In the Gospel of John, the “Jews” are “Judeans”, Not all “Jews”

In the this article and the next article following I would like to propose that one of the main original audiences, perhaps even the main audience, of the Gospel of John were Greek speaking Hebrews. Most of these Greek speaking Hebrews lived in the Diaspora, that is, outside of the land of Israel. Ever since Israelites were exiled from the land of Israel by Assyria, Babylon and Rome, there has been a recognizable difference between Israelites who lived outside of the land of Israel (in the Diaspora) to those who lived in the land of Israel.

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My suggestion is that in the first century, as Diaspora Hebrews began to hear the extraordinary claims about Jesus being the Messiah, they wondered how this could be since Jesus had been rejected and put to death in the Messiah’s own city Jerusalem, by Messiah’s own people, Judeans. 

I suggest John wrote his Gospel to these Greek speaking Hebrews, recording the signs that Jesus did, in order “that you might believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name’ (John 20:31).

As we will see, Greek speaking Hebrews who had familiarity with the Greek translation of the Old Testament (LXX) would understand some of the language and themes of John’s Gospel differently than their Gentile counterparts. For instance, a Greek speaking Israelite may connect a phrase that appears in John 1:1, “and the Word was with God” to Moses, and not to a second God figure. More on that later.

“Jews” in John’s Gospel: “Jews” means “Judeans” – In the Gospel of John, Jesus was received everywhere in Israel but not in Judea

A first step in understanding that a main target audience of John’s Gospel were Greek speaking Hebrews is to understand that in the Gospel of John the word often translated as “Jews” can and does mean “Judeans”. In the Greek New Testament, the word for “Jews” and “Judeans” is exactly the same, youdaioi (Ἰουδαῖοι).

 

Many commentators have come to recognize that the “Jews” who opposed Jesus in the Gospel of John were not all Jews, but rather Jews who lived in Judea, especially the Judean leadership in Jerusalem. Judea, the Greek way to say Judah, is the south-central portion of Israel and includes Jerusalem.

 

The word Greek word youdaioi (Ἰουδαῖοι) translated as either “Jews” or “Judeans” is an adjective, not a noun; but, the word may function as a noun “the Jewish or Judean ones”. A reader must decide the most appropriate way to understand the word, either in a more ethnic sense or more geographical sense.  As we examine the appearances of the word in John’s Gospel, I believe we will see that this Gospel uses the term youdaioi more in the geographical sense (Judeans) than in an ethnic sense (Jews). Jesus was received by thousands of people in other Jewish regions of the land of Israel, but the Judeans, particularly the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem, refused to accept Jesus to be the Christ.

 

“his own” of John 1:11 are Judeans

 

Early in his Gospel (John 1:11), John wrote that Jesus “came to his own, and his own did not receive him.”

 

The word translated as “his own” occurs two times in this verse. The first occurrence of “his own” is a neuter plural, while the second occurrence is a masculine plural.

 

This is why some English versions translate the first part of the verse as “He came to that which was his own” (e.g., NIV). Reflecting the grammatical neuter, he came to his own things, that which rightfully belonged to him, to his own land, to his own inheritance, to his own place, to his own home” (ESV, NASB, NET, RSV, etc). 

 

But the second appearance of “his own”, the masculine plural in the statement “his own did not receive him”, is understood by commentators and English translators, and I think rightly so, to be a reference to his own people, since it is people who can receive or reject. His own people did not receive him.

 

Jesus’s own people, the Jewish people, and as we will see in just a minute, more specifically the Judeans, did not receive him.

 

The Messiah came to his own people, not to Gentiles in Ephesus or Rome. As Jesus said in Matthew 15:24, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (cf. Matt. 10:5-6).

 

His own people are specifically Judeans

In the Gospel of John “his own” people can be even more narrowly defined; “his own people” which Jesus came to and was rejected by were Judeans, especially the Jewish leadership centered in Jerusalem and the Temple.

 

As we look through some of the references to the word “Jews/Judeans” (Ἰουδαῖοι) in the Gospel of John, it becomes clear that the word relates as much to geography as it does to ethnicity. Often the word translated as “Jews” in John’s Gospel is better understood as “Judeans”, that is, the Jews living in Judea as opposed to say, Jews or other Israelites living in Galilee.

