Another paper:
********
THE JEWS, THE WORLD, AND THE UNIVERSAL PEOPLE OF GOD
The goal of this
paper is to examine the role of the Jews in the Gospel of John, particularly
their relation to the people of God given to Jesus in the Gospel. Contrary to some “anti-Judaic”
interpretations, I intend to argue that, at a literary level, we can read the
Gospel not as creating a strict
dichotomy between Jews and followers of Christ but rather that the Jews, like
all peoples, are presented as part of the world which is joined against Christ yet
that they, like all peoples, can take part in the people of God which
transcends ethnic distinctions, a people composed of believers chosen out of
the world from amongst all of humanity.
While such a
reading will no doubt deal with some
questions relating to the issue of supposed anti-Judaism or anti-Semitism in
John, it is not intended to deal with every problem. In fact, rather than an exhaustive
demonstration, the present paper aims merely to show the plausibility of
reading the Gospel in the way being proposed; I will not argue that this is the
only legitimate way of reading it nor that my own reading solves all problems
related to the possibility or plausibility of an anti-Judaic or anti-Semitic
reading. Nor will I say very much about
the effect of various possible historical reconstructions concerning the
background of the Gospel when these are allowed to interact with my proposed
reading. Dealing with the foregoing
issues would require a much more extensive examination and adjudication of the
evidence – and a certainty beyond what is achieved here – than is possible in
the scope of the current paper, if such a project were to succeed at all. Because of the limited scope of the present
paper and its nature as treating of a particular theme in the Gospel rather
than detailed exegesis of a single pericope, treatment of many passages will be
necessarily cursory (although, hopefully generally sufficient). The purpose here is merely to propose a
reading that makes some sense of a variety of evidence, not one that solves all
the problems or successfully deals exhaustively with every verse.
The present paper
will be divided into two main parts.
Part I will focus on the universality of Jesus’ mission, which includes
but is not limited to the Jews. Part II will
then examine the role of the Jews vis-à-vis Christians in light of that mission
– they are part of the world against Jesus yet Jesus has died for them so as to
bring them into a universal flock which transcends the boundary between Jew and
non-Jew. The conclusion will follow from
these two parts.
Part I: The Universality of Christ’s
Significance
In the current
section I will argue that the Gospel tends to partly qualify the divinely
privileged status of the Jews and their particular practices by placing them in
the context of God’s broader, more primal plan of bringing salvation and
restoration from sin and death to all peoples, Jews and non-Jews alike. This thus works to place the role of the Jews
in a more universal perspective.
Universal
and Particular in General
The prologue of
the Gospel in 1:1-18 sets the stage for the rest of the Gospel, already
establishing its universal scope and setting the Jews within that scope. It does this by going back to the very
beginning in the first few verses, reaching back to creation itself rather than
the more specific creation of Israel as could have been done, even before
Abraham (cf. John 8:58). Instead, it
begins with a universal scope before narrowing down to one particular group, the
Jews (who, further befitting the universal scope of the prologue, are not even actually
named here in the prologue). 1:9-10
specifies that Jesus’ divine mission is for the benefit of the whole world, but
the world did not know him. It then
narrows the scope, giving what seems to be one particular instance of this –
his own (οἱ
ἴδιοι), presumably the Jews, did not receive him.
This movement between universal and particular – including
both universalizing the particular and using the particular as an example or
instance of the universal – happens throughout the Gospel of John, as Lars
Kierspel has convincingly shown. Indeed,
merely looking at the distribution of the Greek words for world (κόσμος) and Jews
(Ἰουδαῖοι),
respectively, one sees an alternation in the larger sections of the Gospel
between a more universal and a more particular focus, so that the following
chapters, with more occurrences of κόσμος than Ἰουδαῖοι, have
a more universal scope: John 1, 13-17, 21.
Meanwhile, the other chapters – John 2-12, 18-20 – have a more
particular scope.
