I. Introduction

This paper will make some comments on (a) the nature of the charges leveled against “the Jews” in John in connection with the problem of defining the Gospel’s supposed anti-Judaism (the problem is not “the Jews” as a group or a people, but hostile, murderous behavior directed at God’s Jewish envoy and his Jewish followers), and (b) the origin and significance of the designation “the Jews” for the opponents of Jesus (the epithet is probably an ironic acknowledgment of the claim on the part of Jewish authorities in the synagogue to be the authoritative arbiters of a genuinely Jewish identity).

II. “The Jews were seeking to kill him”: Anti-Judaism in the Fourth Gospel?

Any discussion of anti-Judaism in the Fourth Gospel needs to be carefully circumscribed. There are statements with respect to “the Jews” in the Fourth Gospel which on a first reading can certainly be construed as maliciously and despicably anti-Jewish (most notoriously 8:44, often regarded as the most anti-Jewish statement of the New Testament), but only under the following conditions: 

(1) one can ignore the literary or narrative contexts of such statements -- on the literary and narrative level the supposedly anti-Jewish statements occur as part of a debate between and among people who are all, ethnically speaking, Jews; one of those Jews is Jesus himself;

(2) one can refuse to acknowledge the historical context within which such statements initially functioned -- on any reading of the Gospel the debate between Jesus and “the Jews” of John’s narrative takes place in the first century CE, not in the twentieth or twenty-first; and 

(3) one can regard the charges made against “the Jews” in John (that they want to excommunicate followers of Jesus from the synagogue and to kill Jesus and his disciples) as the defamatory inventions of the evangelist -- such an appraisal of the evidence, though possible in principle, is surely implausible: it is difficult to find convincing reasons for such maliciously specific lies -- it anachronistically makes the evangelist an anti-Semite avant la lettre.

Furthermore, the claim made by Ashton (and others) that the Fourth Gospel expresses “hostility” toward “the Jews” of the story needs to be examined. The Gospel’s portrayal of “the Jews” arguably exhibits perplexity, exasperation, and annoyance (with a strong undertone of sorrow and regret), but neither Jesus in John nor the evangelist in editorial comments counsels hatred or contempt for “the Jews” or their beliefs. The only hating a Christian may do concerns his or her own life (12:25). The verbmisein occurs elsewhere in John only in connection with hatred directed to Jesus and his followers (3:20; 7:7; 15:18, 19, 23, 24, 25;17:14; cf. 1 John 3:13), usually by “the world”. Disciples are called upon to spend their time “loving one another” and Jesus (13:34-15:17), not hating “the world” or “the Jews”. On the Gospel’s own terms, moreover, there are good reasons for not being hostile to “the Jews” and to their beliefs and traditions: The Jewishness of Jesus himself is simply accepted and presupposed (cf. 4:9) as is that of his disciples (at least on the narrative level). The titles of honor with which Jesus’ identity and mission are summarized (especially, “the Christ”, “the Son of God”, “the Son of Man’) originate in contemporary Jewish traditions. The Old Testament is quoted or alluded to with respect and its themes permeate the Fourth Gospel. John assumes that “the Father” of Jesus, who “sent” him into the world, is the God of Israel (cf. 8:41-42) and that the Scriptures of Israel bear testimony to Jesus as (this) God’s authorized envoy (1:45; 5:46; 12:41). Jesus is “the king of Israel”, that is, the Messiah (Christ) awaited and longed for by Jews (cf. 1:41;12:14-15). The Johannine community or school (including the evangelist or evangelists) was itself predominantly (and for quite some time exclusively) Jewish, i.e., its members were Jews by birth and religious upbringing.