 

Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea as a descendant of David of the tribe of Judah (again, Judea is simply the Greek way of saying Judah). As God’s anointed Messiah of the line of David, Jesus has the right to rule from his own city of Jerusalem where the Davidic dynastic capital was divinely established. More specifically, the descendant of David is authorized by God to rule from the Temple Mount, from the right hand of God, which was the location of Solomon’s royal palace in relation to the House of God. Jerusalem and the Temple Mount in a very real sense is “his own property”, the property of the authorized descendent of David.

 

The Geographical Focus of the Gospel of John: Judea and Jerusalem

 

The Gospel of John focuses on the ministry of Jesus in Judea. Of the 21 chapters in John’s Gospel, more or less 18 chapters deal with Jesus’ ministry in Judea.

 

John’s Gospel is the only Gospel to describe an early ministry of Jesus in Judea which included a visit to Jerusalem’s temple (2:13-25), the conversation with the Judean religious leader, Nicodemus (3:1-21), and Jesus’ ministry baptizing in “Judean land” (“Jewish land”, 3:22-36, esp. 3:22).

 

And, as we will see, the Gospel of John is the only Gospel to describe the miracles that Jesus did in Jerusalem/Judea (healing of the lame man at the Pool of Bethesda, healing of a man born blind at the Pool of Siloam, the raising of Lazarus from the dead in Bethany).

 

In the Gospel of John, Jesus leaves Judea only because of the religious and political opposition he gets from the Judean leaders.

 

And, there is a very distinct contrast in John’s Gospel between the rejection of Jesus in Judea compared to how he was received by Hebrews in other geographical areas.

 

Because of the rising tensions brought on by the popularity of Jesus’s early ministry in Judea, John’s Gospel says Jesus “left Judea and departed to Galilee” (4:3). On the way to Galilee he passed through Samaria, where a Samaritan woman and a whole town of Samaritans welcomed him and came to believe that this Judean, Jesus, was the Messiah (4:1-4, 9, 25-26. 39-42)!

 

Note closely the statement in John 4:43-45, which is evidence that the author of this Gospel regards the people and land of Judea to be Jesus’ own land and own people. Following Jesus’s successful visit in Samaria, the author records:

 

“After two days he departed for Galilee. For Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country.  So, when he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, having seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the feast” (John 4:43-45).

 

We tend to think of Jesus as a Galilean because he grew up and ministered in Galilee. But to the author of the Gospel of John, Jesus is a Judean. Using the same word as he used in 1:11, Jesus’s own ἰδίᾳ country (fatherland) was Judea. Jesus had no honor in his own country, Judea, but when he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him.

 

This theme runs like a thread through the Gospel of John. When Jesus comes to Jerusalem, which is in Judea, he is rejected and threatened, even with death. But Jesus persists in ministry in Judea, and leaves Judea only to ease the tension. When he spends time in a geographical region of Israel outside of Judea, the people welcome him and rejoice at his presence.

 

Back in Judea in John 5, Jesus healed a lame man at the pool of Bethesda. What a testimony to Judean Jerusalem that Jesus is the Messiah! But the Judeans failed to recognize the significance and grandeur of the miracle, and threatened to kill Jesus.

 

But then, in the next chapter (John 6), when Jesus performed a miraculous deed in Galilee (the Feeding of the 5000), the people recognized in the sign miracle evidence that Jesus was the prophet like unto Moses who was to come into the world. The Galilean Jews wanted to make Jesus king (John 6:14-15)! What a contrast between how Jesus was received in Judea versus in Galilee. The Judeans wanted to kill him; the Galileans want to make him king.

 

John 7:1 sums up the situation well. Between the festivals of Passover and Tabernacles, that is, the summer before Jesus was put to death, the Gospel says “Jesus went about in Galilee. He did not go about in Judea because the Judeans wanted to kill him.”

 

Even though the threat to Jesus in Judea was great, Jesus came back up to Jerusalem for the Festival of Tabernacles (John 7). Because of his incredible teaching some Jerusalemites (Judeans!) began to wonder if Jesus was indeed the Christ, even though the Judean leaders were against him (7:25-26). When one of the Judean leaders, Nicodemus, who had come previously to Jesus at night, made an attempt to defend Jesus, other Judean religious leaders scoffed at Nicodemus, saying “Are you from Galilee too? Search and see that no prophet is to rise from Galilee” (7:48-52).

