The Son of Man in Matthew: Heavenly Judge or Human Christ

Abstract

The first section of this article lists the characteristics of Matthew's use of the expression 'the son of the man', its addressees and its distribution through the Gospel. The second section puts forward the thesis that Matthew presupposes that his Christian readers already know the son of man sayings of Jesus, that is the whole of his destiny as described in these sayings. The third section examines how the expression functions in the narrative. Matthew uses the son of man logia in order to reinforce the Jewish misunderstanding of Jesus: his Jewish adversaries reject the claims of Jesus; they do not hear his special instruction, so that finally the Sanhedrin judges Jesus, who, as son of the man, will judge the world. On the other hand, Jesus teaches his disciples by means of the son of the man sayings about the whole course of his history and future destiny, so that they (and the reader of the Gospel) not only know about the way and future exaltation of Jesus, but also about the real depth of the catastrophy into which Israel is falling through its rejection of Jesus the son of the man.