This is the third of the series which started with Jesus was not a Jew – according to the Gospels (1) and continued with Jesus was not a Jew – according to the Gospels (2). Again, I am not at all trying to make an anti-Semitic point, as should be clear in what follows here.

In parts 1 and 2 of this series I have shown that in the four Gospels the Greek word Ioudaios, generally translated “Jew”, is in fact used mainly of Judeans, inhabitants of the southern part of the land of Israel around Jerusalem. It is only when the word is used by Gentiles and Samaritans, or in conversation with them, that it has the wider meaning of “Israelite”.

Before making some concluding observations, I want to look briefly at how this word is used in the rest of the New Testament.

In the Gospels the focus of the story is on the land of Israel, but in Acts it is suddenly opened up to include the whole world, or at least those parts where Israelites live. So immediately we see the word Ioudaios used, in 2:5,11,14, as it would have been by Greek speakers right across that world, as a synonym for “Israelite”. Oddly enough, this does not last. In 2:14 Peter calls his audience Ioudaioi, but by verse 22 the same people have become Israelitai, as also in 3:12; in 5:35 Gamaliel uses the same word, as do Paul in 13:16 and some Asian Jews in 21:28. Meanwhile Ioudaios is not used again in Acts until the action moves into the Gentile world in chapter 9. From then on the word is very common, and mostly used as Gentiles used it, of all Israelites.

The word Ioudaios is not common in the letters of Paul, but is again used mainly in the Gentile sense, indeed often in contrast with “Gentile” or “Greek”. A probable exception here is 1 Thessalonians 2:14, recently discussed by Daniel Kirk (no relation), where “Judean” fits the context better.

Ioudaios is not found in any of the other New Testament letters. It occurs twice in Revelation (2:9, 3:9), in both cases of enigmatic groups of people who claim to be Jews but, according to the author, are not; these are most likely Diaspora Israelites who were considered religiously apostate.

So, it seems to me, in translation we need two different renderings of Ioudaios, “Judean” for most of the Gospel references but excluding the ones on the lips of Gentiles and Samaritans, and “Jew” for almost all occurrences outside the Gospels.

A clear consequence of this choice of renderings, but by no means the motivation for it, is that it removes any biblical justification for blaming the Jewish people as a whole for the death of Jesus. If anyone is to be blamed, it is a small group of Judean Israelites, stirred up against Jesus by their leaders, and the Roman authorities under the weak Pilate.

Another clear consequence is that the Jesus of the Gospels was not considered to be a Ioudaios, at least by his fellow Israelites. This explains why, especially in John, he is often portrayed as being opposed to the Ioudaioi. But what may have been a secret to Jesus’ contemporaries is revealed in Matthew and Luke, and is perhaps implied by Mark’s use of the title “Son of David” (10:47,48, 12:35) and by John’s reference to the Messiah being from Bethlehem (7:42). This mystery is that Jesus was in fact a Judean, born in Bethlehem in Judea, a member of the tribe of Judah, and indeed a descendant of King David and of the whole royal line of Judah (Matthew 1:6-11). The New Testament record seems to imply that he was the rightful heir of the Davidic line, the true king of the Ioudaioi in both senses. And, as he told the Samaritan woman who called him a Ioudaios (John 4:9,22), in both senses “salvation is from the Ioudaioi” because it came through him.

So perhaps we should conclude that Jesus was not a Jew among others, he was the one true Jew, the forefather of a new Israel constituted not by physical descent but by faith in him. This was never intended to replace the old Israel, but it was intended to broaden that family to include Gentiles. But this is a controversial issue which I do not want to get into here.

So, as I conclude this series, have I rejected the claim in its title, “Jesus was not a Jew”? No, because I added “according to the Gospels”, and within those narratives Jesus is not one of the Judean people referred to as Ioudaioi. But within the wider narrative of the New Testament we recognise that Jesus is in fact a Jew par excellence, fulfilling in himself all the requirements and prophecies of the Old Testament as well as all the promises of the New.

This Man, who died for our sins, and rose again from the dead to show that he is more than just a man, is the great King we should follow, not only the King of the Ioudaioi but also the one which we Gentiles, grafted into the true Israel, acknowledge and serve as King.

This is follow-up to part 1 of this series. Please read there how I dissociate myself from anti-Semitic writers who deny that Jesus was an Israelite. I will repeat that this series is not really about Jesus, but about the New Testament use of the word Ioudaios, usually translated “Jew”.

In the first post I looked at the Old Testament background and at the use of Ioudaios in the first three Gospels. I now want to move on to the much more extensive use of the word in the Gospel of John, where it is in fact used about 70 times.