 

In John 9 Jesus performed another amazing sign in Judean Jerusalem which gave evidence that he was the Messiah. Jesus gave sight to the eyes of a man born blind. The hope and expectation of the Old Testament prophets was being realized: “the lame walk and the blind receive their sight!” (Isaiah 35:5-6). But the Judean leaders’ hearts were only hardened by the sign.

 

In John 10 Jesus was in Jerusalem for the Festival of Dedication (Hannukah). The conversation came to such a fever pitch that once again certain Judeans threatened to kill him and tried to arrest him. He left Judea and came to the Jewish territory of Perea across the Jordan. The Gospel says, “many people believed in him there” (10:40-42). Once again, we see the contrast between Jesus’s rejection in Judea but reception by Jews in other regions.

When in Perea, Jesus heard about the illness of Lazarus, and Jesus told his disciples that they were going back up into Judea again. His disciples protested: “"Rabbi, the Judeans were just now seeking to stone you, and are you going there again?” (11:7-8). Jesus went back into Judea, and by means of only his spoken word, Jesus raised the man Lazarus out from among dead (John 11:43, 5:25).

 

As mentioned above, the Gospel of John is the only Gospel to describe the miracles which Jesus did in Jerusalem. The synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) describe tens of miracles done by Jesus, but they do not detail any miracle that Jesus did in Jerusalem (with significant, brief exception in Matt. 21:14). The Jerusalem miracles are described only in the Gospel of John. The author of the Gospel of John wanted to make the point that even though Jesus was rejected by his own in Judea, Jerusalem and Judea had plenty of evidence that Jesus was the Messiah: the lame walk (John 5), the blind see (John 9). And now, with Lazarus, the dead are raised (John 11).

 

The raising of Lazarus from the dead was the last straw for the Judean leadership. Note the result of the miracle described by the Gospel:

 

John 11:45, “Many of the Judeans therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in him.”

 

And John 12:10-11, “So the chief priests planned to kill Lazarus too, for on account of him many of the Judeans were going away and believing in Jesus” (cf. John 11:52).

 

These verses are evidence that “Judeans” is meant when many English translations write “Jews”, since many other Jews - in Galilee and Perea, had already believed in Jesus (4:45, 53; 6:14-15; 7:1; 11:54). Here, late in Jesus’s ministry when many Judeans began to believe that the teachings and signs of Jesus were evidence that he indeed was the Christ, the Judean authorities would have none of it and took steps to get Jesus on the cross (John 11:45, 53; 12:10-11).

 

If we go back to the author’s statement in John 1:10 that “his own received him not”, note how the author immediately clarifies in the next verse (1:11) and says that “but for all who did receive him he gave the authority to become the children of God”. Many received Jesus: in Galilee, Perea and even in Judea.

 

Judeans patrolling or policing what was going on outside of Judea

 

Another observation: we can see in both the Gospel of John and in the synoptics that the Judean leaders in Jerusalem asserted their authority over religious matters in regions outside of Judah. For instance, in the first narrative that the Gospel of John records after his introduction (starting in John 1:19) we find religious leaders from Jerusalem interrogating about religious affairs in Bethany beyond the Jordan. Bethany beyond the Jordan was the region of Batanea east of the Sea of Galilee, nearly 100 miles from Jerusalem. John records:

 

John 1:19-20   Now this was John (the Baptizer’s) testimony when the Jews/Judeans sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, "Who are you?"  He confessed– he did not deny but confessed– "I am not the Christ!" (cf. John 1:28).

 

Note the same phenomenon described in the synoptic Gospels. When Jesus was healing the sick and casting out demons in Galilee, Mark 3:22 “The experts in the law who came down from Jerusalem said, ‘He is possessed by Beelzebul, and, by the ruler of demons he casts out demons.’”

 

And again, when Jesus was at the Sea of Galilee, eighty difficult miles from Jerusalem, “After they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret. When the people there recognized him, they sent word into all the surrounding area, and they brought all their sick to him. They begged him if they could only touch the edge of his cloak, and all who touched it were healed. Then Pharisees and experts in the law came from Jerusalem to Jesus and said, ‘Why do your disciples disobey the tradition of the elders? For they don't wash their hands when they eat’” (Matthew 14:34-15:2).

 

So, even in the synoptic Gospels it was often the leaders from Judea that opposed and stirred up opposition against Jesus outside of Judea.

