THE YEAR of the lectionary cycle that relies heavily on the Gospel according to John always carries with it the disturbing use of the phrase "the Jews," without much in the way of modification. That means that while the accusation that antisemitism "was introduced" into Christianity by the author of John is certainly not without some justification, in order to make that use of the book forces you must choose to ignore many of the uses of the word, with or without the definite article, because John explicitly notes not only the followers of Jesus as well as his enemies were Jews, but that Jesus, himself, and all of his closest followers were also Jews. When taking up the study of Greek last year, I found out that the language used in John was the simplest of the four Gospels, I wish the author had introduced more nuance in his writing - he was a sophisticated Greek speaking intellectual capable of that - it may have prevented some of the worst parts of Christian history if he had used a few more words to make those distinctions.
That problem is seen in today's Gospel, John 11:45-56
Many of the Jews who had come to Mary
and seen what Jesus had done began to believe in him.
But some of them went to the Pharisees
and told them what Jesus had done.
So the chief priests and the Pharisees
convened the Sanhedrin and said,
“What are we going to do?
This man is performing many signs.
If we leave him alone, all will believe in him,
and the Romans will come
and take away both our land and our nation.”
But one of them, Caiaphas,
who was high priest that year, said to them,
“You know nothing,
nor do you consider that it is better for you
that one man should die instead of the people,
so that the whole nation may not perish.”
He did not say this on his own,
but since he was high priest for that year,
he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation,
and not only for the nation,
but also to gather into one the dispersed children of God.
So from that day on they planned to kill him.
So Jesus no longer walked about in public among the Jews,
but he left for the region near the desert,
to a town called Ephraim,
and there he remained with his disciples.
Now the Passover of the Jews was near,
and many went up from the country to Jerusalem
before Passover to purify themselves.
They looked for Jesus and said to one another
as they were in the temple area, “What do you think?
That he will not come to the feast?”
What a complex passage. It starts right after the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead at the behest of his two sisters, the Mary at the beginning of the passage, I strongly suspect meaning Mary who was also the first witness to the risen Jesus later in John. It notes that many of "the Jews" saw the raising of Lazarus, presumably friends to Mary and others in the town and became disciples of Jesus. Mary was certainly a Jew as would her sister and brother have been and there is no more faithful follower of Jesus than she. That the ones who came to believe, the ones who told the Pharisees were Jews is explicit and the central issue for the Sanhedrin when they're told about it because they're afraid if too many Jews become supporters of Jesus the Romans will do what they did later in that century, destroy the Jewish nation as a political-religious entity. That is the central contention in the claim that Caiaphas, the high priest that year, proposed that instead of that happening, it was good for Jesus to die.
I'll stop there by pointing out that even in this most troubling telling of the story, "the Jews" meaning the chief authorities among them, were motivated by a fear of the Romans doing what they certainly knew the Romans were always ready to do, they had certainly known of enough mass crucifixions and slaughters for them to doubt the danger that the Children of Israel were in from the Romans as before they were from other foreign invaders and occupiers. The evil that they're presented as contemplating was forced on them, not that I remember reading many pre-20th century commentaries pointing that out.
Another group of Jews are mentioned at the very end, those who went up to Jerusalem to get ready for the Passover who wanted to see this Jesus who they had either seen before or heard of, expecting that he would be there though he was not making public appearances, knowing of the talk of sacrificing him for the good of the nation as a whole. They expected he would observe the Passover, they seem to think it was impossible that he wouldn't, so they certainly believed Jesus to be one of them as, in fact, did the Romans who called him that in a mocking sign they put on the cross with him.
This shows that a superficial, literal, "common sense" reading of the Scriptures is bound to get a lot of people in trouble, it shows one of the defects of language that a word used without modification to narrow or broaden it in context is an extremely dangerous thing. It's impossible to know why the author of John would have done that, perhaps he was taught by an ancient Greek Strunk-White style phony or maybe he did it to save paper.* Whatever it was, it's had some really bad results. This is one case when I think the best translation of these passages would insert modifiers to make those distinctions clearer. Though that damage has been done in the culture and it will take many generations to wash it out. It won't just happen, it has to be the intended effort of generations to make it clear.
I would be very surprised if the author of John wasn't Jewish, himself, though one who might be beginning to discern a parting of the ways. One which I think it took many generations to happen. I would bet he included himself in some of his uses of the term. As I've said here, I am certain that the earliest followers of Jesus believed they were born and died Jews, including Peter who Catholics consider the first pope and probably the fifth Pope St. Evaristis who was certainly born to Jewish parents, one of the things about him that tradition seems to hold solidly about him. I'll bet he believed himself a Jew as late as 105, the traditional date of his purported martyrdom. Some sources believe that he was the Pope when John the Apostle was traditionally believed to have died, for what that's worth, almost all of the dating of such things being based on tradition without any real documentation as such.
* My dear old Latin teacher said he thought that was the origin of the ablative absolute when paper was scarce, the ablative absolute being one of the things students traditionally find to be hard when studying Latin. I don't know, he was the expert, not me. I didn't think it was that hard to get the hang of once he explained it to me. Maybe he was just better at explaining stuff than most were.
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