Did Jesus Exist? - The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth by Bart Ehrman (read book .TXT) 📕

Given these different Son of Man sayings, how can we decide how the historical Jesus actually used the term (as opposed to the Gospels or the storytellers from whom they learned these accounts)? This is where the criterion of dissimilarity can come into play. The early Christians believed that Jesus himself was the Son of Man, the cosmic judge of the earth who would return in glory (see, for example, Revelation 1:13). The sayings in which Jesus talks about himself as the Son of Man cannot pass the criterion of dissimilarity. But the sayings in which Jesus seems to be talking about someone else do pass the criterion: surely Christians who thought Jesus was the Son of Man would not make up sayings that appear to differentiate between him and the Son of Man.

The sayings that make this differentiation are always ones that predict what will happen in the future, when the Son of Man comes in judgment on the earth. These sayings are also multiply attested in early sources, as we saw earlier. Conclusion: Jesus appears to have talked about a future Son of Man who would bring in God’s kingdom at the end of this age. Later Christians who thought that Jesus himself was that one took his sayings and manufactured traditions in which he spoke of himself in this way. This latter kind of saying, therefore, probably does not go back to Jesus. It is the future Son of Man sayings that do.

The Future Judgment

Jesus issues dire warnings about what will happen with the coming of the Son of Man in Mark, Q, M, and L (see, for example, Matthew 13:40–43; Mark 13:24–27; Luke 17:24; 21:34–36). Thus, for example, in the apocalyptic prediction of Matthew 13:47–50 we read the following (this has an independent parallel in the Gospel of Thomas):

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net which was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind. When it was full, they hauled it ashore, and sitting down chose the good fish and put them into containers, but the bad fish they threw away. That’s how it will be at the completion of the age. The angels will come and separate the evil from the midst of the righteous, and cast them into the fiery furnace. There people will weep and gnash their teeth.

And so there will be a day of reckoning for all people when this age is “completed.” One of Jesus’s characteristic teachings is that there will be a massive reversal of fortunes when the end comes. Those who are rich and powerful now will be humbled then; those who are lowly and oppressed now will then be exalted. The apocalyptic logic of this view is clear: it is only by siding with the forces of evil that people in power have succeeded in this life; and by siding with God other people have been persecuted and rendered powerless. But when the Son of Man arrives, all that will be reversed so that anyone who has given up everything for the sake of that coming kingdom will be rewarded: the first will become last and the last first. And so we see from a saying in Mark and another in L:

Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left a house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and the sake of the good news, who will not receive them all back a hundred fold in this present time—houses, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, and lands, along with persecutions—and in the age that is coming, life that never ends. But many who are first will be last and the last will be first. (Mark 10:29–31)

And people will come from east and west and from north and south and recline in the kingdom of God; and behold, those who are last will be first and the first will be last. (Luke 13:29–30; this may be Q—cf. Matthew 20:16)

This coming judgment will not simply involve humans: it will have a cosmic dimension. This entire world has grown corrupt, and so it will be destroyed to make way for the coming of the kingdom.

And in those days, after that affliction, the sun will grow dark and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the sky will be shaken; and then they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds with great power and glory. And then he will send forth his angels and he will gather his elect from the four winds, from the end of earth to the end of heaven. (Mark 13:24–27)

Preparation for the End: Keeping the Torah and Living Ethically

How was one to prepare for this coming end? We saw in Jesus’s earliest recorded words that his followers were to “repent” in light of the coming kingdom. This meant that, in particular, they were to change their ways and begin doing what God wanted them to do. As a good Jewish teacher, Jesus was completely unambiguous about how one knows what God wants people to do. It is spelled out in the Torah. The Law was a central component of Jesus’s teaching, as can be seen from the fact that he focused on the Law, and the correct interpretation of the Law, in multiple independent sources, both early and late.

From Mark: When a man runs up to Jesus and asks him what he must do to “inherit eternal life,” Jesus’s immediate response is to list some of the Ten Commandments. (In Matthew’s version of this story, he actually tells the man, “If you want to enter into life, keep the commandments” (Mark 10:17–22; Matthew 19:16–22; see also Luke 18:18–23).

From Q: Jesus states that it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for a single dot of the Law to pass away