The Son of Man: How 1 Enoch Shaped the Language of the Gospels

Part 4 of 10 — Deuterocanonical Studies Series

The Son of Man: How 1 Enoch Shaped the Language of the Gospels

Jesus called Himself “the Son of Man” more than eighty times in the four Gospels. It was His preferred self-designation—used more often than “Messiah,” more often than “Lord,” more often than any other title. Most people who have thought about this phrase trace it to Daniel 7:13–14, where a mysterious figure described as “one like a Son of Man” approaches the Ancient of Days and receives everlasting dominion. That connection is real and important. But it is not the whole story.

Between Daniel and the Gospels, something remarkable happened. An entire theology of the Son of Man was developed—not in the canonical Hebrew Bible, but in the Parables of Enoch , chapters 37–71 of the Book of 1 Enoch. In those chapters, the brief, enigmatic vision from Daniel was expanded into something far more specific: a pre-existent, enthroned, divine judge who would overthrow the kings of the earth and vindicate the righteous.

And when we set that Enochic theology beside the words of Jesus in the Gospels, the parallels are not subtle. They are extraordinary.

We are not claiming that Jesus “got His ideas” from 1 Enoch. That would be a crude way to frame the question. What we are asking is this: when Jesus said “Son of Man” to a first-century Jewish audience, what did they hear? Just a humble Aramaic idiom meaning “a human being”? Or did they hear something far heavier—something loaded with the imagery of thrones, judgment, and pre-cosmic glory that the Enochic tradition had been developing for generations?

Daniel 7: Where It Begins

The phrase originates in Daniel’s night vision. After a sequence of terrifying beasts representing world empires, the scene shifts:

“I was watching in the night visions, and behold, One like the Son of Man, coming with the clouds of heaven! He came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought Him near before Him. Then to Him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and His kingdom the one which shall not be destroyed.”

— Daniel 7:13–14

In Daniel, the phrase is descriptive. The Aramaic bar enash means “one like a human being”—a figure who looks human in contrast to the beasts that preceded him. The vision gives him universal dominion but does not develop his identity further. We are told what he receives. We are not told who he is, where he came from, or what he will do when he sits in judgment. Daniel opens a door and leaves it open.

1 Enoch Walks Through That Door

The Parables of Enoch (1 Enoch 37–71), also called the Similitudes, take Daniel’s brief vision and unfold it into a fully realized figure. The Son of Man in 1 Enoch is not a passing image in a dream. He is a central character—named, described, enthroned, and given a role that stretches from before creation to the final judgment.

Consider what 1 Enoch 46 says when the Son of Man first appears:

“And there I saw One who had a head of days, and His head was white like wool, and with Him was another being whose countenance had the appearance of a man, and his face was full of graciousness, like one of the holy angels. And I asked the angel who went with me and showed me all the hidden things, concerning that Son of Man, who he was, and whence he was, and why he went with the Head of Days.

And he answered and said unto me: This is the Son of Man who hath righteousness, with whom dwelleth righteousness, and who revealeth all the treasures of that which is hidden, because the Lord of Spirits hath chosen him… And this Son of Man… shall put down the kings and the mighty from their seats, and the strong from their thrones.”

— 1 Enoch 46:1–4 (R.H. Charles translation)

Already we have moved far beyond Daniel. The Son of Man has a face “full of graciousness.” He walks beside the Ancient of Days as a companion, not merely as a petitioner. He has been chosen by the Lord of Spirits. And he will overthrow the mighty. This is not a symbol. This is a person.

Then comes the passage that should arrest any reader familiar with the Gospel of John:

“And at that hour that Son of Man was named in the presence of the Lord of Spirits, and his name before the Head of Days. Yea, before the sun and the signs were created, before the stars of the heaven were made, his name was named before the Lord of Spirits.”

— 1 Enoch 48:2–3

Pre-existence. The Son of Man was named before the creation of the sun and stars. His identity was established before the physical universe existed. We are no longer reading about a visionary symbol. We are reading about a figure who exists before time.

The Parables continue to develop the portrait. In 1 Enoch 48:6, “the kings and the mighty and all who possess the earth” will be “delivered into the hands of His elect.” In 1 Enoch 62, we reach the judgment scene itself:

“And the Lord of Spirits seated him on the throne of His glory, and the spirit of righteousness was poured out upon him, and the word of his mouth slays all the sinners, and all the unrighteous are destroyed from before his face.”

— 1 Enoch 62:2–3

And in 1 Enoch 69:27, the picture reaches its fullest expression:

“And he sat on the throne of his glory, and the sum of judgment was given unto the Son of Man, and he caused the sinners to pass away and be destroyed from off the face of the earth.”

— 1 Enoch 69:27

We now have, assembled across these chapters, a complete theological portrait: a pre-existent figure, named before creation, chosen by God, seated on a throne of glory, executing final judgment on the nations, and destroying the wicked. This is the Son of Man as 1 Enoch understood him. And it was written before the Gospels.