Part of the explanation for the alternating emphases
derives from the fact that, whereas Jesus’ speech has a marked tendency towards
the universal, the narrator tends on the other hand more often to focus on
particulars. As Kierspel shows, eighty-two
percent of all occurrences of the word κόσμος, for instance, appear on the lips
of Jesus (sixty-four occurrences), whereas eighty-three percent of all
occurrences of the word Ἰουδαῖοι appear in the narration proper
(fifty-nine occurrences). Jesus,
meanwhile, uses Ἰουδαῖοι
only four times (4:22, 13:33, 18:20, 18:36), and whether any of these is used negatively may be up
for debate.
Even when Jews are his opponents, Jesus tends to use only pronouns
to refer to his opponents or to speak more broadly of the κόσμος
instead. And whereas the narrator uses
place names quite often, Jesus more often simply speaks of his coming into the
world. In general, Jesus’ speech
throughout the Gospel seems to function in terms of universalizing based on the
local particulars present in the narrative. Indeed, Kierspel
notes how 18:20, as the first time where both the world and the Jews show
up in the mouth of a single speaker, “seems to indicate that the ministry of
Jesus transcends the originally Jewish context.” In particular, we
can see in Jesus’ farewell discourses a universalized picture of the passion,
the following narrative focusing on certain Jews as the particular historical
opponents of Jesus whereas Jesus’ speech takes the opposition in a universal
sense.
The effect of this is that while the Jews in the Gospel
seem to be Jesus’ most prominent particular opponents during his earthly life,
it is yet the universal significance of Jesus, his work, belief in him, and
opposition to him that is at stake here.
The Jews function as a representative sample of the world; they, as we
will see, oppose Jesus yet Jesus died for them and they may yet believe. The question to be considered next is how
this works in terms of the Jews’ status as possessors of the sacred tradition
of Israel and, one would think, the rightful people of God to whom
Christ was to come.
Jewish Particulars in the Context of Christocentric
Universals
How do Jewish particularities fit into the universal
significance of Jesus in the Gospel? What
we find is that the Jews in the Gospel, as seen in 1:9-10, are still Jesus’ own
in some sense – they are descended from Abraham (8:33, 37), they have the Law (7:19),
and so on. But like in the writings of
some of the Old Testament prophets, this will not guarantee their staying truly
Jesus’ own or being part of God’s people – behavior and unbelief can disqualify
some from truly belonging and no ethnic privilege can guarantee otherwise (3:36; 8:43-47; 10:24-30; 15:2). One can,
that is, break the covenant and place oneself outside the covenant people of God. As R. Alan Culpepper puts it, “the Gospel of
John does not say that God has abrogated the covenants but that the Jews have
broken the covenants and therefore do not recognize Jesus as the son of God.” For the world and
“his own” who do not do know Jesus, there is no true belonging to Christ. The whole world, Jews included, has opposed
Christ and failed to receive salvation. Indeed, in 19:15 the Jews who reject Jesus decisively disown their own
heritage, siding instead with the world and accepting Caesar rather than God or
Jesus as king. They are indeed the
descendants or seed (σπέρμα) of Abraham and should therefore be the ones who
accept Jesus but, not doing so, they fail to be children (τέκνα) of him
or God (8:33-47).
Instead, as seen in 1:12-13, what sets one apart as
belonging to God is not one’s ethnic origin but rather receiving Jesus and
believing in his name. For those who do believe, whether Jewish or not, there
is belonging (see 10:4, 13:1, 15:19) – judgment has come to the world and to
Israel (3:18, 36; 12:31, 48; 16:11) but a remnant of both have received salvation, being gathered into one
people of God. Jesus has died for the
Jewish people as well as for the whole world, to bring both Jews and non-Jews
together in unity (11:50-52). In this unity, the Jewish particulars of the
Law and Jewish customs in general are transcended in that such particulars were
given to and are for the Jews yet the flock contains both Jews and
Gentiles.
In John it is not so much, after all, the Law or Jewish
custom which represents the world’s greatest need but grace and truth, which
comes from Christ (1:17). The latter is
needed by both Jews and Gentiles and hence represents what, in Christ’s death,
unites God’s people from a diversity of ethnic backgrounds. What the entire world, Jews included, need is
salvation from sin and death and the rulership of the devil (1:29; 6:49-50, 58;
8:24, 70; 11:25-26; 12:31; 13:2; 16:11).
