This essay, which is dedicated with admiration and regard to one of the most wide-ranging and theologically-minded of New Testament scholars, makes no pretence to being a survey of the present state of studies on ‘the Son of Man’ to which he himself has contributed substantially. Such is the intensity of this debate and so great the constantly growing volume of literature concerned with it, that it would require a considerable book, as well as more time than most can afford, to give it anything like adequate coverage; and, in any case, surveys are quickly out of date. All that is here attempted is to bring into view certain features of the problem which are widely overlooked. It is well known that British scholarship, as a whole, tends to adopt certain views on the subject which, elsewhere, are regarded as eccentric, and this essay will, incidentally, constitute an attempt to demonstrate that, on the contrary, such views are reasonable. But the writer would not wish to involve his British colleagues in private peculiarities of his own, in addition to what, to Continental and, in part, to American observers, already looks eccentric enough. What follows will, therefore, in the main be a personal statement, although it does owe much to the work of colleagues, of which the notes will, it is hoped, furnish some measure of acknowledgement.