It is quite clear that the writer of Luke and Acts, and the editor of Matthew, identified Jesus with the expected Son of David, but there is room for doubt whether this fully represents the thought of the first disciples. There is very little in Mark which identifies Jesus with the Son of David. In the preaching of Jesus the Kingdom of God, so far as it was not the divine sovereignty, was the Age to Come much more than the restored monarchy. It is true that the people of Jerusalem seem to have been looking forward to a Davidic king, as may be seen from the cries of the multitude at the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. It is also true that Bartimaeus greeted Jesus as Son of David; but there is nothing in the recorded words {49} of Jesus to show that he accepted this view. It seems, therefore, probable that just as the people were thinking of the splendours of a restored monarchy, while Jesus was speaking of the reign of God in the Age to Come, so they were looking for a Davidic Messiah, and explained Jesus' strange and overmastering personality in accordance with their own wishes rather than with his words. It is not the only point at which the Church followed the leading of the people rather than the teaching of Jesus. The figure of the Son of Man destined to be God's representative at the day of judgement which will divide this age from the Age to Come is prominent in the undoubted teaching of Jesus, but forms one of the most difficult problems in New Testament criticism. There seems but little doubt that "Son of Man," which in Greek is an unintelligible phrase rather than a title, was quite as obscure to the generation of Greek Christians which produced the present gospels as it is to ourselves. It was to them merely the strange self-designation of Jesus. Probably the editors of the gospels believed that Jesus used this phrase continually, and introduced it into their redactions of early sources without stopping too narrowly to inquire either whether it had this meaning in the passage in question, or whether the way in which they were using it was consistent with the connotation of the phrase. The result is that both in Mark and in Q there are passages in which "Son of Man" represents an Aramaic phrase which might be {50} translated literally in this way, but would be idiomatically rendered "man." For instance, it is tolerably certain that in the passage in which Jesus speaks of the Sabbath and says, "The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath," he really continued, "so that man is lord also of the Sabbath," but in unidiomatic translation the word meaning "man" was rendered "Son of Man" and interpreted as referring to Jesus himself. The reason for saying that this is tolerably certain is that the only alternative is that "Son of Man" really meant "Jesus," and was intended as a reference to the "Son of Man" who plays a part in some of the apocalypses, and it seems inconceivable that Jesus, who forbade his