The above linguistic discussion has demonstrated considerable diversity of opinion, as could hardly fail to be the case in the absence of any contem- porary example of the dialect spoken in Galilee at the time of our Lord's earthly ndnistry. In their estimate of probabilities afibrded by cognate dia- lects, or by later usage, scholars are sure to differ somewhat. Nevertheless, tlie whole investigation has been fruitful in suggestion to the NT critic. But the attempt made in connexion with it to account for the presence in tlie Gospels of 'the Son of Man ' on some other grounds than that it repre- sents a self-designation employed by our Lord, can only be characterized as an elaborate failure. Wellhausen's invocation of hypothetical Apoca- lypses to explain the presence in tlie records of Jesus, and in those records not in the apocalyptic passages alone, of a title which (ex hypoth.) He did not use, removes no difficulty, but only calls aloud itself for explanation how such a thing could be. The belief that the title is the genuine utter- ance of Jesus is left unshaken.
3. When did our Lord adopt the title ' Son of Man ' ? — There can be but one answer, if we are justified in assuming that 'the Son of Man' was already a Messianic title before our Lord employed it. He can have adopted it only subsequently to St. Peter's confession of His Messiahship at Ca?sarea Philippi. But do the Gospels lend colour to any such limitation? Turning to the earliest of the Synoptics, — and we may confine our attention just now to the Synoptics, — we are met by the signifi- cant fact that St. Mark has the phrase only twice (210. 28) prior to the Csesarean incident ; St. Luke has it four times (5^^ G^- 22 7^^), and St. Matthew nine times (S^" 9« \0'^ 11" 128- ^^-^o 13^7. «)_ xhus, in by far the greatest number of cases the title occurs subsequent to Peter's confession. What, then, is to be said as to its occurrence in such cases as are prior to that confession? No one answer will suffice. Certainly it will not do to resort to the expedient of saying that the title was but little known, and that its Messianic applica- tion might be missed until our Lord Himself, late in His ministry, brought it into direct relation to Daniel's prophecy ; or to adopt the alternative offered by Holtzmann {NT Theol. vol. i. p. 264) of saying that ' the son of man ' or ' man ' was used by Jesus at first in its ordinary significance, and then, by reason of the stress He laid on it, came to be to the disciples an enigmatic word, which brought them to see that their Master was a man not as others, but with a unique calling, and at length to find in Him the Messiah. Either sup- position would leave unexplained how the adoption of the title, Avhether unfamiliar or familiar, could have passed unchallenged, and not have called forth questions as to the sense in which Jesus was using tne words. As little is help to be found in Fiebig's suggestion that one reason why our Lord chose this title ('the Man,' according to Fiebig), was that men would find in it a meaning, though they might fail to apprehend the meaning with
which Jesus employed it (op. cit. p. 120). Here, again, allowance is not made for the extreme difficulty of supposing that a speaker could apply a title to himself unless it were with an obvious purpose, which his hearers would certainly discern. There is not the least ground for supposing that it was a more usual thing in Aramaic than it is in our own language for any one to speak of him- self in the thirtl person. Such a form of speech might lend itself to more definite self-revelation, but clearly it was in no wise calculated to secure self- concealment. Wrede, in a note in ZNTW {1904, Heft 4), urges that in recent discussions about the ' Son of Man ' too little attention has been given to the really astonishing fact that Jesus is represented in the Gospels as quite habitually speaking of Himself as of a third person, and yet, so far as the Gospels show, no one thought it strange. Wrede is justified in saying that only our early familiarity with the language of the Gospels makes us insensible to the difficulty created by the frequency of the recurrence of the title ; but he surely greatly exaggerates the diffi- culty when he finds in it a most convincing argu- ment to deny that Jesus used this self-designation at all. Certainly it was an unusual and striking form of speech to adopt. But that constitutes no suffi cient reason for assuming that our Lord did not adopt it, even because it was more calculated to arrest attention when He desired to lay stress on His Messianic claims, and on special aspects of them. The real difficulty lies in the supposition that an unwonted form of speech, most calculated to provoke inquiry concerning the speaker, was adopted by Jesus at a time when, according to the testimony of the Synoptics, He studiously avoided making His identity known, when He had not even affirmed His Messiahship to the inner circle of the Twelve. It is needful, therefore, to look in detail at the passages cited above, in which the title is found prior to the declaration of our Lord's Messiahship. For that declaration, see Mt W\ Mk S^^, Lk Q^".