The Son of Man: The Mysterious Figure of the Book of Parables

In shortThe Son of Man is a heavenly figure who appears in the Book of Parables, chapters 37 to 71 of 1 Enoch. He is described as chosen and hidden before the creation of the world, seated on the throne of glory, and judging the kings and the mighty. He is also called the Chosen One, the Righteous One and the Messiah.

Some expressions get worn thin by use, and in Hebrew “son of man” is one of them. It is the everyday word for a person: “be a son of man” means “be a decent human being,” and you can shout it at a stranger who is not looking where he is going. In biblical Hebrew the phrase is modest too. In the Book of Ezekiel God addresses the prophet as “son of man” about ninety times, and the meaning is roughly: you, mortal.

And then, in one part of the Book of Enoch, the very same phrase becomes the name of the most exalted figure in heaven after God.

One ancient of days, and another with him

That part is the Book of Parables, chapters 37 to 71 of 1 Enoch. In its second vision Enoch sees two figures:

There I saw one who had a head of days, and his head was white as wool. With him was another, whose face looked like a human face, full of grace, like one of the holy angels. I asked one of the angels who went with me and showed me every hidden thing about this Son of Man: Who is he? Where does he come from? Why does he go with the Ancient of Days? He answered me: This is the Son of Man who has righteousness, with whom righteousness dwells. He will reveal all the hidden things, for the Lord of Spirits has chosen him, and his portion surpasses all before the Lord of Spirits in everlasting righteousness.

1 Enoch 46:1–3

Anyone who knows the Book of Daniel recognizes the source. In chapter 7 Daniel sees four terrifying beasts come up out of the sea, and after them the “Ancient of days,” whose hair is like pure wool. Then, with the clouds of heaven, comes “one like the Son of man,” who receives dominion and a kingdom that shall not pass away.

In Daniel this is an image: after four kingdoms that look like beasts of prey comes a kingdom with a human face. The Book of Parables takes the image and asks about it the questions a child would ask. Who is he? Where does he come from? Why does he go with the Ancient of Days? And the angel, unusually for angels, gives a full answer.

The judge of kings

The answer begins with righteousness, and moves at once to politics:

This Son of Man whom you have seen will rouse the kings and the mighty from their couches and the tyrants from their thrones. He will loosen the reins of the tyrants and break the teeth of the wicked. He will drive the kings from their thrones and their kingdoms, because they do not exalt and praise him, nor gratefully acknowledge where their kingdom came from.

1 Enoch 46:4–5

The Book of Parables does not hide whom it hates. All through its chapters “the kings and the mighty” and “those who possess the earth” keep returning, always in the same role: people who do not acknowledge that their power was given to them, and who will one day stand trial. The one who will put them in the dock is the Son of Man, seated on the throne of glory. God, too, has a special name in these chapters, “the Lord of Spirits.” The name hardly appears outside the Book of Parables, and inside it recurs more than a hundred times.

The book gives him other names as well. He is “the Chosen One,” he is “the Righteous One,” and in two places he is the “Anointed,” the Messiah of the Lord of Spirits. He is a staff for the righteous, “the light of the nations and the hope of those who are sad at heart,” language that recalls the servant of the Lord in the Book of Isaiah. All the titles that the Bible scattered among different figures converge here on one.

The one who was there before everything

The boldest idea has to do with time. The Son of Man is not born when the hour comes. He exists in advance:

That is why he was chosen and hidden before him, before the world was created, and he will be before him for ever.

1 Enoch 48:6

Elsewhere the book says that his name was named before the Lord of Spirits before the sun and the stars were created. This is one of the earliest expressions in Jewish literature of the idea that the redeemer was prepared before the world needed him. The idea did not stay on the margins. The Talmud lists seven things that were created before the world was created, and one of them is the name of the Messiah.

There is a comforting logic here. Someone living under a regime that looks eternal wants to know that the end of that regime was fixed before it even began.

The book that was not found at Qumran

When was the Book of Parables written? It is one of the most disputed questions in the study of the Book of Enoch. Of all the parts of the book, it alone was not found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Most scholars today date it to the end of the first century BCE or to the first century CE.

The date matters because of what happened next. In the Gospels of the New Testament, “the Son of Man” is the title Jesus uses again and again when he speaks of himself. Did the title reach the Gospels from the Book of Parables, or did both works draw, each in its own way, on the Book of Daniel? The debate continues, and it is one of the reasons these chapters are read so closely.

The surprise of the last chapter

All through the Book of Parables Enoch is a witness. He sees the Son of Man, asks about him, hears explanations. Then, in the last chapter, he ascends to the heaven of heavens, and an angel comes up to him:

That angel came to me, raised his voice, blessed me and said to me: You are the Son of Man who was born for righteousness. Righteousness rests upon you, and the righteousness of the Ancient of Days will not leave you.

1 Enoch 71:14

The reader is left puzzled. If Enoch is the Son of Man, whom did he see in all the earlier chapters? Some scholars think the chapter was added to the work at a late stage. Others suggest that Enoch here discovers his own heavenly counterpart, which existed before him. One scholar found the verse so difficult that he proposed emending the text. In later tradition, at any rate, this direction won: in the Hekhalot literature Enoch goes up to heaven and becomes the angel Metatron.

A plain name for a great figure

It is easy to get used to the phrase “Son of Man” and forget how odd it is. The figure who will judge the kings of the earth is not called a king. Nor is he called a hero or an angel. He is called by the plainest name the language has.

The book was written in a world where rulers were in the habit of calling themselves gods. Its answer is a figure whose whole title is that he is human. And in the last chapter it takes one more step: the seer, who had been looking up all along at the perfect figure, is told that it bears his own face. It is hard to know whether the author meant to comfort his readers or to place a responsibility on them. Quite possibly both.