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  • From: "Anthony Buglass" <tonybuglass AT fish.co.uk>
  • To: "Corpus-Paul" <corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Corpus-Paul] RE: son of man
  • Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2003 10:33:20 -0000

Richard Anderson asks:
Why does Paul not use "son of man" terminology?

Notwithstanding Jim West's comment that we can slide into pointless
speculation on this, there are two areas of interest which impinge upon it.

The first is the use of the Aramaic tradition among Hellenistic Jews. "Son
of man" is natural Aramaic but peculiar Greek (so says C K Barrett, "Jesus
and the Gospel Tradition, 1967 p6). Even if Paul's initial audience and
readership included mainly Jews, the question is how many of them would read
Aramaic, or if they worked mainly in Greek and used the LXX, how far "son of
man" language was current in Jewish theological speculation. It was
arguably current in Palestine in Jesus' day, and must have had sufficient
currency to have made its use intelligible during the development of the
Synoptic tradition. It is possible to surmise that if it were current in
Hellenistic Jewish thinking in places like Rome, Paul might have used it;
since he didn't, we might conclude that it wasn't current - perhaps replaced
by "saviour" language, more comprehensible in a Hellensitic community?

The other is Paul's knowledge and use of the Jesus tradition. It has almost
been traditional to argue that Paul didn't know much or anything about
historical Jesus or Jesus tradition. Against that, J Dunn argues that it is
unreasonable to suggest that Paul's communities knew nothing about Jesus
until they got Mark, or that the only knowledge they received from Paul was
the same "take" on the subject as he gave in his letters. To infer from
Paul's almost non-use of Jesus-tradition in his his letters that he didn't
know it is not justified. It is equally possible that Paul knew a
significant amount of Jesus-tradtion, and had already used it in his oral
ministry - he didn't repeat in his letters what he had already taught
verbally, unless it was necessary to refer back to it (eg 1 Cor.15:1f)
""Taken-for-granted" doesn't mean "couldn't-care-less"" (Dunn, The Theology
of Paul the Apostle, p185).

Paul seldom uses Jesus-tradition in his letters. The issue is not so much
an argument from silence as an attempt to explain why that near-silence
exists. Kloppenberg suggest places where Paul may have been influenced by
sayings-tradition in general and GThomas in particular:
- Thom.53 suggests that circumcision is useless, in a saying which has no
parallel in the canonical sayings of Jesus but many parallels in Paul (eg
Rom.2:25-29; Phil.3:3; 1 Cor.7:17-19; Gal.6:5;
-.While the sayings tradition doesn't explicitly exclude women from
positions of leadership, sayings such as Thom.14 may address opposition to
the ministry of women by classing them as 'honorary males'. Paul's
inclusion of women in the organisation of his communities may have been
influenced by practices in the Thomas communities (Kloppenberg "Q Thomas
Reader" p.110f).
He also notes that Paul spent 15 years growing in the faith in the part of
Syria where he argues the sayings-tradition was at its strongest. It is
inconceivable that Paul knew nothing. Perhaps he deliberately refrained
from using it. It is unlikely that his Corinthian opponents were
Thomas-Christians, but the words which he takes from them and turns against
them (1 Cor.2:9-10) echo Thom 17. Further, his opponents appear to have
anticipated the eschatological Kingdom of God, in terms supported by Thom.3;
113; 51. His response in 1 Cor.4:8b may be an ironic response to a saying
such as Thom.2:4. There are certainly similarities between the developing
sapiential traditions of eastern Syria and the incipient gnosticism of
Achaia. Thomas illustrates the potential of the sayings tradition to
produce views similar to Gnosticism. It is not that Paul was ignorant of
the sayings of Jesus (Dunn 1998:185), nor that he was not interested in
them, but that he rejected the tradition because it had developed into a
form with a theology which he found unacceptable.

To return to the question of the use of "son of man" language - not only was
it linguistically out of place in Paul's predominantly Hellenistic milieu,
but it is part of a sayings-tradition which he had decided not to use for
other reasons. There were other more appropriate tools with which to
communicate the Gospel.

Cheers,
Rev Tony Buglass
Superintendent minister, Pickering Methodist Circuit, North Yorkshire.







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