The Son of Man as Corporate Figure in Early Jewish and Christian Tradition: Daniel, John's Apocalypse, and Tyconius of Carthage

ABSTRACT One of the major discontinuities supposedly distinguishing the earliest strata of the Jesus tradition from subsequent Christian reflection concerns the expression ‘Son of Man’, a title which (it is often claimed) fades from view and becomes reduced to theological abstraction, referring merely to Christ's humanity. This is only half true. In this article, I draw recent scholarship on the Son of Man in Daniel and its reception into dialogue with the fourth-century writings of Tyconius of Carthage. Numerous scholars have argued that the figure of the Son of Man in Daniel 7 appears as a collective representative of the righteous remnant of Israel. In his Exposition of the Apocalypse, Tyconius similarly interprets the Son of Man in Revelation as a corporate figure of the vindication and exaltation of all the suffering righteous, for whom the life of Jesus becomes pre-eminently representative. Furthermore, Tyconius’ reading of this Son of Man imagery profoundly influenced Augustine's notion of the totus Christus, suggesting much deeper continuities than previously thought between Second Temple Jewish and early Christian ways of seeing the figure of the Son of Man as a locus for expressing human redemption at once personal, corporate, and stronger than death.