 

Summary and Significance

 

Try it yourself sometime. In the Gospel of John, instead of “Jews”, as if to mean all Jews, read the word instead in the geographical sense of “Judeans”. See if the Gospel makes more sense.

 

We saw that Jesus’s “own” that he came to were Judeans. While he was not received by the majority of Judeans, in John’s Gospel Jesus was received in all the other regions of the land of Israel, including Samaria, Galilee and beyond the Jordan. Threats to kill Jesus were always in Judea from Judeans, and in the end, he was killed in Judea.

 

Understanding that “Jews” in the Gospel means “Judeans” abolishes antisemitic interpretations of the Gospel. Gentile Christian history has missed the geographical connotation of the word “Judeans” and has instead tended to blame and make “the Jews” of John’s Gospel an entire ethnic group who opposed and killed Jesus. But the Christian interpretation is wrong, as more recent scholarly commentators and translations have recognized: “Jews” in this Gospel means Judeans, particularly the Judean religious leadership.

 

Understanding that “Jews” means “Judeans” means that the Gospel of John is addressing an internal Jewish controversy. The author is telling us that while most Judeans did not receive their own anointed Davidic king, nonetheless Jesus performed many signs in Judea that gave evidence that he is the promised Messiah, and, many Jews in other regions of Israel did receive Jesus.

 

John was not writing to Gentile audiences to declare “the Jews rejected and killed Jesus”. Rather, the author is writing to other Hebrews giving reasons to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, even though he was rejected in his own city Jerusalem, in his own region, by his own people Judeans.

 

Judeans rejected Jesus, not all Jews.

 

There is another theme that I believe the writer of the Gospel of John wants to communicate to his readers. The author wants to declare that Jesus, like David and Solomon, is not only the King of Judah, but also of Israel entire. Ever since the tragic split of the kingdom of Israel into two at the death of Solomon, the prophets and people have longed for the re-unification of the kingdom under one righteous ruler of the House of David (Eze. 37:16-24, Isa. 11:13, Jer. 3:18, Hos. 1:11).

 

After the split, the Northern kingdom was called Israel, and the southern Kingdom Judah (Judea). Would the tribes and territory of the Northern Kingdom Israel ever accept again a descendant of the Judean David as their king?

 

The Gospel of John tells us. Note the three areas in this Gospel where Jesus was excitedly received as Messiah King: Samaria, Galilee and Transjordan. These are the three main territories of the ancient Northern Kingdom of Israel that rejected the Davidic, Judean monarchy and had been exiled by Assyria. And note the declaration of Nathanael, who was and ISRAELITE from Cana in Galilee, that is, from the territory of the ancient Northern Kingdom: “Rabbi, you are the Son of God, you are the King of Israel” (John 1:49). Jesus is not just the king of the Judeans, but like David, is the king of Judah and Israel.

 

Israel, the northern tribes and territories, received Jesus as Messiah. The leaders of Jesus’s own tribe, Judah/Judea, did not.

In our next podcast I hope to explore who the “Greeks”, the “Hellenes” were that appear in two places in the Gospel of John (7:35, 12:20-24). Could it be that these “Hellenes” were not uncircumcised Gentiles, but rather Greek speaking Hebrews (cf. the “Hellenists” of Acts 6)?

And, besides the antisemitic issue, the question of the original recipients of the Gospel of John is important since if the original recipients were not only familiar with the geographical connotation of the word Judea, but also had familiarity with the Greek translation of the Old Testament Scriptures (the LXX), the author would draw literary and thematic parallels from the Greek Old Testament to give evidence to his readers that Jesus was the one “of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote” (John 1:45).

On the other hand, the same Old Testament literary and thematic parallels recognizable to Greek speaking Hebrews could be missed, or misunderstood, by later Gentile readers of John’s Gospel. For example, I will suggest that while 2nd century and later Gentile Christians interpreted the Gospel’s first verse, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”, as a reference to a second divine figure involved in the Genesis creation – an Israelite reader familiar with the Old Testament Scriptures would recognize and connect this statement in John 1:1 to Moses.

 

To a Greek speaking Hebrew, familiar with the Greek Old Testament, John 1:1 was a parallel to Moses, but to later Gentile readers steeped in Hellenistic philosophy John 1:1 was about a 2^nd God figure.