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ON THE TITLE, "SON OF MAN."

A LITTLE Work has recently appeared, The First Three Gospels, their Origin and Relations, by the Rev. J. Estlin Carpenter, the modest and unpretending form of which hardly does justice to the character of its contents. This is indeed the one thing that I should most regret about it. The book is addressed, in my opinion, to an inappropriate public. It is published in a series of "Biblical Manuals," under the auspices of the Sunday-school Association (Unitarian). It may therefore be inferred that it is intended for the young. And for the highest class of young pupils it is in many respects excellently fitted. It is written with a clearness of development and a flowing ease of style which draw on the reader and prevent his interest from flagging. There is just the right degree of warmth about it. It is elevated in tone, without being stilted or rhetorical. Even one who does not sympathize with the author's point of view, and who cannot profess to be indifferent to his conclusions, will find them presented with as little unnecessary friction and aggressiveness as possible.

These are considerable merits, and the author is fully entitled to the credit of them. The drawbacks are: First, as I have said, that the book is addressed to a wrong public. Books for the young are not the proper field for critical experiment. They should be confined to ascertained and acknowledged fact. Theories which depend upon critical premisses should first be threshed out in the schools before they are taken down into the highways and hedges. They should first be propounded in a form in which they can be adequately discussed and tested. The writer should have before his eyes the wholesome knowledge that he is writing for scholars who will not allow his statements and theories to pass unquestioned. It seems to me that Mr. Carpenter's book has distinctly suffered from the fact that this has not

been the case. Much of it is not really suited to the young, and if it had been submitted in the first instance to those for whom it is suited, it would, I think, have been written differently.

This is the second qualification that I should have to make in regard to it, that it looks at first sight critical in a higher sense than it really is. I do not refer merely to certain unguarded expressions, such as on p. 115, where it is assumed without a hint of doubt that the last words of Mark i. 1, "The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ [the Son of God]," are an interpolation, although they are wanting only in a single uncial MS. (N), and although their omission (supposing them to be genuine) might be due to one of the commonest of accidents. I do not say that the omission has nothing to be said for it; but the right verdict is doubtless that of Drs. Westcott and Hort, that "neither reading can be safely rejected." It is a more serious matter when we find a sentence like this on the fourth Gospel: "The rich background of nature and society, the variety of occupations, the manifold touches which reveal the teacher's close and loving observation of his countrymen, are merged in a few great and universal ideas, in whose glow all local colour has been blanched away." The first orthodox commentary on the Gospel that is taken up-Dr. Westcott's or Dr. Plummer's-will show that this is the very reverse of the fact.1 The fourth Gospel is really full of local colour, and to deny this is to give a wholly misleading aspect to the evidence on one of the most fundamental questions.

The synoptic Gospels are less dangerous ground, and Mr. Carpenter gives a critical analysis of these to which little exception can be taken. His last three chapters are indeed a welcome sign of the progress which is being made towards agreement on this head. The Gospel of St. Mark is placed 1 Speaker's Commentary, p. v ff.; Camb. Greek Test., p. xxvii ff.

about the year 70 A.D., and that of St. Luke some ten years later, both very probable dates. And if there is a tendency to bring too far down the latest touches in the Gospel which bears the name of St. Matthew, it is acknowledged that the mass of the materials of which it is composed are older. The whole of this part of the case is stated with moderation, and I should myself feel that it would not be difficult to arrive at an understanding about it. It is however rather strange, and perhaps not without significance, that the chapters dealing with this side of the subject are the last in the book. They come in rather as an ornamental appendage to the reconstruction of the history than as the foundation on which it is based. And accordingly we find that the critical determination of the sources has had less to do with the main body of the book than might have been expected. It needs, in fact, little reading between the lines to see that certain dominant ideas are present to the mind of the author throughout, and that his decision on particular points is far more affected by them than by any strictly objective documentary standard. There looms before him a dim ideal of what he conceives that the Christ ought to be; and if the Gospels do not of themselves yield exactly that ideal, they must be corrected into accordance with it.

This is to me another disappointing feature in the book. It claims to be critical, and it uses a critical language; but when it comes to be looked into, the criticism will be found to be far more subjective than objective. And, as a consequence, it will satisfy the author himself, and those of his own way of thinking, more than others who differ from him. An example may be seen in the appendix dealing with the title "Son of Man," which contains the central and distinctive idea towards which a great part of the volume may be said to be working. The treatment of this title is, to the best of my belief, new and original; and although I

cannot regard it as at all tenable, it may yet seem to deserve some closer examination.

Mr. Carpenter's idea is, briefly stated, this: He thinks that our Lord did not really use the title in the sense attributed to it in the Gospels. He would link on the actual use to the context in which it originally occurs in the book of Daniel. It will be remembered that the first instance in which the phrase occurs in any exceptional sense is in connexion with the vision of the four great monarchies: the first represented by a lion; the second, by a bear; the third, by a leopard; the fourth, by a monster with iron teeth and ten horns. The Ancient of days takes his seat upon the throne of judgment; the last of the beasts is destroyed, and the others deposed; and there comes with the clouds one "like unto a son of man," who is brought before the Ancient of days, and receives a dominion which is universal and eternal. There is some little divergence in the interpretation, especially of the second of these symbolical creatures; still there is no doubt that they stand for a succession of monarchies, according to the most common view, the Babylonian, Median, Persian, and Macedonian, or the empire of Alexander and his successors. trast with these, the Form "like a son of man" represents, no doubt, in its primary significance, and in the horizon of the prophet, the idealized, regenerated, purified Israel. From a Christian point of view it is not wrongly transferred to Him who embodied and fulfilled the ideal vocation of Israel.

In con

Mr. Carpenter however-quite reasonably from his standpoint-adheres to the primary application to a regenerated Israel. He thinks that the use in the Gospels grew directly out of this. The "Coming of the Son of Man" he takes to be a synonym for the triumph of "the kingdom," that great social change and renovation to which there can be 1 Dan. vii. 1-14.

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no doubt that Jesus looked forward. In more than one passage the equation is found in the Gospels, "Coming of the Son of Man," "coming of the kingdom" (e.g. in Mark ix. 1=Luke ix. 27 Matt. xvi. 28). These passages Mr. Carpenter takes as a key to the explanation of the rest; and he skilfully works out the view that, wherever personality is ascribed to the Son of Man, this is due to a misunderstanding of the real teaching of Jesus. What He said impersonally the Church, at a very early date, understood personally. Starting from the belief that Jesus was the Messiah, His disciples soon came to refer what was meant for the Messianic people to the Messiah Himself. Hence the existence of a number of passages in the Gospels in which Jesus is made to speak of Himself when in point of fact He did not do so; hence in particular the appropriation of a large group of sayings in which mention is made of the "Coming of the Son of Man," from the inauguration of an age of righteousness, or coming of a righteous people, to the personal coming, or Second Coming, as we are in the habit of calling it, of the Messiah.

I have said that this hypothesis is skilfully worked out, but I do not for a moment believe that it is true. It involves, as will be seen at once, a wholesale rewriting of the Gospels. It is no doubt the case that there is one important group of passages in which the title "Son of Man" is specially connected with this future or Second Coming. There is no great difficulty in re-interpreting these in the sense desired. But there is also a number of other passages which are broken up entirely by the attempt to force any such meaning upon them. These have to be got rid of by less legitimate methods.

No very great straining is indeed involved in the explanation of the question in Matthew xvi. 13 (“Who do men say that the Son of Man is?") as a simple periphrasis for "that I am" which is found in the other two Gospels. Nor is