THE ESCHATOLOGICAL CONNOTATION of the Son of Man, as was already established in Daniel, comes to light with particular clarity in the pseudepigraphic (i.e., falsely attributed to a biblical author) Fourth Book of Ezra. It most probably originated after 70 CE, or more precisely around 100 CE, and is significant in our context because it obviously also refers back to the idea of the Son of Man in Daniel 7.1 In the penultimate, sixth vision (chapter 13), the visionary sees the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven:2
(13:2) And behold, a wind arose from the sea and stirred up all its waves. (3) And I looked, and behold, this wind made something like the figure of a man come up out of the heart of the sea. And I looked, and behold, that man flew with the clouds of heaven; and wherever he turned his face to look, everything under his gaze trembled, (4) and whenever his voice issued from his mouth, all who heard this voice melted as wax melts when it feels the fire.
The one “like the figure of a man” is undoubtedly the one “like a human being” in Daniel 7, although he does not only come with the clouds of heaven but at first comes up from the depths of the sea and then flies on the clouds of heaven. In contrast to Daniel, here he is not brought to God to receive dominion; instead, we now learn in great detail how he fights for this dominion and brings final redemption to the people of Israel. With his appearance, a multitude gathered from the four corners of the world “to make war against the man who came up out of the sea” (13:5). But he fights with unusual weapons:
(13:9) And behold, when he saw the onrush of the approaching multitude, he neither lifted his hand nor held a spear or any weapon of war; (10) but I saw only how 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 storm of sparks. (11) All these were mingled together, the stream of fire and the flaming breath and the great storm, and fell on the onrushing multitude which was prepared to fight, and burned them all up, so that suddenly nothing was seen of the innumerable multitude but only the dust of ashes and the smell of smoke.
Thus the multitude is destroyed and a peaceful multitude gathers around the Son of Man. As can be anticipated, it is the remnant of the people of Israel (13:13). Subsequently, God himself explains the vision to the seer Ezra:
The man who was coming up out of the sea is “he whom the Most High has been keeping for many ages, who will himself deliver his creation; and he will direct those who are left” (13:26). When the preordained signs of the end occur, “then my son (filius meus) will be revealed, whom you saw as a man coming up from the sea” (13:32). Then the nations will cease fighting against each other and will gather together, desiring to conquer him. But he, “my Son,” will “destroy them without effort by the law (which was symbolized by the fire)” (13:37–38). The peaceful multitude that is then gathered around the Son of Man are the lost ten tribes, “the people who remain” (13:49).
The “human” or “man” is the Son of Man–Messiah, who will destroy the sinners and heathen nations. In the lion vision that directly precedes this, he is described as “the Anointed One” (unctus), “whom the Most High has kept until the end of days, who will arise from the posterity of David, and will come and speak” (12:32). He is therefore explicitly also the Davidic Messiah. The war against the nations, however, is not a normal war with earthly weapons: the Messiah destroys them with the fire that comes out of his mouth, and this fire is identified as the fire of the law—that is, the Torah.3 The law also plays an important role elsewhere in the Ezra Apocalypse. It has been correctly assumed that a deuteronomistic concept of historya stands behind this,4 but one should not rule out early rabbinic influences. After all, we are chronologically at the transition to rabbinic Judaism.5
If the fire of the law that transforms the multitude into ashes goes far beyond the given framework of the early Jewish idea of the Messiah, then this applies all the more to the designation of the Messiah as the Son of God (the only direct parallel is the Daniel Apocryphon). This bold statement is often traced back to a later Christian revision that was not in the original text. Unfortunately, the Fourth Book of Ezra is extant only in translations (Latin, Syriac, Ethiopic, Arabic, Armenian, Georgian, and Sahidic), which probably go back to a Greek text that itself was likely based on a Hebrew or Aramaic original. The best-documented translation is the Latin one, which renders “son” throughout as filius. In one of two Arabic translations, though, it is rendered in 4 Ezra 13:32 as “my servant” and in the other as “my youth.”6 While “my servant” probably traces back to the Hebrew ‘avdi, the translation of “youth” likely comes from the Greek pais.7 Elsewhere, the Messiah is expressly called “my son, the Messiah,” which in Latin translation is rendered as filius meus Jesus (4 Ezra 7:28). Here, “Jesus” is obviously a Christian interpolation, which, however, does not mean that “servant” and “son” are necessarily also to be understood as Christian. Both are documented in the Hebrew Bible too: the “servant” is “the servant of God” in Isaiah (42ff.), which could be viewed as the prototypical Messiah, and the “son” is an honorary title for the Davidic king, which establishes the messianic genealogy. In Psalm 2:7, God speaks to the Davidic king, “You are my son; today I have begotten you,” and the expression “my son” (Hebr. beni) is rendered in the Septuagint as hyios mou and in the Vulgate as filius meus, the latter exactly as it appears in 4 Ezra. In the Second Book of Samuel, God entrusts the prophet Nathan with the prophecy to David: “I [God] will be a father to him [David’s son Solomon], and he shall be a son (ben)8 to me” (2 Sam. 7:14).
Hence there is no reason to reject the claim that divine sonship, which was originally reserved for the Davidic king, was transferred in the Fourth Book of Ezra to the Messiah. This Son of God–Messiah is certainly not an earthly figure, nor is he an angel, but instead a heavenly savior9 who from the very beginning is hidden with God; although he acts on God’s behalf, he virtually acts as God when his time has come. At one point it even says that he will judge the nations, reprove them, and then destroy them (4 Ezra 12:33); in other words, he will take on precisely the task that is actually reserved for God. Pointing in the same direction is the peaceful multitude gathered around the Son of Man–Messiah in the vision, after he destroyed the ungodly multitude: “Then many people came to him, some of whom were joyful and some sorrowful; some of them were bound, and some were bringing others as offerings” (13:13). This alludes to Isaiah 66:18–20, where God gathers “all nations and tongues”: “They shall bring all your kindred from all the nations as an offering to the Lord … to my holy mountain Jerusalem, says the Lord, just as the Israelites bring a grain offering in a clean vessel to the house of the Lord” (66:20). Rather than coming to God, the nations are now coming to the Messiah—or else the Messiah is God.10 The title of son conferred on the Messiah thus goes far beyond the original biblical use of metaphors and is to be understood here literally. The Messiah in 4 Ezra is truly a son of God, a younger God alongside his father, the older God. The addition “Jesus” in 4 Ezra 7:28 only serves to show that this is exactly how Christian readers understood the text and therefore had no difficulty interpreting this Son of God–Messiah to be their Messiah Jesus Christ.
a One theory of biblical scholarship assumes a unified history of the biblical books of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, and 1 and 2 Kings, which is denoted “deuteronomistic.” The deuteronomistic concept of history emphasizes the law, centralization of the cult, and monotheism.