Daniel 7's 'one like a son of man'

What the chapter is doing

Daniel 7 sits at the seam of the book. It is the last chapter of the Aramaic block that began at 2:4 and the first of the apocalyptic visions that run through chapter 12. The vision is dated to the first year of Belshazzar. Daniel sees four beasts come up out of a churning sea: a lion with eagle's wings, a bear with ribs in its mouth, a leopard with four heads, and a fourth beast with iron teeth and ten horns. A little horn rises among the ten, speaks great things, and wars against the saints. The scene then cuts to a heavenly courtroom. Thrones are set. The Ancient of Days takes his seat. The fourth beast is killed and its body burned. Then verses 13-14 introduce the figure who comes with the clouds.

The vision is followed by an interpretation. An angelic figure tells Daniel the four beasts are four kings (7:17), and that the saints of the Most High will receive the kingdom (7:18). Daniel asks specifically about the fourth beast and the little horn. The answer (7:23-27) describes the fourth kingdom, the persecution of the saints 'for a time and times and the dividing of time,' the destruction of the persecutor, and the giving of the kingdom 'to the people of the saints of the most High.' The throne-room interpretation does not explicitly identify the 'one like a son of man' as either an individual or as the saints. It puts both languages on the page and leaves the relationship open.

The phrase 'one like a son of man' is Aramaic ke-bar enash. The phrase bar enash by itself simply means 'human being' or 'mortal,' the way ben adam functions in Hebrew. The qualifier 'like' (ke-) marks the figure as appearing in human form without claiming the figure is just a human. The contrast is structural. The four beasts come up out of the sea (the realm of chaos in the ancient Near East), and the human-shaped figure comes with the clouds of heaven (the realm of God). The opposition is built into the imagery before any identification is made.

The four readings

How three other Second Temple texts read the figure

Three texts written between Daniel and the Gospels develop a 'Son of Man' figure with clear parallels to Daniel 7. They are usually grouped under the label 'Son of Man traditions' and are the primary evidence that an individual-heavenly-Messiah reading of Dan 7 was already current in Second Temple Judaism. The Book of Parables (1 Enoch 37-71), 4 Ezra 13, and the Gospels' use of the title each take the figure in a different direction.

Jesus's use of 'the Son of Man'

The numbers are striking. The phrase ho huios tou anthrōpou ('the Son of Man') appears roughly 80 times in the four Gospels. About 30 are in Mark and parallels in Matthew and Luke. About 12 are unique to John. The phrase is on Jesus's own lips in nearly every occurrence. Stephen at his execution sees 'the Son of man standing on the right hand of God' (Acts 7:56), and John in Revelation sees 'one like unto the Son of man' (Rev 1:13; 14:14), each in clear Danielic settings. Outside those few cases, the early church does not use the title. Paul never calls Jesus 'the Son of Man.' James, Peter, and Jude do not. The phrase is concentrated in the Jesus-tradition itself.

The Son of Man sayings cluster into three groups in modern scholarship, going back to Bultmann's classification in his 1921 commentary on John. There are present-authority sayings ('the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins,' Mark 2:10). There are suffering sayings ('the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected,' Mark 8:31). And there are future-coming sayings ('they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven,' Matt 24:30). The future-coming sayings draw most directly on Dan 7. The present-authority sayings are sometimes read as drawing on the more general 'son of man = human' usage. The suffering sayings are unique and combine Dan 7 with Isaiah 53.

The trial scene in Mark 14:60-64 is the densest single use of Dan 7 in the Gospels. The high priest asks: 'Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?' Jesus answers: 'I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.' The high priest tears his clothes and accuses him of blasphemy. The blasphemy charge is the puzzle. Claiming to be the Messiah was not in itself blasphemous in Second Temple Judaism. Many had claimed it without being charged with blasphemy. Most scholars read the blasphemy charge as a response to Jesus's specific claim that he, the speaker, will sit at the right hand of God and come with the clouds. That claim places him in the position of Dan 7's exalted figure, which the high priest would have read as a claim to divine prerogative.

