Searching for the Self: Classic Stories, Christian Scripture, and the Quest for Personal Identity

by Adrian T. Smith

The Apostles are called into a journey-to-witness (Acts 1:8), and the verses that follow (1:9–11) drop a massive hint about the content of their testimony. These verses repeatedly mention visual activity by the Apostles (“looking”; “eyes”; “gazing”; “looking”; “seeing”). What did they see? The ascension of Jesus into heaven. Specifically, the ascension into a cloud. Our modern western scientific context predisposes us to ask “meteorological” questions about such verses. But, to the ancient reader, symbolic dimensions loomed larger. Specifically, Daniel 7:13 associates “the clouds of heaven” with a character “like a son of man”—which happened to be Jesus’ self-identification in the Gospels. In Dan 7:14, the son-of-man character receives an everlasting kingdom. This kingdom replaces the bestial empires grotesquely caricatured in Dan 7:1–12 (the Mesopotamian, Greek and Roman empires which had oppressed Israel). In this context, “son of man” may be typifying the ruler of God’s kingdom as truly human or humane (in contrast with the predatory beast-like imperial powers that ruled the ancient world).