2. The eschatological Son of Man.
Mark’s depiction of the Son of Man as a heavenly figure, who is to come in the clouds of heaven, is followed very closely by Matthew and Luke. In Mark 8:38/Matt 16:27, and Luke 9:26, the Son of Man comes in his Father’s glory; in Mark 13:26/Matt 24:30, and Luke 21:27, he is coming in clouds; in Mark 14:62/Matt 26:64, and Luke 22:69, he is sitting at the right hand of God. In each of these contexts, the Son of Man is depicted in Danielic fashion as possessing power and glory bestowed by God the Father. He is an agent of God’s final eschatological retributive justice. Matthew and Luke do not add any particular theological insight to Mark. Even when Luke fails to mention in 22:69 that the sitting Son of Man will return to earth riding on the clouds, he nevertheless acknowledges this return in other parts of the narrative (9:26; 21:27; cf. Acts 1:9–11).
Use of Son of Man in Q
The most popular hypothesis about the Son of Man traditions in Q is that they were added later, when the messengers of Q met with opposition from their fellow Jews and reacted with a proclamation of judgment that was going to be brought about by Jesus as Son of Man.94 This approach has created the perception that what we have at play in Q, at a Christological level, is a two-stage Son of Man Christology. In the first stage, the Son of Man is presented in ways that coincide with the experience of the community as marginal, lacking theological acceptability, and social status. In the second, he is presented as coming in victory to vindicate his suffering people.95 I believe this is a possible way of explaining the nature of Q as a community-produced document.96 The circumstances of the community influenced the way in which the oral traditions were appropriated. In other words, their praxis shaped their theology. Or to put it in Liberation Theology terms, theology became a second step after praxis.97 What we have in Q then, is the testimony of a community struggling for self-identity couched in apologetically driven rhetoric that utilizes the image of the Son of Man as a catalyst for this conflict. Let us consider now the passages in Q that refer to the Son of Man. As in the Markan tradition, they fall into two categories: the earthly Son of Man and the eschatological Son of Man.
1. The earthly Son of Man.
Luke 6:22 (/Matt 5:11). The Lukan version of the Sermon on the Mount—the Sermon on the Plain—says that the disciples are blessed when they are reviled “on account of the Son of Man.” The parallel in Matthew reads “on account of me,” thus clearly identifying the Son of Man with the historical Jesus. Even though Luke seems to be referring to a future coming figure (cf. also 3:16; 7:19; 13:35), the immediacy of the beatitude being addressed to the disciples in the second person plural “you” shows that, for Luke, allegiance to the Son of Man has immediate consequences: people hate, exclude, revile, and defame the disciples now! The emphasis is on a present-day experience, not something that will happen in the future. The suffering modeled by the Markan Son of Man, which Luke includes in his gospel (9:22, 44; 18:31; 22:22), has already begun in the life of the post-Easter community.
Luke 7:34 (/Matt 11:18). In this passage, the reference to the Son of Man is clearly directed to Jesus, whose lifestyle is contrasted with that of John the Baptist. Both John and the Son of Man “have come” (ἐλήλυθεν).Their ministries are still fresh in the community’s memory,98 giving people food for thought. And they are still controversial figures for the religious authorities, each on their own terms, one for his asceticism and the other for his apparent excesses.
Luke 9:58 (/Matt 8:20). The itinerant and uncertain lifestyle of Jesus is presented as a challenge to those who wanted to become his disciples. Again, even though Jesus seems to be talking about another person when referring to the Son of Man, he is obviously referring to himself, since the prospective disciples promise to follow him “wherever you go.” The community that produced and/or received this tradition knows that a lifestyle of duress and deprivation is in store for them if they decide to become disciples.
Luke 11:30 (/Matt 12:40–41). This passage can go both ways. It can refer to the historical ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, in which case the sign of Jonah has to be interpreted as Jesus’ prophetic proclamation against the religious authorities. But while Jesus’ proclamation will not engender a positive response, i.e., repentance, Jonah’s did, as attested in verse 32. The irony resides in the fact that for Luke, Jesus is greater than Jonah! Or it can also be interpreted in a futuristic manner, as referring to an eschatological figure who was to come and to whom Jesus bore witness, advising people to prepare for. When the Son of Man comes, Jesus says, he might find faithlessness and hardness of heart, rather than willingness to repent (cf. Luke 18:8).
These are all the Q passages that point towards an earthly Son of Man and his ministry. Whether this refers to Jesus or to one coming in the near future is difficult to assess, given the fact that this tradition has been woven into the theological frame of the Gospels, where Jesus is unmistakably identified with the Son of Man. However, what is clear is that no eschatological grandeur and power is attached to this personage but rather, the opposite, namely: rejection, hatred, criticism, and social deprivation.
2. The eschatological Son of Man.
Luke 12:8 (/Matt 10:32). Here Jesus is warning his disciples—and also the crowd (12:1, 13)—about the dangers of denying him before others. If this happens, Jesus says, the Son of Man will deny them before the angels of God, a clear reference to the eschatological judgment, also referenced by Mark in 8:38 and 13:24–27. There is no textual indication in Luke, nor for that matter in Mark, that this Son of Man is equated with the historical Jesus. That connection is made by the Gospel narrative at large, but not necessarily by the Q tradition. That is why it is necessary for Matthew to clarify this point. The Matthean parallel reads: “Whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven” (Matt 10:33). Matthew does something similar in 5:11, where he changes the Q tradition to read “on account of me” rather than “on account of the Son of Man,” as Luke 6:22 has it.
Luke 12:10 (/Matt 12:32). This is the Q version of the Markan tradition about blaspheming the Holy Spirit (Mark 3:28–30). In Mark, this blasphemy is perpetuated when people, in this case the scribes, affirm that Jesus’ power to heal comes from the devil. For Mark, questioning Jesus’ source of power amounts to sinning against the Holy Spirit. Not so for Luke, who seems to make a distinction between speaking against the Son of Man, which is forgivable, and blaspheming the Holy Spirit, which is not. In this way, Luke seems to differentiate between the Son of Man and the historical Jesus.
Luke 12:40 (/Matt 24:44). The text speaks about the sudden and unexpected coming of the Son of Man to usher in the kingdom which, although promised to the disciples, has yet to be materialized in their lives (cf. 12:32). Readiness, alertness, and diligent work are required from them if they expect to be welcomed into the kingdom. Otherwise, their fate will be with the unfaithful (12:46). For Q, it is the Son of Man, an eschatological figure, who is the agent of God’s kingdom. But this figure is never clearly identified with the historical Jesus, an accomplishment of the overall theological work of the evangelists for whom Jesus is the Son of Man.
Luke 17:22, 24, 26, 30 (/Matt 24:27, 37, 39). Here, Luke uses the Q tradition that talks about the “days of the Son of Man.” This is a tradition unique to Q, not appearing in any of the other gospels or in the rest of the NT. Luke uses it to theologically qualify the apocalyptic tradition of the end times, which is used by Mark and other NT writers. Interestingly enough, Matthew has replaced the expression τῶν ἡμερῶν τοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου with the word παρουσία, betraying knowledge of the Pauline tradition on the same subject (cf. 1 Thess 2:19; 3:13; 4:15; 5:23; 1 Cor 15:23). An analysis of the section provides us with a good sense of how Luke supplements the tradition with his own editorial work. The passage in question is Luke 17:22–37:
Verse 22: Lukan redaction. We think this verse represents a Lukan introduction to the Q motif of the days of the Son of Man meant to address the issue of the delay of the end times. The fact that Matthew omits it shows that the verse is not in Q or, if it is, that he still expects the eschaton to occur soon