also the titles "the Elect One" and "the Righteous One"
(or "the Holy One of God"), but "the Son of Man" is the prevalent name for
the Messiah in these Similitudes.

261. The facts thus stated do not account for Jesus' use of the
expression. Many of his sayings undoubtedly suggest a development of the
Daniel vision resembling that in the Similitudes. This does not prove that
Jesus or his disciples had read these writings, though it does suggest the
possibility that they knew them. It is probable, however, that the
apocalypses gave formulated expression to thoughts that were more widely
current than those writings ever came to be. The likeness between the
language of Jesus and that found in the Similitudes may therefore prove no
more than that the Daniel vision was more or less commonly interpreted of
a personal Messiah in Jesus' day.

262. Much of the use of the title by Jesus, however, is completely foreign
to the ideas suggested by Enoch and Daniel. Besides apocalyptic sayings
like those in Enoch (Mark viii. 38 and often), the name occurs in
predictions of his sufferings and death (Mark viii. 31 and often), and in
claims to extraordinary if not essentially divine authority (Mark ii. 10,
28 and parallels); it is also used sometimes simply as an emphatic "I"
(Matt. xi. 19 and often). Whatever relation Jesus bore to the Enoch
writings, therefore, the name "the Son of Man" as he used it was his own
creation.

263. Students of Aramaic have in recent years asserted that it was not
customary in the dialect which Jesus spoke to make distinction between
"the son of man" and "man," since the expression commonly used for "man"
would be literally translated "son of man." It is asserted, moreover, that
if our gospels be read substituting "man" for "the Son of Man" wherever it
appears, it will be found that many supposed Messianic claims become
general statements of Jesus' conception of the high prerogatives of man,
while in other places the name stands simply as an emphatic substitute for
the personal pronoun. Thus, for instance, Jesus is found to assert that
authority on earth to forgive sins belongs to man (Mark ii. 10), and,
toward the end of his course, to have taught simply that he himself must
meet with suffering (Mark viii. 31), and will come on the clouds to judge
the world (Mark viii. 38). The proportion of cases in which the general
reference is possible is, however, very small; and even if the
equivalence of "man" an