Further Evidence

Here too, as in Daniel 7 itself, we find another witness to a pre-Christian religious conflict within Israel between those who accepted the very ancient idea of an older-appearing divine figure and a younger one who shares his throne and to whom the older one gives authority, and other Jews who rejected this idea as a seeming contradiction of monotheism.

The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ, by Daniel Boyarin

Here, Boyarin is referring to another text, known as Fourth Ezra. Here, again, there is a divine figure, just as in Daniel 7; yet, there is also evidence in the text for an attempt to suppress this idea. In other words, even outside of Christianity, the idea was both controversial but taken seriously enough to be dealt with.

In some ways the Son of Man figure in Fourth Ezra is even closer to the one of the Gospels than the version in Enoch.

A few snippets:

…this wind made something like the figure of a man come out of the heat of the sea. …the man flew with the clouds of heaven…

… an innumerable multitude of men were gathered together from the four winds of heaven to make war against the man who came up out of the sea.

…he sent forth from his mouth as it were a stream of fire, and from his lips a flaming breath, and from his tongue he shot forth a stream of fiery coals.

As Boyarin summarizes: “Needless to say, the enemies of the man are then burnt to a crisp, if not worse than that.” This Ezra passage makes clear, even more so than in Enoch, the combination of the divine Son of Man and the Redeemer, or Messiah; a high Christology, and one independent of the Jesus movement.

This combination is perhaps best seen in Fourth Ezra 12:32, insisting that the heavenly Son of Man comes from the line of David. But it is not apparent why a descendent of David should come in the clouds – unless this combination of the divine and the Messiah is in view.

In any case, another view of this same picture is presented: an older-appearing divine figure and a younger one who shares his throne and to whom the older one gives all authority. While this is a common view, it is by no means an uncontested view. We know this if for no other reason than the Jewish leaders insisted Jesus Christ be crucified for His so-called blasphemy.

These texts, or snippets of texts, are not religions; however, they do offer evidence of the underlying religion, just as tips of icebergs offer evidence of the iceberg.

Conclusion

This combination of the divine (and by this, Boyarin always means God, or a second person or aspect of God) and the Messiah is not an innovation of the Gospels:

The great innovation of the Gospels is only this: to declare that the Son of Man is here already, that he walks among us. As opposed to Enoch, who will be in those last days the Messiah Son of Man, Jesus already is.

No longer coming someday, flying in the clouds; the Gospels declare that Jesus has come, and He is that Messiah and Son of Man.

All of the ideas about Christ are old; the new is Jesus. There is nothing in the doctrine of the Christ that is new save the declaration of this man as the Son of Man.

Not a small thing, by any means. But also not a new invention of a sect of Second Temple Jews who would come to be known as Christians; not an invention made to fit a desired narrative, one to explain why their Messiah was crucified and rose to sit at God’s right hand.