The thoroughgoing Jewishness of this first-century work and of its writer(s) and first readers makes it rather unlikely that the Gospel’s troublesome depiction of “the Jews” involves something ugly, a hatred of (first-century) Jews (by non-Jews), a hatred inevitably combined with a deep-seated contempt for their religious traditions, practices and beliefs. When Culpepper (like others) refers to John’s hostility toward “the Jews”, he lists passages which in fact depict “the Jews” of the story as the perpetrators of hostile, even violent behavior toward Jesus and his followers (5:16, 18: 7:1; 8:31, 37-38, 44, 47; 9:22; 16:2-3; 18:36; 19:38; 20:19). In that light, the Fourth Gospel is anti-Jewish only in a very limited sense and it is not obvious that the label “anti-Jewish” is even applicable here: the Gospel reproaches “the Jews” for their rejection of Jesus as “the Christ, the Son of God” (20:31). The Gospel’s reproach of “the Jews” reaches an intense level, however, because “the Jews” of the story do not simply reject Jesus or the claims made by and for Jesus. They also actively plot to “arrest” (piazein : 7:30, 32, 44; 8:20; 10:39; 11:57) and to “kill” him (apokteinein: 5:18; 7:1, 19, 20, 25; 8:22, 37, 40; 11:53; 12:10; cf. 18:31). They make two attempts to “stone” him (8:59; 10:31, 32, 33; 11:8). They also drive Jewish believers in Jesus out of the synagogue (9:22; 12:42; 16:2), as a first step, and want to kill them (12:10; 16:2), as a second. “The Jews” accuse Jesus of being demon possessed (8:48, 52) and a blasphemer (10:33). They regard him as someone who, like a false prophet, “leads the crowd astray” from God (7:12, with 45-47; cf. Deut 13:1-11). At the end, they achieve their murderous aim with respect to Jesus, ironically effecting the crucifixion of their own king while trading him in for another, Caesar (18:33-19:22). On the Gospel’s own terms, then, there are good reasons for Jesus’ severe and pointed reproach of “the Jews”. 

In view of such considerations, the Johannine reproach of “the Jews” can really be regarded as their vilification (false accusations motivated by hatred) only to the extent that the Gospel’s depiction of their actions toward Jesus and his followers (whether before or after Easter) has little or no basis in history and is thus slanderous. The conclusion that the Gospel is deeply and despicably anti-Jewish, perhaps even anti-Semitic, would then probably be inevitable and well-founded. That certain Jewish leaders (both at Jamnia and beyond) sought to exclude Christian Jews from full participation in Jewish religious and social life in various places is historically plausible and probable, however, even if the link between the excommunication texts (John 9:22; 12:42; 16:2) and the birkat ha-minim is not as certain as Martyn had sought to demonstrate. Furthermore, that certain Jews were hostile to Jesus and to his followers and played a significant role in bringing about his crucifixion by the Romans is widely attested in the New Testament, is also implied in rabbinic literature (b. Sanh. 43a), and is probably historically true (even if the depictions of this involvement are tendentious). The problem for John is not “the Jews” as an ethnic group (John’s writers and first readers themselves come from this ethnic group) or as a people with certain traditions and beliefs (John’s writers and first readers share and respect those traditions and beliefs), but the hostile and finally murderous behavior which they direct toward God’s Jewish envoy and his Jewish followers.

The notorious John 8:44 must surely be read in this light. The Johannine Jesus here attacks the behavior of “the Jews” (8:22, 48, 52, 57), namely, their desire to kill him (8:37, 40, 59). That is, “the Jews” with whom Jesus is here in conversation are not diabolical; rather, their murderous behavior is diabolical (according to 8:44, the devil -- not “the Jews” -- has been “a murderer from the beginning’). John 8:44 claims that the devil is the father, not of “the Jews” as such, but of their behavior. Furthermore, the Gospel probably does not have all “the Jews” (of Jesus’ time, nor of John’s) in view since John can elsewhere use the termoi Ioudaioi to refer to Jews who are not hostile to Jesus at all (see e.g. 11:19, 31, 33, 36, 45; 12:9, 11). In John 8, then, “the Jews” of the narrative represent a certain limited group of Jews, scriptural authorities in the synagogue and their followers among the rank-and-file who violently oppose the Johannine Jesus and his disciples. The claim that the devil, a murderer ab origine, is the father of the murderous behavior of “the Jews” in John 8 can, I suggest, be read as an attempt to account for this behavior theologically. That is, both pained and perplexed by this behavior, John peers behind the stage of history and sees a mighty malevolent power at work, God’s own opponent, the devil. “The Jews” have astonishingly become players in a cosmic drama between God and the devil and they are on the wrong side! Their inability to hear (8:43) the Johannine proclamation about Jesus as originating in the Truth (God) and their decision to kill him and Johannine Jewish Christians were, in John’s considered theological estimation, not the result of personal or communal illwill, nor of some racial flaw, but of a diabolical conspiracy in which “the Jews” of John 8 play no autonomous role at all (they do of course play a role, but it is not autonomous). How else, John seems to be asking, can one possibly explain their repudiation of Jesus as God’s own Son (an incontrovertible fact for John) and their seeking to kill him (in the past) and his Jewish followers (in the Johannine present)? The attribution of diabolical agency (or paternity) can undoubtedly be used in despicable and dehumanizing ways, but that is not always or necessarily the case (cf. Mark 8:33). Context and intention, one may perhaps assume, are important factors in the evaluation of such language. John 8:44 is arguably John’s considered theological assessment of an extremely perplexing and painful turn of events, the repudiation and violent persecution of the Jewish Jesus and his Jewish followers by those to and for whom (so John believes) Jesus was sent into the world by God, i.e., the God of Abraham and Moses and Israel.