The Jews are not exempt from this need, despite being possession of
divinely given Scriptures and practices.
Their fathers died in the desert from their sin (6:49), but Jesus is here to deal with the problem of sin and
death once and for all for Israel and all others. Sin
may lead to death, enslavement, or exile, but Christ is the means of exodus, of
restoration from the exile of sin and death under which Israel suffers (see 3:14; John 10
in connection with Ezekiel 34; John 11:25, 52 –
especially 11:25 in light of the connection of resurrection with
restoration of Israel in Ezekiel 37). All humanity alike
is portrayed as under sin, under the rulership of Satan, and the Jews not
exempted from this – all are in need of the cleansing of Christ and his
victory. All are part of the sinful
world which is in darkness, in need of light.
Such a universal problem requires a universal solution, not just a
particular one for one particular people.
The Jewish Scriptures, however, are not abandoned in John
nor is the Law necessarily set wholly by the wayside. John still recognizes the authority of
Scripture and of Moses and the Law; the authority of these is implicitly
recognized in frequent citations, allusions, and appeals to them as authorities
by both Jesus and narrator (e.g., 5:45-47, 7:19-24, 12:37-41, 13:18, 15:25, 17:12, 19:24; 20:9). Yet in the new situation of the inclusion of
both Jew and Gentile in Jesus’ flock, their role becomes different; Jewish
particularities are universalized for the sake of a universal people of God and
the Jewish Scriptures take on a key role as witness to Jesus, who fulfills the
Scriptures. The significance of things
such as the Jewish feasts or temple correspondingly is universalized as they
tend to be understood Christologically.
In 4:19-24, for instance, temple worship is universalized into worship for
all since, having now the Spirit and truth which are present in Christ, God’s
people now have that temple presence of God wherever they are and whoever they
are – as 2:13-22 emphasizes, Jesus’ body takes on the role of the temple in
housing God’s presence and as place of worship; at his glorification, this
becomes available to all everywhere. The
significance of each of the various temple-oriented festivals therefore finds its
end also in Jesus as well (see, e.g., the focus on the Passover in John 6, Tabernacles
in 7-10, and Dedication in 10-12). In a
post-70 era, such a message would have been more important than ever to the
Johannine community in the absence of a physical temple and would thus present
the Christian faith as the proper continuation of the Israelite tradition, here
embodied in the temple, in contrast to the differing efforts of non-Christian
Jews to see that tradition forward.
In other words, John presents the divinely-given Jewish
particularities as fulfilled in Christ.
So much is fairly uncontroversial.
One might emphasize Jesus’ fulfillment, however, as a matter of the
strict replacement of the temple and other Jewish particularities. I would propose reading John, however, as portraying
Jesus not so much in terms of a replacement but rather as the culmination of these
particularities. Whatever other main
purpose the Scriptures or other Jewish things might have had in God’s plan,
they are preparatory for Christ. John’s
emphasis on the divine plan surrounding Christ’s telos, which involves his glorification on the cross, resurrection,
and bringing together Jew and non-Jew in the people of God (3:14; 4:34; 5:36;
11:51-52; 12:23-33; 13:1; 17:1-5, 23; 19:28, 30) and the constant connection of
Christ to the fulfillment of Scripture and other Jewish things (e.g., 2:13-22;
4:19-24; 5:45-47; 6:32-35, 44-58; 8:56-58; 11:25-26; 12:37-41; 13:18; 15:1, 5,
25; 17:12; 19:24; 20:9) all seem to point to Christ and his mission as the
culmination, completion, end, or goal of all these particularities rather than
a mere replacement. Even Christ’s own words become words to
fulfill, being treated themselves like Scripture (18:8-9, 31-32). Indeed, we can therefore see God’s particular
plan for the Jews as part of his general plan for the world, with Jesus as
culmination of that plan both for Israel and the world. Jesus thus brings
out of historical Israel blessings for the whole world, Israel included, uniting all in one people of God.
