Anonymous (it would be nice to have a name):

I wish I could accept that your premise is correct. Alas, it is not so simple. Let's start with Son of Man. This expression is one the gospels only have on Jesus' lips. It does not show up in church confessions in the epistles, because the church did not use this title of Jesus. How is it that Jesus' favorite self designation is a church creation and yet it NEVER shows up as a title confessed by the church in places where the church is explaining Jesus in its descriptions of him in its doctrinal sections?

There is some key conceptual background to Jesus. Most of it comes from the Hebrew Scripture or from Second Temple literature, but it also is combined with testimony, even from sources rooted in Jesus' opponents, that he did unusual things (See Josephus, Antiquities 18.63-64, where his description os the Jesus did "paradoxcal things"). In other words, there is indication in the materials we have that reflects a combination of sayings and actions that is not simply to be dismissed as church creation that Jesus did present himself as the hub of divine activity and promise. The one option Jesus does not permit is that he is merely one prophet among many. Nothing in the various strands of tradition that feed into the gospels allows that conclusion. Anything else is a Jesus we create.

dlb