Jesus and “the Jews”

Jesus and “the Jews”

 John is more hostile to “the Jews” than any of the other three Gospels. When the other Gospels talk about the opponents of Jesus, they specify Jewish leaders, such as priests or scholars. But John simply calls them “the Jews’ (5:16). In the Gospel of John, “the Jews” is a technical term that means the opponents of Jesus, not all people who are racially Jews.

 John reports Jesus going so far as to say the Jews didn’t descend from Abraham: “Your father the devil” (8:44). Physically, they came from Abraham. But spiritually, there was no resemblance. Not all Jews, however, opposed Jesus. In fact, Jesus was a Jew. So were all of His twelve disciples. So were the vast majority of His many other followers.

 John probably wrote his Gospel in the last quarter of the first century, shortly after Jewish leaders had grown so weary of Jewish Christians worshiping with them that they expelled them from the synagogues. If so, this book was written during the height of an us-them, Christian-Jew antagonism. Many of the Christians were Jews, racially. And many continued to honor Jewish traditions, such as the Sabbath and Jewish holidays. But more and more they were also beginning to think of themselves as distinct. Religiously speaking, they were followers of Jesus. The Jews still worshiping in the synagogue, however, were not.