The pattern of qualifying terms related, usually, to the
Jews and their history with the adjective ἀληθινός (true) points in the general direction already emphasized – Jesus is
the culmination of the people’s history and the significance of their
divinely-given particularities (e.g., 1:9; 4:23; 6:32; 15:1 – compare also 2:10
as well as the use of καλός in 10:11). Here, “true” is
generally not opposed to “false” – Jesus is not saying in 6:30-33, for instance, that the
old bread from heaven was fake – but rather seems to be meant in the sense just
given, of culmination or fulfillment, of completion of significance. Jesus’ statement that a certain saying is ἀληθινός in 4:37 seems to have a parallel idea in mind – that is, that the
saying is being fulfilled or instantiated in its full significance.
In John 15:1-8, calling on Old Testament imagery of Israel as vine or vineyard, Jesus calls himself the true vine (ἡ ἄμπελος ἡ ἀληθινή).
This seems to emphasize Christ as representative and the one who binds
together God’s people – to be truly part of Israel or God’s people is to abide in Christ and those who do not
are cut off, a point already mentioned above with regard to those who rejected
Christ. Christ is the fulfillment, the
end, the culmination and representative of Israel and Israel’s history and,
(reading this passage in light of the rest of the Gospel) dying for his people,
he has cleansed them, uniting them together in him. As 10:14-18 and 11:50-52
emphasize, Israel is not rejected or replaced but rather others are brought
in to join them through Jesus’ death. Yet
there is still the threat of being cut off for those who do not believe, as we
have seen; being part of Israel and therefore the people of God in John is a matter of a
proper relationship with Christ. Hence, Nathanael,
who is chosen as one of Christ’s first disciples, is called in 1:47 “truly an Israelite [ἀληθῶς Ἰσραηλίτης] in whom there is no
deceit” – deceit, the opposite of truth, is absent from him and, as a new
follower of Christ, who is the truth, he is a true member of God’s people. As we have seen, then, God’s particular plan
for the Jews is portrayed as part of his general plan for the world and Jesus
is the culmination of each together, both Jews and Gentiles participating
positively in the divine design through acceptance of him.
Part II: Jewish or Christian but not both?
In Part I, I
proposed we read John not as rejecting or replacing the Jewish people but
rather as engaging in a kind of prophetic refinement, with only a remnant
turning to God, the rest remaining in their sin, and believing Gentiles being
added to them as part of the culmination of the nation’s history and
institutions. The question remains,
however, as to whether John allows that one remains a Jew if one successfully
follows Christ. Are these identities
mutually compatible or is John’s picture of the Jews instead wholly negative,
so that to become a Christian is to cease to be a Jew? It would obviously count against the readings
proposed in Part I if the latter were to hold, so the burden of the present
part of the paper will be to briefly propose a preliminary answer to such questions.
According to Raimo
Hakola, the Jews in John are cast in a universally negative light, the enemies
of Christ and Christians, and being Jewish is seen in John as no longer
compatible with being part of the Johannine community – after all, no model
followers of Jesus, he contends, are ever called
Jews.
I will deal with the issue of the portrayal
of the Jews first.
As Kierspel has
indicated, what we find in John is a more complex portrayal of those referred
to as
Ἰουδαῖοι than
might otherwise appear when focusing one-sidedly on the negative uses of Ἰουδαῖοι in
the controversies with Jesus in the Gospel. The Jews are more
divided than might otherwise seem from Hakola’s work: In the story of Lazarus
in chapter 11, for instance, they are mostly portrayed positively and many even
believe (though some do not and instead play the role of opponents (see
especially 11:45-46)). Then in
12:9-11, again, many Jews come to believe in Jesus.
