Weiss had caused so much trouble to theologians, and wanted to postpone the historical discussion until the Aramaic experts had settled the linguistic question. That happened sooner than was expected. In 1898 Dalman declared in his epoch-making work (Die Worte Jesu) that he could not admit the linguistic objections to the use of the expression Son of Man by Jesus. "Biblical Aramaic," he says, "does not differ in this respect from Hebrew. The simple [Man] and not [Son of Man] is the term for man." . . . It was only later that the Jewish-GaIilaean dialect, like the Palestinian- Christian dialect, used [Son of Man] for man, though in both idioms the simple [Man] occurs in the sense of "some one." "In view of the whole facts of the case," he continues, "what has to be said is that Jewish-Palestinian Aramaic of the earlier period used [Man] for 'man,' and occasionally to designate a plurality of men makes use of the expression [Sons of Man]. The singular [Son of Man] was not current, and was only used in imitation of the Hebrew text of the Bible, where [Son of MAn] belongs to the poetic diction, and is, moreover, not of very frequent occurrence." "It is," he says else- where, "by no means a sign of a sound historical method, instead of working patiently at the solution of the problem, to hasten like Oort and Lietzmann to the conclusion that the absence of the expression in the New Testament Epistles is a proof that Jesus did not use it either, but that there was somewhere or other a Hellenistic community in the Early Church which had a predilection for this name, and often made Jesus speak of Himself in the Gospel narrative in the third person, in order to find an opportunity of bringing it in."
So the oxen turned back with the ark into the land of the Philistines. It was a case of returning to the starting-point and deciding on historical grounds in what sense Jesus had used the expression.[1] But the possibilities were reduced by the way in which Lietzmann had posed the problem, since the interpretations according to which Jesus had used it in a veiled ethical Messianic sense, to indicate the ethical and spiritual transformation of all the eschatological conceptions, were now manifestly incapable of offering any convincing argument against the radical denial of the use of the expression. Baldensperger rightly remarked in a review of the whole discussion that the question which was ultimately at stake in
- ↑ For the last phase of the discussion we may name: Wellhausen, Skizzen und Vorarbeiten (Sketches and Studies), 1899, pp. 187-215, where he throws further light on Dalman's philological objections; and goes on to deny Jesus' use of the expression. W. Baldensperger, "Die neueste Forschung uber den Menschensohn," Theol. Rundschau, 1900, 3, pp. 201-210, 243-255. P. Fiebig, Der Menschensohn. Tubingen, 1901. P. W. Schmiedel, "Die neueste Auffassung des Namens Menschensohn," Prot. Monatsh. 5, pp. 333-351, 1901. (The Latest View of the Designation Son of Man.) P. W. Schmidt, Die Geschichte Jesu, ii. (Erlauterungen-Explanations). Tubingen, 1904, p. 157 ff.
