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

130 A STUDY IN SHARED SYMBOLISM AND LANGUAGE
TRANSLATING THE GOSPEL OF JOHN TODAY
The Greek noun Ioudaioi (‘Ioudai=oi) is almost always translated “Jews.”
That rendering is, however, sometimes inaccurate. The social setting of
the Fourth Gospel, and the rivalry between Jewish groups—the post-
Jamnian Hillelites and the post-70 “Christians” who had been born
Jews—caused the Fourth Evangelist creatively to reconstruct the history
of Jesus’ time. 108 By his own time the opponents of Jesus’ group are not
the Sadducees and chief priests, who ceased to exist as a social force after
70 C.E. The opponents were the only other group of Jews who survived
the destruction of 70: the Pharisees, followers of Hillel and Shammai. It
is they whom John sometimes simply labeled Ioudaioi.
Context is more important than etymology when translating a word
that has a wide semantic range. It is, therefore, sometimes absurd to
translate Ioudaioi as “Jews.” Take, for example, John 11:54: “Jesus therefore
no longer went about openly en tois Ioudaiois (e)n toi=j ‘Ioudai/oij), but
went from there to the country near the wilderness, to a town called
Ephraim; and there he stayed with the disciples.” To render Ioudaiois in
this verse as “Jews,” as do most translators, indicates that Ephraim was
not a Jewish town, that the disciples were not “Jews,” and perhaps that
Jesus was not a Jew. According to the Fourth Gospel (11:57) and many
other passages in the Gospels and Acts, the opposition to Jesus emanated
from the priestly circles in Jerusalem. It is sometimes best then to render
Ioudaiois in 11:54 as “Judean leaders.” In this way, the meaning of John
11:54 becomes clear: “Jesus therefore no longer went about openly
among the Judean leaders.” 109
Research on the Dead Sea Scrolls and other Jewish writings, especially
the Pseudepigrapha, has increased translators’ sensitivity to the different
meanings that words obtained by the first century C.E. One of these multivalent
terms is surely Ioudaioi. As I hope to show in a future publication,
before 70 C.E. there were many Jewish groups, certainly more than
twelve Jewish groups or sects (pace Josephus). After 70 only two Jewish
groups survived with any recognition and influence: the Hillel (and
108. See the studies by Jewish and Christian scholars in Hillel and Jesus: Comparisons
of Two Major Religious Leaders (ed. J. H. Charlesworth and L. Johns; Minneapolis:
Fortress, 1997); and see R. Alan Culpepper, Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel (Philadelphia:
Fortress, 1983), 125–32.
109. For a development of this position, see James H. Charlesworth, “The Gospel
of John: Exclusivism Caused by a Social Setting Different from That of Jesus ( John
11:54 and 14:6),” in Anti-Judaism and the Fourth Gospel: Papers of the Leuven Colloquium,
2000 (ed. R. Bieringer, D. Pollefeyt, and F. Vandecasteele-Vanneuville; Jewish and
Christian Heritage Series 1; Assen: Royal van Gorcum, 2001), 479–513.