Although scholars differ slightly in their lists as to
which occurrences of Ἰουδαῖοι fail to be negative, the following verses contain
occurrences of the term which many consider to be (perhaps) positive or at
least neutral in tone: 2:6, 13, 16; 3:1, 22; 4:9, 22; 5:1; 6:4, 41, 52; 7:2, 11,
15, 35; 8:22; 11:19, 31, 33, 34, 36, 37, 45, 54, 55; 12:9, 11, 12, 13; 13:33;
18:12, 14, 20, 35; 19:20, 21, 30, 38, 39, 40, 42. Most positively of
all, Jesus himself is explicitly labeled a Jew in 4:9, 20, a label he does not
reject but rather accepts in 4:22, explicitly associating the Jews with the
coming of salvation (cf. 2:16; 5:1; 18:33-35).
Meanwhile, the term Israel (Ἰσραήλ) and its cognates are used in John generally without
any negativity (1:31, 47, 49; 3:10; 12:13).
Divisions between those Jews who oppose Jesus and ones who
do not, meanwhile, occur in 9:16 (called
Pharisees here, rather than Jews); 10:19-21.
Probably merely superficial faith, meanwhile, is said to be attributed
to Jews in 2:23-25; 8:30-31; 9:16, 40-41; 10:19-21; 12:42-43. As James D. G. Dunn
emphasizes, one can see in John a process of sifting and division among the
Jews, particularly in 7-12 (see the uses of κρίσις or σχίσμα in 3:19; 5:22, 27, 29,
30; 7:24, 43; 8:16; 9:16; 10:19; 12:31). Given what was seen
in Part I of the paper, this should not be surprising since it simply
represents the Old Testament pattern of the sifting out of a remnant from
Israel as the legitimate and faithful continuer of its life and tradition.
As was also seen
in Part I, however, the Jews as a people are part of the world, which is
hostile to Jesus and under bondage to darkness.
The non-Jewish peoples, however, are all also in the same boat.
For instance, despite what many see as
attempts to move some of the burden of blame for the crucifixion off of Pilate
onto the Jews, Pilate is still portrayed as solidly on the side of the world –
he is not on the side of truth, does not know or recognize Jesus, and willingly
gives Jesus over for crucifixion (see especially 18:33-19:16).
The Jews are simply the most salient people
of the world to confront Jesus during his lifetime since they were his own
people.
Yet they are themselves but one
of the peoples who are together in the darkness of the world and in need of the
light offered by Jesus.
Pilate is but
one example showing up in John that the world opposing Jesus and under Satan’s
rule goes beyond just the Jews and extends to the Gentile peoples as well.
John, then, does
not portray the Jews overwhelmingly negatively or as incapable of good. Indeed, the fact that John portrays Jesus as
a Jew should itself provide a good bit of evidence against Hakola’s reading
according to which Christians in the Johannine community are thought of as no
longer Jews. Hakola is correct, of
course, that John does have a
tendency not to call any model followers of Jesus Jews (although Jesus does call Nathanael an Israelite). As can be seen
in some of the verses already listed several paragraphs above, although the
term Ἰουδαῖοι is
used of persons when they come to know Jesus, it is generally used of those who
are already said to believe only when
that belief is defective in some way.
What is not noticed, however, is that the very few times
other ethnic labels show up in John, the usage is similar to that noted for Ἰουδαῖοι. On the two occasions, for instance, when the term referring to Greeks (Ἕλληνες)
occurs (7:35, 12:20), it is only used of those who have yet to or are in the
process of coming to Jesus, not of anyone after they have already done so. Similar things could be said for references to
the Samaritans (Σαμαρῖται)
in John 4 (even more negatively, see the one occurrence of Ῥωμαῖοι in 11:48).
In the above
paragraph we have admittedly a very small sample, but it is instructive that in
the Gospel of John no ethnic term is ever applied to any model follower of Jesus (1:47 may count
as an exception) although Jesus himself is
affirmed in his own ethnicity as a Jew. Given
the reading of John in Part I, I would suggest that in that light we see this
phenomenon as part of the universalizing tendency of this Gospel. In other words, the ethnicity of true
believers is purposefully not emphasized since Jesus’ flock is intended to be
universal, united in an identity in Jesus that transcends mere ethnic
distinctions, but without thereby abolishing such distinctions (Jesus, after
all, is still a Jew and salvation is from the Jews). By de-emphasizing the ethnicity of model
believers, John is better able to portray a people which is also universal and
which is therefore inviting to non-Jews as well as Jews. No matter their ethnicity, they too can join
with Israel in the people God, joining thereby, as seen in Part I, the
“true” Israelites (1:47).
