Tool Beta
The Gods of the Bible
Every named divine being in Scripture, what the text calls it, and what the ancient world thought it was.
The Son of Man
A human-looking figure in Daniel's vision who arrives on the clouds and is handed authority over everything.
Daniel 7:13-14, in every translation this tool compares.
Son of man is an ordinary way of saying a human being, the way we might say a soul. In Daniel 7 someone answering that description arrives riding the clouds, which everywhere else in the Hebrew Bible only God does, and is handed authority over everything. Jesus claims the title at his trial, and that is the moment he is charged with blasphemy.
A figure who rides the clouds, which every other time in the Hebrew Bible is something only Yahweh does, and who receives dominion from the Ancient of Days. Jesus claims it at his trial and the claim produces the blasphemy charge. DDD takes Daniel 7:13-14 as the earliest text for the non-generic sense: an ordinary Semitic idiom for a human being becomes a heavenly figure in the Jewish texts, and then Jesus in the New Testament. Walton flags the Mesopotamian Anzu myth as possible background for the beast imagery of Daniel 7 in general, a narrower and more cautious claim than an explanation of the Son of Man himself.
Individual or symbol. DDD reads Daniel 7:13 as the first step from an ordinary idiom for a human being to a heavenly figure. The Jewish Study Bible reads the author as most likely meaning a heavenly judge, perhaps Michael, and records that later Jewish tradition (Ibn Ezra, Rashi) dropped the messianic reading and took the figure as a picture of Israel. The Gospels read it of Jesus. All three readings are working from the same two verses.
- Daniel 7:13-14
- Mark 14:62
- Matthew 26:64
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/divine-council-index\/daniel-7-9-14\/","n":"Daniel 7:9-14","s":"Thrones are set in place, plural, the court sits, and one like a son of man comes on the clouds.","r":"Daniel 7:9-14"}
- DDD s.v. "Son of Man," 800-803
- *The Jewish Study Bible*, note on Daniel 7:13-14
- Heiser, *Unseen Realm*, ch. 29
- Collins and Collins, *Daniel* (Hermeneia)
- Walton, "The Anzu Myth as Relevant Background for Daniel 7?" in *The Book of Daniel: Composition and Reception* (2001)
