Zealot - The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

his
     inexplicable disappearance from the tomb. In any case, it is difficult to explain
     how the resurrection, an idea that was alien to messianic expectations in first-century
     Palestine, could have raised the belief that Jesus was messiah. The point of Wrede’s
     study was to use the “messianic secret” to show that, in his words, “Jesus actually
     did not give himself out as messiah” in his lifetime, an intriguing and probably correct
     hypothesis. Those who disagree with Wrede and argue that the messianic secret can
     actually be traced to the historical Jesus include Oscar Cullman,
Christology of the New Testament
(Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1963), 111–36, and James D. G. Dunn, “The Messianic
     Secret in Mark,”
The Messianic Secret
, ed. Christopher Tuckett (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983), 116–36. For more general
     information about the messianic secret, see James L. Blevins,
The Messianic Secret in Markan Research, 1901–1976
(Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1981), and Heikki Raisanen,
The “Messianic Secret” in Mark
(Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1990). Raisanen correctly argues that many of the theories
     offered for the “messianic secret” generally presume the notion that “the theological
     viewpoint of Mark’s gospel is based on a
single
secrecy theology.” He believes, and most contemporary scholars agree, that the “messianic
     secret” can be understood only when the secrecy concept is “broken down … into parts
     which are only relatively loosely connected with each other”; Raisanen,
Messianic Secret
, 242–43.
    For a brief précis on the many messianic paradigms that existed in firstcentury Palestine,
     see Craig Evans, “From Anointed Prophet to Anointed King: Probing Aspects of Jesus’
     Self-Understanding,”
Jesus and His Contemporaries
, 437–56.
    Although many contemporary scholars would agree with me that the use of the title
     Son of Man can be traced to the historical Jesus, there remains a great deal of debate
     over how many, and which, of the Son of Man sayings are authentic. Mark indicates
     three primary functions of Jesus’s interpretation of this obscure title. First, it
     is used in the descriptions of a future figure that comes in judgment (Mark 8:38,
     13:26, 14:62). Second, it is used when speaking of Jesus’s expected suffering and
     death (Mark 8:31, 9:12, 10:33). And finally, there are a number of passages in which
     the Son of Man is presented as an earthly ruler with the authority to forgive sins
     (Mark 2:10, 2:28). Of these three, perhaps the second is most influential in Mark.
     Some scholars, including Hermann Samuel Reimarus,
The Goal of Jesus and His Disciples
(Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1970),accept the historicity only of the noneschatological, so-called lowly sayings. Others,
     including Barnabas Lindars,
Jesus Son of Man
(London: SPCK Publishing, 1983), accept as authentic only those among the “sayings
     traditions” (
Q
and Mark) that reproduce the underlying
bar enasha
idiom (there are nine of them) as a mode of self-reference. Still others believe
     only the apocalyptic sayings to be authentic: “The authentic passages are those in
     which the expression is used in that apocalyptic sense which goes back to Daniel,”
     writes Albert Schweitzer,
The Quest of the Historical Jesus
(New York: Macmillan, 1906), 283. And of course there are those scholars who reject
     nearly all of the Son of Man sayings as inauthentic. Indeed, that was more or less
     the conclusion of the famed “Jesus Seminar” conducted by Robert W. Funk and Roy W.
     Hoover,
The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus
(New York: Polebridge Press, 1993). A comprehensive analysis of the centuries-long
     debate about the Son of Man is provided by Delbert Burkett in his indispensable monograph
The Son of Man Debate
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999). An interesting comment by Burkett is
     that the Gnostics apparently understood “son” literally, believing that Jesus was
     stating his filial relation to the gnostic “aeon” or god Anthropos, or “Man.”
    Geza Vermes demonstrates that
bar enasha
is never a title in any Aramaic sources; “The Son of Man Debate,”
Journal for the Study of the New Testament
1 (1978): 19–32. It should be mentioned that Vermes is among a handful of scholars
     who believe that “Son of Man” in its Aramaic expression is just a circumlocution for
     “I”—an indirect