Similar things can
be said for the ubiquitous use in the mouth of Jesus of “your own” or “their”,
in reference to the Jews, to modify “the Law” (
νόμος
– see 7:19, 23; 8:17; 10:34; 15:25; cf. 7:22, 51; 18:31; 19:7).
As seen in Part I, the universal nature of
the people of God due to the death of Christ drawing in all peoples (in
addition to the Jews) lends a universalizing tendency to John – the Law in all
of its Jewish particulars does not apply to the people of God qua people of God
since it is universal and overflows the boundaries of the Jewish people.
Jews were still given the Law by God but now
those who were not so given are part of God’s people as well.
Hence, John tends often not to ascribe the
Law to Jesus and his followers, again so as to better portray the universality
of God’s people in Christ.
There is no
strict dichotomy in John, then, between being a Christian and being a Jew, or being
a Christian and belonging to any other ethnicity for that matter.
Conclusion
Rather than hating
the world and the Jews along with it, John portrays God’s love for the world
and his desire for the world, Jews included, to believe in his Son (1:29; 3:16-20;
11:47-53; 12:30-33; 14:30-31;
17:20-23).
God wants to draw
all to himself through the death of Jesus and hence Jesus died for
the Jewish people
as well as
others.
As Udo Schnelle has noted, the
world as a whole in John is represented with a similar complexity to that of
the Jews.
Both are hostile to Jesus, but the people of
the world also go after Jesus and become his disciples.
In 12:18-19,
for instance, we hear of both the Jews and the world going after Jesus.
With qualifications then (see 4:19-24), the Jews are presented as in some
sense on par with the rest of the world – they do not have exclusive rights to
a standing before God vis-à-vis the other peoples of the world nor is their
birth a matter of automatic belonging to God if they do not believe.
Both Jew and Gentile, instead, belong to
Christ in the people of God on the same basis, that of the work of Christ in
his glorification on the cross, where ethnic differences are thereby
transcended in the King of the Jews (19:19-20).
In Christ, this is the ultimate culmination
of God’s plan, in which both Jews and others play their own parts, the wider,
more universal scope within which, for John, the story of Israel
must be understood.
If the historical
hypotheses of people like J. Louis Martyn
are correct, then, given my reading of John, the non-Christian Jews who ejected
the Johannine Christians from the synagogue would be, on a Johannine view, by
definition still allied with the world in its opposition to Jesus; they have
failed to be faithful to their heritage and believe in Jesus and hence stand opposed
to God in Christ, right along with the pagans.
And though all are under the rulership of Satan, Christ has overcome
Satan and the world in their opposition to him, a fact which would give comfort
to the Johannine community.
But since
Jesus also died for the world, Jews included, there is therefore on this
reading perhaps some hope for the Johannine community to see their onetime
opponents, whether Jew or Gentile, see the truth and join the universal people
of God alongside them.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ashton, John. Studying John: Approaches to the Fourth Gospel. Oxford:
Oxford University
Press, 1994.
Barrett, C. K. The Gospel according to St. John: An Introduction with Commentary and
Notes on the Greek Text. Second Edition. Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1978.
Brown, Raymond E. The Gospel according to John I-XII: Introduction, Translation, and
Notes. AB. Garden
City, New York: Doubleday, 1966.
_____.
The Gospel according to John
XXIII-XXI. AB. Garden
City, New York: Doubleday, 1970.
Culpepper, R. Alan. Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel: A Study in Literary Design. Philadelphia:
Fortress, 1983.
_____.
“Anti-Judaism in the Fourth Gospel as a Theological Problem for
Christian Interpreters.” In Anti-Judaism
and the Fourth Gospel: Papers of the Leuven
Colloquium, 2000, edited by R. Bieringer, D. Pollefeyt, and F.
