Why was John so negative toward the Jews? After all, it is virtually certain that he himself was a Jew. It is unlikely that he was simply criticizing Judeans from a Galilean perspective. At this point I would like to reflect on sociological, historical, and theological factors that contributed to John's negative portrait of the Jews. I do so neither to defend nor to criticize the evangelist but rather to understand better a disturbing feature of his Gospel.
Sociological
factors. The evangelist whom we
traditionally call John wrote his story of Jesus near or in Palestine after a.d. 70, probably in the late first
century. A very important event in Jewish history took place in a.d. 70: the Roman capture of the
Jerusalem Temple and its destruction. Josephus
blamed it on fanatics and bandits among the Jewish people. Whatever the cause
may have been, the result was that Jews no longer had political control over
their land or access to their most sacred site and principle of religious
unity, the Temple. The challenge facing all Jews after a.d. 70 was to reconstruct a Judaism without Temple and land.
The challenge was
met by Jews in various ways. The apocalyptists represented
by 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch
(two inspirational but not canonical books) looked toward the imminent
intervention of God that would spell the end of "this age" and the
beginning of the "age to come." The political rebels went
underground but nourished their hope of gaining power by military means. They
had their chance finally in the Bar Kokhba
revolt
(a.d. 132-135) and failed. The
rabbis under Yohanan ben Zakkai at Yavneh developed a form of Judaism that joined
devotion to the Torah, elements of Pharisaism, and other pre-70 traditions.
This group later developed into the rabbinic movement that produced the Mishnah,
the Talmuds, and other rabbinic writings.
Pagan observers
of the early Christians in the late first century would have continued to look
upon them as a Jewish sect, even if all the members were not ethnically
Jewish. Such observers would have assumed that early Christians like John were
Jews concerned with reconstructing Judaism around their Jewish hero, Jesus of
Nazareth. On the other hand, Jewish observers of the same early Christians
would have looked on John and his like as rivals in the task of reconstructing
Judaism after the destruction of the Temple. In the late first century,
Judaism was at a crossroads: it could take the apocalyptic, the nationalistic,
the rabbinic, or the Christian route. From the perspective of later history,
the rabbinic way won out among Jews, and the Christian way developed into a
separate religion. The apocalyptic way revived from time to time, and the
nationalistic way emerged again with twentieth-century Zionism. But things
were not so dear in the first century.
The composition of John's Gospel should be viewed against the background of the crisis facing all Jews in the late first century and the rival claims among them to carry on the tradition of Judaism. There is probably a connection between the Jews in John's Gospel and the emerging rabbinic movement led by Yohanan ben Zakkai. The negative portrait of the Jews in John's Gospel is part of an intra-Jewish quarrel. The use of "the Jews" may even refer to the Judean roots of the rival movement.
As John's Gospel
shows, this quarrel became bitter. John intended his story of Jesus to be read
on two levels: the time of Jesus' public activity (about a.d. 30), and the time of the intra-Jewish
quarrel between his community and the Jews (late first century). The
evangelist sought to identify the Jewish opponents of Jesus with the Jewish
opponents of the Johannine community. And so the Jews misunderstand, persecute,
and finally have Jesus killed.
The application
of the term aposynagogos ("out of the synagogue") to the
Johannine Christians (9:22; 12:42; 16:2) reflects the point to which the
quarrel had come. The Matthean parallel is the description of the opponents as
having control over "their synagogues" or "the synagogues of the
hypocrites." Whether the so-called "blessing/curse of the
sectarians" (an invocation added to first-century Jewish prayer) had been
enacted to force Christian Jews either to curse themselves or leave the
synagogue, some event or institution had forced a dramatic split between
Christian Jews and other Jews in the late first century.
Quarrels within a
religious movement are often bitter. In our own day Jews argue about who is a
Jew; Catholics debate about the proper interpretation and implementation of
Vatican II; and liberal and fundamentalist Protestants repeat the "battle
for the Bible." In these quarrels harsh and intemperate statements are
made. The result is often schism or just a temporary truce. Such modem
analogies can at least help us to appreciate the context in which John talked
about the Jews. A Jew himself, John wrote in a highly emotional setting in
which the future of Judaism was at stake. John was convinced that the Christian
way was correct, and the early rabbinic way was not.
Political
factors. Besides the sociological
factors, there may also have been a political factor in John's negative
portrayal of the Jews. After the fall of Masada
in a.d. 73/74 the Jews were a
defeated people, under even more direct Roman control than before. At the same
time, Jewish Christians had to explain an embarrassing fact about their hero
Jesus of Nazareth: he had been executed according to a Roman punishment reserved
primarily for revolutionaries. The charge against him ("King of the
Jews") suggests that the Roman governor considered him just another
messianic pretender, a political rebel.