In this discussion I gloss over difficult issues of whether the author is recording actual words spoken, originally in Greek or translated, or putting his own words into his characters’ mouths. I will simply surmise that he might have used Greek Ioudaios to translate Hebrew Yehudi or Aramaic Yehuday.

In the largest group of these uses (1:19, 2:18,20, 3:25, 5:10,15,16,18, 7:1,11,13,15,35, 8:22,31,48,52,57, 9:18,22, 10:19,24,31,33, 11:8,19,31,33,36,45,54, 12:9,11, 13:33, 18:12,14,20,31,35,36,38, 19:7,12,14,21,31,38, 20:19; probably also 3:1) the reference appears to be to Israelites in Judea, who are interacting in some way with people such as Jesus and Pilate who are not from Judea. It seems clear that at least the majority of these people would have lived in Judea. Indeed in 7:25 “people of Jerusalem” is used of apparently the same group. This suggests that in these cases “Judean” might be a more accurate translation than “Jew”. It is impossible to be sure that there were no Galilean or diaspora Israelites among these groups; nevertheless they were in general groups of Judeans.

In quite a number of these cases NIV 2011 renders Ioudaioi as “Jewish leaders”. Indeed this seems justified as many of the references seem to be to people with some kind of religious or political authority. But they were also Judeans.

In 6:41,52 the situation is a little more nuanced, as the action takes place in Galilee, in the synagogue at Capernaum, and most of the congregation would have been local Israelites. However, in Mark 7:1 (cf Matthew 15:1), from the same period in Jesus’ ministry after the feeding of the five thousand, we read of “The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem” (NIV) and challenged Jesus in or near Capernaum. So it is at least possible that the Ioudaioi referred to in John 6:41,52 are not the local Israelites but these visitors from Judea.

By contrast, Jesus, according to John, calls the presumed Galilean Nathanael not a Ioudaios but an Israelite (1:47), a point which he then elaborates by comparing him with Jacob = Israel seeing a ladder into heaven (1:51).

In 3:22 Ioudaios is used as an adjective “Judean”.

Most of the other references (2:6,13, 5:1, 6:4, 7:2, 11:55, 19:40,42) are to Jewish religious customs and festivals, described as of the Ioudaioi. From the author’s probably Galilean perspective, even these may have been considered “of the Judeans”, in that at the time Judeans seem to have been active in imposing their standardised religious practices in Galilee. But these mentions of Jewish practices can also be understood as explanations for Gentile readers, which would imply that here Ioudaios is used of Israelites in general to distinguish them from Gentiles.

Then we have the title “King of the Ioudaioi” (18:33,39, 19:3,19,21,21, cf. 19:14; also Matthew 2:2, 27:11,29,37, Mark 15:2,9,12,18,26, Luke 23:3,37,38). The interesting thing about this title is that it was used, whether seriously or in mockery, only by Gentiles – the Magi, Pilate, Roman soldiers – and by Israelites quoting them. It seems to have been Pilate’s error to refer to “the one you call the king of the Jews” (Mark 15:12). When Israelites wanted to express the same sentiment, seriously or in mockery, they called Jesus “King of Israel” (Matthew 27:42, Mark 15:32, John 1:49, 12:13).

So, to summarise, in John’s Gospel Ioudaios most often means “Judean”, but is used by and to Gentiles in the sense “Israelite”.

The final three occurrences of Ioudaios in John are in chapter 4. And it is J.K. Gayle’s discussion of these at BLT that got me interested in this subject. In verse 9 we have the note that “Ioudaioi do not associate with Samaritans”, which can probably be listed as another explanation for Gentiles of Israelite religious customs. But it is immediately preceded by the Samaritan woman calling Jesus a Ioudaios. What did she mean by that? It is unlikely that she thought Jesus was a Judean, as very likely he spoke with a similar Galilean accent to Peter’s (Matthew 26:73). More likely, as a Samaritan not accepted as truly Jewish, she used Ioudaios in the same way as Gentiles did, to refer to all Israelites.

This leads to perhaps the most interesting of the references, in John 4:22, where Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that “salvation is from the Ioudaioi“. What does he mean here? Is he accommodating his language to what the Samaritan woman would understand, and so referring to all Israelites? Maybe. Or is he hinting at something which he would have known, but which is not otherwise mentioned in John’s Gospel, that he is in fact by birth not a Galilean but Judean, from Bethlehem in Judea, and indeed from the tribe of Judah itself?

I would like to discuss this further, but this post is already too long, so I continue in part 3.