How was Jesus a Son of Man?

Answer 1

Another answer from our community:

The common underdstanding from our modern Western view he was saying he was born of humans. There was a deeper significance however of that term to the ancient Eastern Asian viewpoint. It was also a reference to the fulfillment of some of the prophacies in the Old Testament. The term was also connected to the term Messiah. This term upset the "bad boys" of the day known as the Sanhedrin and the Pharisees because Jesus was saying he was God and the Messiah and the one come to "clean house". I suggest you get a concordance either online or a book form or in the back of a Bible. Read all the occurance of the Son of Man and you will get an idea of how important that term really was and the meanings of the term within the context it was used.

Answer 2

The phrase, Son of Man as a reference to Jesus, originates in Mark's Gospel, where Jesus referred to himself as the Son of Man and Peter called him the Christ ('anointed one'). To have called Jesus the Son of God might have been considered blasphemous when Mark was written, but the demons and the centurion, as outsiders, could call do so because their statements would not bring the Christian community into disrepute.

Perhaps fifteen years later, Matthew's Gospel could use the term Son of God quite freely and sarcasm was no longer necessary in the centurion's statement when Jesus died.