Vandecasteele-Vanneuville, 68-91. Assen: Royal Van Gorcum, 2001.
de Boer, M. C. “The Depiction of ‘the Jews’
in John’s Gospel: Matters of Behavior and Identity.” In Anti-Judaism and the Fourth Gospel: Papers of the Leuven Colloquium, 2000, edited by R. Bieringer, D. Pollefeyt, and F.
Vandecasteele-Vanneuville, 260-280. Assen: Royal Van Gorcum, 2001.
Dunn, James D. G. “The Embarrassment of
History: Reflection on the Problem of ‘Anti-Judaism’ in the Fourth Gospel.” In Anti-Judaism and the Fourth Gospel: Papers
of the Leuven Colloquium, 2000, edited by R.
Bieringer, D. Pollefeyt, and F. Vandecasteele-Vanneuville, 47-67. Assen: Royal
Van Gorcum, 2001.
Hakola, Raimo. Identity Matters: John, the Jews and Jewishness. NovTSup. Leiden:
Brill, 2005.
Keener, Craig S. The Gospel of John: A Commentary, Volume I.
Peabody, Massachusetts:
Hendrickson, 2003.
_____.
The Gospel of John: A Commentary,
Volume II. Peabody, Massachusetts:
Hendrickson, 2003.
Kierspel, Lars. The Jews and the World in the Fourth Gospel: Parallelism, Function, and
Context. WUNT. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006.
Martyn, J. Louis. History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel. Third Edition. NTL. Louisville,
Kentucky: Westminster
John Knox, 2003.
Motyer, Stephen. Your Father the Devil? A New Approach to John and ‘the Jews’. Carlisle,
UK: Paternoster, 1997.
_____. “The Fourth Gospel and the Salvation
of Israel: An
Appeal for a New Start.” In Anti-Judaism
and the Fourth Gospel: Papers of the Leuven
Colloquium, 2000, edited by R. Bieringer, D. Pollefeyt, and F.
Vandecasteele-Vanneuville, 92-110. Assen: Royal Van Gorcum, 2001.
Pansaro, Severino. “‘People of God’ in St
John’s Gospel?” New
Testament Studies 16 (1969-1970): 114-129.
Reinhartz, Adele. “‘Jews’ and Jews in the Fourth
Gospel.” In Anti-Judaism and the Fourth
Gospel: Papers of the Leuven Colloquium, 2000, edited by R.
Bieringer, D. Pollefeyt, and F. Vandecasteele-Vanneuville, 341-356. Assen:
Royal Van Gorcum, 2001.
Ridderbos, Herman N. The Gospel according to John: A Theological Commentary, translated
by John Vriend. Grand Rapids: Wm.
B. Eerdmans, 1997.
Schnackenburg, Rudolf. The Gospel according to St John, Volume Two: Commentary on Chapters
5-12, translated by C. Hastings, F. McDonagh, D. Smith, and R. Foley. New
York: Crossroad, 1982.
_____.
The Gospel according to St John,
Volume Three: Commentary on Chapters 13-21, translated by D. Smith and G A.
Kon. New York: Crossroad, 1982.
Schnelle, Udo. “Antijudaismus im
Johannesevangelium? Ein
Gesprächsbeitrag.” In “Nun steht aber die
Sache im Evangelium…” Zur Frage nach den Anfängen des christlichen
Antijudaismus. Second Edition, edited by R. Kampling, 217-230. Paderborn:
Ferdinand Schöningh, 1999.
von Wahlde, U. C. “The Johannine ‘Jews’: A
Critical Survey.” New Testament Studies
28 (1982): 33-60.
Witherington, Ben, III. John’s Wisdom: A Commentary on the Fourth
Gospel. Louisville, Kentucky:
Westminster John Knox, 1995.
Zumstein, Jean. “The Farewell Discourses
(John 13:31-16:33).” In Anti-Judaism and the Fourth Gospel: Papers
of the Leuven Colloquium, 2000, edited by R.
Bieringer, D. Pollefeyt, and F. Vandecasteele-Vanneuville, 461-478. Assen:
Royal Van Gorcum, 2001, 475.