How the angelic-Michael reading developed

The Michael reading was largely a twentieth-century critical development. It is most fully argued in Collins's Hermeneia commentary (1993) and developed earlier in his Apocalyptic Vision (1977). The argument moves in three steps. First, the 'one like' (ke-) formula in Daniel introduces angelic figures elsewhere in the book (8:15-16; 10:5-6, 16, 18). Second, Michael is the only named figure in Daniel given the role of Israel's heavenly patron (10:13, 21; 12:1). Third, ancient Near Eastern royal mythology associates the legitimate king (or his heavenly patron) with riding the clouds, especially in Baal cycle material from Ugarit. Michael as cloud-riding patron-angel fits all three patterns.

Hartman and Di Lella's Anchor Bible volume (1978) took an intermediate position. The figure represents the saints and may be Michael as their angelic representative. Newsom's OTL (2014) holds the figure together corporately and angelically, treating the chapter as deliberately layered. The reading has steadily gained ground in critical commentary since the 1970s, partly because it provides a way to combine the individual-figure verses (13-14) and the corporate-saints verses (18, 22, 27) without forcing either side to absorb the other.

Where the two textual clues sit together

The chapter does not resolve the tension it sets up. Verses 13-14 describe a single figure receiving dominion. Verses 18, 22, and 27 describe the saints receiving the same dominion. The four readings handle the tension in different ways. Position 1 (corporate) treats verses 18-27 as the chapter's own gloss on verses 13-14. Position 2 (Michael) treats Michael as the patron who receives the kingdom on behalf of the saints he represents. Position 3 (individual Messiah) treats verses 18-27 as describing the people who share in the Messiah's kingdom. Position 4 (Jesus's self-identification) is about reception, not original intent, and can pair with any of the first three on the question of what the chapter first meant.

All four readings agree on a smaller set of facts. The figure appears in human form. The figure comes from heaven, not from the sea. The figure receives dominion from the Ancient of Days. The saints of the Most High are also said to receive the kingdom. The chapter sets up an opposition between empires-as-beasts and the divine-or-human-figure who replaces them. The disagreements are about what the human-shaped figure is, not about what the chapter as a whole is doing.

What each side has to account for

Position 1 (corporate) has to account for the worship-language of 7:14. 'All people, nations, and languages' serving the figure with the verb palach is the same vocabulary used elsewhere in Daniel for the worship of Yahweh. Corporate symbols in the prophets rarely receive that kind of address.

Position 2 (Michael) has to account for the chapter's silence on Michael by name. The angelic reading depends on importing the patron-angel from chapters 10 and 12. It also has to account for the unusual level of worship the figure receives. Second Temple angels did not generally receive the cult-language used in 7:14.

Position 3 (individual Messiah) has to account for the chapter's interpretive layer that reads the recipients corporately. If the figure is a single coming Messiah, the chapter could have said so directly. The corporate-saints language has to be read as derived from the figure's people-of-God.

Position 4 (Jesus's self-identification) has to account for the fact that the connection between Dan 7 and Jesus's identity claim runs through Jesus's own mouth and is rarely picked up by the rest of the New Testament. Paul does not use 'Son of Man.' The early church did not turn it into a title for Jesus in the way it did for 'Christ' or 'Lord.' That asymmetry is part of the evidence that the title goes back to Jesus himself.

The chapter sits at the head of the New Testament's Christology and at the head of Second Temple apocalyptic. The reading that wins on Dan 7 is the reading that can hold all four data points together: the individual figure in 13-14, the corporate saints in 18-27, the Second Temple Jewish development of the figure in 1 Enoch and 4 Ezra, and Jesus's deliberate use of the title in the Gospels. No reading currently in the field handles all four without strain. The verses keep their puzzles.