Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 62:1 (Mar 2019)
Article: Lord Or Legend: Jesus As The Messianic Son Of Man
Author: Charles L. Quarles

JETS 62:1 (March 2019) p. 103

Lord Or Legend: Jesus As The
Messianic Son Of Man

Charles L. Quarles*

* Charles Quarles is research professor of NT and Biblical Theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, 222 N. Wingate St., Wake Forest, NC 27587. He can be reached at [email protected]. This article is a revision of a paper first delivered at the 2011 Greer-Heard Point-Counterpoint Forum on the topic, “Can We Trust the Bible on the Historical Jesus?” at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, a forum involving Bart Ehrman, Craig A. Evans, Ben Witherington III, Dale Martin, Jennifer Knust, Craig Keener, and Charles Quarles.

Abstract: In several recent works, Bart Ehrman has argued that Jesus frequently taught about the coming of a figure called the Son of Man who was a divine figure, cosmic judge, and ruler of the kingdom of God. Although Jesus did not see himself as this Son of Man, his disciples mistakenly identified him as this figure as a result of their belief in Jesus’s resurrection. This article surveys the use of the title Son of Man by Jesus and Jewish literature and generally confirms Ehrman’s view of the meaning of the title. It further argues that the standard criteria of authenticity which Ehrman confidently employs in his works also confirm that Jesus identified himself as the Son of Man. Thus, the high Christology of early Christianity is not the result of “legend” as Ehrman claims but resulted from Jesus’s own divine claims.

Key words: Son of Man, Bart Ehrman, Christology, historical Jesus, criteria of authenticity, Daniel 7:13–14, Daniel 7:9–10

Chapter 5 of Jesus, Interrupted by Bart Ehrman is titled “Liar, Lunatic, or Lord? Finding the Historical Jesus.” Ehrman drew his title from the famous closing words of the chapter “The Shocking Alternative” in C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. Lewis wrote:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him [Jesus]: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a g...