The Gospel Parallels

When we set the Enochic Son of Man beside the Jesus of the Gospels, the resonances are not vague. They are specific, verbal, and structural. Here are the most striking:

The phrase “throne of His glory” is especially striking. It does not appear in Daniel. The words “throne of glory” do appear in the Hebrew Bible—Hannah’s prayer in 1 Samuel 2:8 and Jeremiah 14:21, 17:12—but in those passages it refers to God’s own throne or the Temple, never to a messianic judge figure. The first known occurrence of this exact phrase applied to a messianic figure who sits on it and judges the nations is in 1 Enoch 62.

And then it appears, word for word, on the lips of Jesus in Matthew 19:28 and 25:31. We can call that a coincidence if we wish, but we should at least notice it.

Did Jesus’s Audience Know This Tradition?

This is the critical question, and the evidence suggests the answer is yes. We know that 1 Enoch was widely read in Second Temple Judaism because the Dead Sea Scrolls prove it. Eleven fragmentary copies of 1 Enoch were found at Qumran, written in Aramaic, dating from the third century BC to the first century AD. That is more copies than Ezra, Nehemiah, or Esther. Whatever we think about 1 Enoch’s canonical status, the community at Qumran considered it important enough to copy repeatedly over several centuries.

The Epistle of Jude, which is in the New Testament, directly quotes 1 Enoch 1:9. The Epistle of Barnabas, written within a generation of the apostles, introduces a quotation from 1 Enoch with the formula “the Scripture says.” We explored these connections in detail in Part 1 of this series. The point here is simpler: 1 Enoch was not obscure. It was part of the intellectual and spiritual furniture of the world in which Jesus taught.

When Jesus stood before the Sanhedrin and declared, “You will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven” (Matthew 26:64), the high priest tore his robes and called it blasphemy. Why? If “Son of Man” meant nothing more than “a human being,” why would that provoke a charge of blasphemy?

The reaction makes far more sense if the audience heard the phrase the way the Enochic tradition had shaped it: as a claim to be the pre-existent, enthroned judge of all nations. That is a claim worth tearing your robes over.

The “What If”

We want to be careful here. We are not claiming that Jesus was “quoting” 1 Enoch the way He quoted Isaiah or the Psalms. We are not claiming that the Parables of Enoch are divinely inspired Scripture (though some early Christians treated them that way, as we discussed in Part 1). What we are doing is asking a question that the parallels force upon us.

What if the phrase “Son of Man” carried all of this weight? What if, when Jesus used it, He was not just making a humble self-reference or even just pointing back to Daniel 7? What if He was deliberately invoking the fully developed Enochic theology—a pre-existent figure, named before creation, who would sit on the throne of glory and judge the nations?

What if Matthew 25—the great parable of the sheep and the goats, where the Son of Man sits on His throne and separates the nations—is not just an echo of Daniel 7, but a scene that would have been immediately recognizable to anyone who had read 1 Enoch 62? The Enochic judgment scene and the Matthean judgment scene share the same throne, the same judge, the same terror of the powerful, and the same vindication of the righteous. The structural parallels are difficult to explain as mere coincidence.

And what if the pre-existence language in John’s Gospel—“the glory which I had with You before the world was” (John 17:5)—is not a theological innovation but a claim that would have been intelligible to anyone familiar with 1 Enoch 48, where the Son of Man’s name was named “before the sun and the signs were created”?

None of this diminishes the uniqueness of Jesus. If anything, it deepens it. If the Enochic tradition prepared a category—a pre-existent, enthroned, righteous judge—then Jesus stepped into that category and filled it with His own life, death, and resurrection. The category was waiting. He inhabited it.

A Note on Dating

We should acknowledge the scholarly debate. The Parables of Enoch (1 Enoch 37–71) are the one section of 1 Enoch that was not found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. This has led some scholars to date them later—perhaps as late as the first century AD, which would make them roughly contemporary with or even slightly later than Jesus’s ministry. Others date them to the first century BC, which would place them firmly before the Gospels.

The dating matters. If the Parables were composed before Jesus, then they represent a theological tradition that His audience would have known. If they were composed around the same time, then we may be looking at two independent streams drawing on a common pool of ideas—both the Enochic community and the early Christians working with the same Daniel 7 raw material and arriving at strikingly similar conclusions. Either way, the parallels demand attention.

What virtually no scholar argues is that the Parables were written after the Gospels and borrowed from them. The literary and theological relationship clearly runs in one direction or in parallel—not from the Gospels back to 1 Enoch.

Where This Leaves Us

If you have read Daniel 7 but never read 1 Enoch 37–71, you have the seed but not the tree. Daniel provides the image: one like a Son of Man, coming on clouds, receiving dominion. The Parables of Enoch grow that image into a theology: a named, pre-existent figure who sits on a throne of glory and judges the nations. And when Jesus uses the phrase “Son of Man” in the Gospels, He steps into a tradition that His audience had been developing for generations.

Whether or not we consider 1 Enoch to be Scripture, it is part of the conversation that produced the New Testament. To read the Gospels without it is like walking into the middle of a dialogue and hearing only one voice. The other voice—the Enochic voice—is still there for anyone willing to listen.

You can read 1 Enoch 46—the chapter where the Son of Man first appears beside the Head of Days. You can read Daniel 7 and Matthew 25 side by side with it. And for the Greek and Hebrew behind these passages, explore our Interlinear Bible. If you want to understand which Bibles still include 1 Enoch, that question is covered in Part 5 of this series.