The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls: The ... - josephprestonkirk

70 THE FUTURE OF A RELIGIOUS PAST
Statements about “children of darkness” are applied specifically to them.
Much has been invested in an effort to understand the designation “Jews”
in the Fourth Gospel. 11 Although a geographical reading works for many
occurrences, I am not convinced that it accounts for the usage overall.
Significantly, however, there is no self-designation that stands over against
“Jews.” There are surely no “Christians” in the Fourth Gospel. The only
time Gentiles (“the Greeks”) are mentioned in a positive light is in chapter
12, where their coming indicates that Jesus’ “hour has come”
(12:20–23). The story is about Jesus and his followers, all of whom are
from the family of Israel. And while there are no “Christians” in the
Fourth Gospel, in the opening chapter Nathaniel is called “an Israelite in
whom there is no guile.” It is apparently acceptable to be an Israelite and
not a “Jew.”
The various constructs proposed by J. Louis Martyn12 and Raymond
E. Brown, 13 to name only the most prominent, make sense of the
terminology. “The Jews” is a self-designation of a group to whom adherents
of the Palestinian Jesus Movement no longer belong—according to
the Fourth Gospel, because of an official decision made by synagogue
authorities (9:22). 14 We do not need to debate here if there ever was such
a formal decision. The Fourth Gospel depicts a situation in which former
members of Israel’s family have been forced out and can no longer call
themselves “Jews.” In this regard, the situations of the Qumran Essenes
and the Johannine community are quite similar.
Even this most extreme “sectarian” form of the new faith, however,
does not create a religious alternative to faith in Israel’s God. To call the
Johannine community “Christian” is not simply to introduce a foreign
terminology but to presume a final solution to an unsolved problem. If
there is no ultimate court of appeal during the last decades of the first
century C.E. to determine who really are “Jews,” neither is there any way
of ruling “messianists” out of the family of Israel. That such a separation
is in progress is not in question. The issue is how close an analogy the
11. Among those who have argued that the designation is geographical (“Judeans”)
is Bruce E. Schein in his unpublished Yale dissertation, “Our Father Abraham,” 1972.
See also his Following the Way: The Setting of John’s Gospel (Minneapolis: Augsburg,
1980). For more-recent discussions, see the contributions in Anti-Judaism and the Fourth
Gospel: Papers of the Leuven Colloquium, 2000 (ed. R. Bieringer et al.; Assen: Royal Van
Gorcum, 2001).
12. J. Louis Martyn, History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel (New York: Harper &
Row, 1968; 2d ed.; Nashville: Abingdon, 1979).
13. Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John (AB 29–29A; Garden City:
Doubleday, 1966–70); and idem, The Community of the Beloved Disciple (New York:
Paulist Press, 1979).
14. See Charlesworth’s contribution in the present volume (ch. 1).