The conflict on display in John, then, is primarily between two groups of Jewish people (Johannine Jewish Christians and “the Jews”) who were both nurtured on the scriptures and traditions of the synagogue. The curious fact which needs explanation is why one group, the Johannine Jewish Christians, labeled the other group “the Jews” while rejecting (at least implicitly) this epithet for themselves as Jewish Christians. We here come up against the main interpretive issue with respect to the Johannine depiction of “the Jews”: why does John refer to those who are hostile to Jesus and his disciples as “the Jews”, with the potentially misleading implication that Jesus himself and his (initial) disciples as well as the Gospel’s writer(s) and original, intended readers were not themselves Jews?

III. “We are disciples of Moses”: The origin and significance of the designation “the Jews” in John. 

It is understandable that scholars who seek to understand John’s portrayal of “the Jews” focus on what John or the Jesus of John says about them, both directly and indirectly, rather than what they may say about themselves. The reason for this is clear: “the Jews whose opinion is expressed in the Gospel appear on a scene set by a Christian evangelist” (M. de Jonge). This crucial insight also applies to the ways in which “the Jews” refer (or are allowed to refer) to themselves in the Gospel. The Gospel is not, and is not meant to be, an objective portrayal of first-century Jews and Judaism. In one passage, however, “the Jews” who oppose Jesus and his disciples are allowed to define themselves in ways that can hardly be described as a misrepresentation of Jewish self-understanding: in 9:28, they declare themselves to be “disciples of Moses”.

This self-designation finds a parallel in rabbinic sources. A baraitah in b.Yoma 4a refers to Pharisaic scholars in distinction from Sadducean ones as “disciples of Moses”. Though there is scarcely (to my knowledge) any other attestation for the precise wording, the (self)affirmation of Jews in the first century as “disciples of Moses” is historically plausible and certainly no misrepresentation of Jewish self-understanding: “Moses is the normatively authorized figure of Judaism ... There is, then, nothing ... which indicates a distortion of the conversation” (Martyn). The self-affirmation placed into the mouth of “the Jews” of John is undoubtedly a fundamental indicator of who Jews (or their spokesmen) understood themselves to be in the Johannine context.

In chapter 9, these disciples of Moses live from the conviction that “God has spoken to Moses” (9:29). To speak of Moses is to speak of that authoritative body of teaching revealed to Moses, namely, the law: “the law was given to Moses” (1:17: cf. 7:19) and “the law of Moses” is “not to be broken” (7:23), including the law pertaining to the Sabbath (5:10; 7:23; 9:16). Moses’ teaching is largely preserved in “the scriptures”, primarily if not exclusively the Pentateuch. Disciples of Moses thus “search the scriptures”, with the conviction that “eternal life” is to be found there (5:39; cf. 7:52). It will be the thesis of this section of my paper that the self-affirmation “we are disciples of Moses” in the context in which it occurs provides a crucial clue to the origin and significance of the epithet “the Jews” for the Jewish opponents of the Jewish Jesus and his Jewish followers.

In John 9, Jesus’ healing of a Jewish man who had been born blind does not lead immediately to an account of the man (or of others) coming to faith in Jesus but to a “division (scisma)” (9:16) among “the Pharisees” (9:13, 15). Following an initial questioning of the healed man (9:13-15), some of these Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath”. Others among them pose a rhetorical question, “How can a man who is a sinner do such signs?” (9:16). The implied answer would seem to be that a doer of such signs, such miracles, cannot be a sinner and must thus be “from God”. If so, he may well be “a prophet”, as the healed man suggests to them in response to their request to say what he thinks (9:17). The second group of Pharisees thus entertains the sympathetic view of Jesus attributed to Nicodemus, “a man from the Pharisees and a ruler of the Jews” (3:1; cf. 7:50), who came to Jesus and said to him: “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs which you do, unless God be with him” (3:2).

