Though “son of man” is simply a good Semitic idiom meaning “a man,” by the first century it had long served as the name of a mysterious apocalyptic or eschatological figure (as in the one “like a son of man” who rides in the chariot of God in Ezekiel), and as Christ uses it in the Gospels it should clearly be read as a distinctive prophetic title (though not one whose precise significance can be ascertained).
