The Expression Son of Man and the Development of Christology: A History of Interpretation

Son of Man is practically the only self-designation employed by Jesus himself in the gospels, but is used in such a way that no hint is left of any particular theological significance. Still, during the first many centuries of the church, the expression as it was reused was given content, first-literally-as signifying Christ's human nature. Later "Son of Man" was thought to be a christological title in its own right. Today, many scholars are inclined to think that, in an "original" Aramaic of an historical Jesus, it was little more than a rhetorical circumlocution, referring to the one speaking. Mogens Müller's The Expression "Son of Man" and the Development of Christology: A History of Interpretation is the first study of the "Son of Man" trope, which traces the history of interpretation from the Apostolic Fathers to the present, concluding that the various interpretations of this phrase reflect little more than the various doctrinal assumptions held by its interpreters over centuries.

Mogens Muller has been Professor in New Testament at the University of Copenhagen since 1982. He is author of Der Ausdruck 'Menschensohn' in den Evangelien. Voraussetzungen und Bedeutung (1984) and The First Bible of the Church: A Plea for the Septuagint (1996), as well as articles on the Gospel of Matthew, on the Son of Man problem and on the reception of the Old Testament in the New.