In what follows, however, the views of the first group of Pharisees prevail and this group is strikingly referred to as “the Jews” (9:18, 22; = “some of the Pharisees” in 9:40). The reader is informed that “the Jews did not believe that he [the man] had been born blind and had received his sight, until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight” (9:18). “The Jews” then interrogate his parents who, like their son, are in fact also Jews of the local synagogue. The parents confess ignorance of their son’s healing because, according to John, “they feared the Jews “ (9:22). The reason for their fear, John informs the readers in a narrative aside, is that “the Jews had already agreed” to expel from the synagogue those Jews who had confessed Jesus to be the Messiah (9:22). “The Jews” of this narrative thus stand opposed to Jesus and to those (other Jews) who would believe him to be “the Messiah”. 

The man is now called “a second time” (9:24-34). In the ensuing conversation, the interrogators (‘the Jews” of 9:18-23) proclaim themselves to be “disciples of Moses”, unlike the formerly blind Jew whom they typify as the disciple of someone else, not of Moses but of Jesus: 

“You (su) are a disciple of that fellow,

but we (hmeiV) are disciples of Moses” (9:28). 

About 9:28 within its context the following may now be said. First, the fact that John allows “the Jews” to describe themselves as “disciples of Moses” is a clear indication that the termoi Ioudaioi cannot be translated as “the Judeans” (at least in ch. 9 and in many other passages). The interrogators define themselves not with reference to the region in which they live or originate, nor with reference to their ethnic identity, but with reference to Moses, i.e., in religious terms. “The Jews” of the narrative thus understand themselves to be above all else “disciples of Moses” and it is as such that the Johannine Jesus repeatedly enters into debate with them (see 3:14; 5:39-47; 6:30-32; 7:19-24, 51-52; 10:31-39; cf. 1:17, 45).

Second, then, it is apparent that the matter of Jewish identity is at stake in John 9:28. “The Jews” present the formerly blind Jewish man (thus mutatis mutandis also other Johannine believers in Jesus, on both the narrative and contemporary levels of John’s two-level drama) with a stark and uncompromising alternative which says, in effect, 

‘As disciples of Jesus, you have forfeited your Jewish identity;

as disciples of Moses, we (and not you disciples of Jesus) are truly the Jews”.

Third, given the first two points, the origin and significance of the peculiar and frequent epithet, “the Jews” for those who, on the basis of their scriptural knowledge, reject and oppose Jesus and his disciples now come into focus: the Gospel’s references to the Jewish scriptural authorities behind the decree of expulsion (9:22) as “the Jews” is in the first instance an ironic acknowledgment of their claim to be the authoritative arbiters of Jewish identity. Being a disciple of Jesus was evidently no longer one of the ways in which a Jew could be a disciple of Moses. The Gospel is at pains to reject this claim, as I noted above. For John, there is the deep and tragic irony that it is actually “the Jews”, the self-affirmed disciples of Moses, who have forfeited their Jewish identity and heritage (cf. 19:15), because they have rejected the Johannine proclamation of Jesus as the promised Messiah of Israel: “Do not think that I accuse you to the Father. The one who accuses you is Moses, upon whom you have set your hope. If you did believe Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. If you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?” (5:45-47). For John, Moses, properly read and understood, stands on the side of the Jewish Jesus and his Jewish disciples and supports their claims. But the important point for our present purposes is that the peculiar Johannine use of the term “the Jews” probably emerged in a debate not with but within the synagogue (between Jews who embraced Jesus as the expected Jewish Messiah and those who did not) about Jewish identity, i.e., about whether Christian Jews could properly be regarded as genuine “disciples of Moses”. 

The Christian Jews in the synagogue, who were perhaps in the minority in the Johannine setting (though making inroads), were in a difficult situation, since “the Jews had already agreed that if any one should confess him to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue”, in effect declared no longer to be a Jew, a true disciple of Moses. Pharisaic authorities (in the Johannine setting as elsewhere) sought, following the destruction of the Temple by the Romans, to define what it is to be a Jew (and thus to live like one) under new and threatening circumstances. At stake was not simply Jewish identity but Jewish survival, a theme which finds its echo in John 11:47b-48: “This man performs many signs. If we let him go on thus, every one will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our [holy] place [the Temple] and our nation”.

The issue in John’s use of “the Jews” to designate certain authoritative, learned (Pharisaic) Jews who, with their followers among the synagogue rank-and-file, rejected and opposed Jesus and his followers in the Johannine context is thus identity, Jewish identity. “The Jews” are those who claim to be the arbiters of a genuinely Jewish identity and John acknowledges this claim with the ironic (even sarcastic) epithet “the Jews”. The end result (perhaps originally unintended) is that Johannine Jewish Christians came to abandon the term “the Jews” for themselves as Jewish disciples of Jesus even as they sought in their own way to remain faithful to Moses and the scriptures of Israel.