Once Jesus Became God
Core Authentic Themes
- Apocalyptic Expectation: Sayings announcing that the current evil age would soon end and God would violently intervene to establish a new cosmic order. [1]
- Radical Ethics: Instructions on loving enemies, turning the other cheek, and helping the poor as preparation for the imminent judgment. [1]
- The "Son of Man": References where Jesus spoke of an upcoming cosmic judge (the Son of Man) coming from heaven, which Ehrman argues Jesus viewed as a separate figure rather than himself.
- e “the Son of Man” in the teachings of Jesus. Everyone agrees — since it’s plain for all to see — that in the Gospels Jesus uses the phrase in a variety of ways, sometimes to talk about his present ministry (“the son of man has nowhere to lay his head”; Luke 9:58; Matt. 8:20), sometimes to predict his future suffering (“the son of man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again”; Mark 8:31; Luke 9:22), and sometimes to refer to a cosmic judge from heaven, whom we’ve now met on several occasions (for example, Mark 8:38: “Whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he arrives from heaven in the presence of the holy angels”). Hence the questions: Did Jesus — that is, the historical Jesus, the actual man himself (not Jesus as portrayed in the later Gospels) use the phrase in all of these ways? Did he always use it in reference to himself?
- Comment says: I think 1 Enoch portrays Enoch himself as the Son of Man. And I don’t think we have any idea what the Jewish authorities asked Jesus when he was arrested. Mark’s Gospel, our first source, was written 40 years later by someone who didn’t know anyone involved, living in a different country, and speaking a different language!
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BDEhrman January 12, 2025 at 12:22 amLog in to Reply
Yes, that’s probably the most widely held view, but I don’t buy it for a minute. THere are huge debates about what the phrase “Son of man” means on the lips of Jesus and which of the son of man sayings he actually said and which were put on his lips by later story tellers. It is interesting that when he refers to the son of man as the cosmic judge of the earth, he does not appear to be talking about himself. Since the story tellers thought he *was* the future judge of the earth, it does not seem like *those* sayings would be ones they would have made up. So I think they (e.g., Mark 8:38) are the ones he said, that he called God’s future judge the Son of Man (based on Dan. 7:13-14), but that after his death when his followers thought he had been raised from the dead and exalted to heaven, they naturally concluded he was the one God would send, and so had him refer to himself with the term — which is why the Gospels report him using it as a self-designation.
- BDEhrman August 26, 2025 at 9:32 pmLog in to Reply
No, I haven’t changed my mind. I’m saying that MARK understood Jesus to be the coming Son of Man. That’s very different from saying what Jesus himself thought.
I was reading Helen Bond’s book ‘The Historical Jesus’ and she suggested Jesus was talking about himself whenever he referred to ‘Son of Man’. I always found that confusing as Jesus seemed to sometimes refer to ‘Son of Man’ in the third person, but sometimes seemed to apply the title to himself.
I really like the idea that the church or gospel authors adjusted Jesus words on this to make it sound like Jesus was referring to himself when in fact Jesus had another person/being in mind altogether.