἐδ. p. 247).