{"id":2921,"date":"2020-04-20T17:05:59","date_gmt":"2020-04-20T21:05:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/lawrencefrizzell\/?p=2921"},"modified":"2020-04-20T17:05:59","modified_gmt":"2020-04-20T21:05:59","slug":"the-jews-in-the-gospel-of-john","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/lawrencefrizzell\/the-jews-in-the-gospel-of-john\/","title":{"rendered":"“The Jews” in the Gospel of John"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The work of a translator is much appreciated so that ideas can be shared across cultures. Translating the Bible is a wonderful service to the faithful and to all who are curious, but the task is fraught with challenges, which Ronald Knox described in Trials of a Translator<\/a><\/em> (New York, Sheed & Ward, 1949).<\/p>\n

In the mid-1950s La Bible de Jerusalem<\/em> constituted a great service to the Church in Francophone countries, coordinated by the Dominicans of L\u2019Ecole Biblique<\/em> in Jerusalem. The translation into English needed improvements so the Jerusalem Bible<\/em> of 1966 gave way to the New Jerusalem Bible<\/em> in 1985, under the supervision of the Benedictine scholar Henry Wansbrough. Recently he launched the Revised New Jerusalem Bible<\/em> at St. Benet\u2019s Hall in Oxford. Margaret Hebblethwaite reported in this event in The Tablet<\/em> under the title \u201cThe search for the right word of God.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

This report, with the superscription \u201cThe Gospels and anti-Semitism,\u201d focuses on the challenge to translators with regard to the Greek work ioudaios<\/em> in the plural, used 70 plus times in John and traditionally rendered \u201cthe Jews.\u201d The term usually refers to the religious leaders in Jerusalem, who investigated the identity of John the Baptist (John 1:19) and the reason for Jesus\u2019 disruptive action in the Temple area (2:19). The polite tone of their inquiry gave way to intense hostility after Jesus healed the paralyzed man at the pool Bethesda on the Sabbath (5:15-18).<\/p>\n

In October 1997 I gave a paper at an international intra-ecclesial conference in the Vatican on \u201cAnti-Judaism in the Christian Environment.\u201d I sketched the scholarly efforts after the Second Vatican Council to deal with this problem for translators, which you can access and download here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Among recent contributions to this topic, I wish to draw attention to the judicious and irenic statements in The Jewish Annotated New Testament<\/em> edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017, second edition), especially to Joshua Garroway\u2019s essay \u201cIoudaios\u201d (p. 596-99) and Adele Reinhartz\u2019s commentary on the Gospel according to John (p. 172-73). These succinct efforts to grapple with a thorny issue deserve our careful attention.<\/p>\n

Another recent contribution to biblical scholarship with a pastoral and spiritual perspective is The Paulist Biblical Commentary<\/em>, edited by Jos\u00e9 Enrique Aguilar Chiu and others (New York: Paulist Press, 2018). Francis J. Moloney\u2019s commentary on John reviews the topic under \u201cSpecial Issues\u201d (p. 1109-10). \u201cThe expression \u2018the Jews\u2019 does not indicate an ethnic group<\/em>, but those who make a theological and christological decision against Jesus of Nazareth\u2026 In the Gospel of John, \u2018the Jews\u2019 are not a race; such an interpretation must be rejected energetically.\u201d<\/p>\n

How can the pastor deal with the anti-Jewish bigotry that may be aroused among the people listening to the Gospel on Good Friday and on The Second Sunday of Easter (\u201cfor fear of the Jews\u201d in 20:19)? A brief statement can be read before the Passion is proclaimed on Good Friday to recall the message of the Second Vatican Council in the Declaration on the Church\u2019s Relation to Non-Christian Religions (Nostra aetate<\/em>): \u201cTrue, the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ (John 19:16); still, what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today.\u201d A clarification that in these texts \u201cthe Jews\u201d means the religious authorities in Jerusalem can be made on other occasions. Of course, there should be opportunities for all the faithful to engage in Bible study so that their faith is enriched and the misinterpretation by generalization or stereotype is overcome.<\/p>\n

Translators are to be praised for their attention to this problem, but education is the ongoing challenge for all teachers in the parish and school. To end on a benign note, I draw attention to the fine essay by Professor Otto Betz, \u201cTo Worship God in Spirit and Truth: Reflections on John 4:20-26\u201d in the J.M. Oesterreicher Festschrift Standing Before God<\/em> (New York: Ktav, 1981, p. 53-72). \u201cSalvation is from the Jews\u201d is understood in light of Genesis 49:10-11, pointing to Jesus as the Savior of the world (John 4:42).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The work of a translator is much appreciated so that ideas can be shared across cultures. Translating the Bible is a wonderful service to the faithful and to all who are curious, but the task is fraught with challenges, which … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2011,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jewishchristian"],"aioseo_notices":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/lawrencefrizzell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/lawrencefrizzell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/lawrencefrizzell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/lawrencefrizzell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2011"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/lawrencefrizzell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2921"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/lawrencefrizzell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3766,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/lawrencefrizzell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2921\/revisions\/3766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/lawrencefrizzell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/lawrencefrizzell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/lawrencefrizzell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}