I was at a dinner last night where the topic came up of the phrase “The Jews” in John. In particular, Sunday’s sermon had addressed John 20, and the pastor helpfully noted that we need to be careful when reading a verse like 20:19 (“…the doors were locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews…”) that we don’t let it feed into anti-Semitism. I shared some of my thoughts about this with the group, and I thought I’d share here for anyone else who would be helped by this.

“The Jews” is a terrible translation of the Greek word Ioudaioi here and elsewhere for several reasons. First of all, the disciples themselves were Jewish. They didn’t have fear of “the Jews”; they were the Jews! Jesus was a Jew, and probably most of the people that John wrote for were Jews in Asia Minor who believed in Jesus as Jews. Clearly that’s not what the word means here.

Second, the Greek word is mainly a geographic term referring to people who live in Judea. While it could be used in a religious sense to refer to people who have a Jewish belief system, the concept of “religion” really develops later in history. I would translate this with a geographic term rather than what will be read today as a religious phrase, e.g., “the doors were locked where the disciples were for fear of the Judeans.”

But even still, “the Judeans” is not really a perfect way of putting it either. Were they afraid of Judeans in general? No, they were staying in the home of a Judean! Jesus had a following in Jerusalem and throughout Judea, just as he did in Galilee. What is meant here is the people in charge in Judea … those who had urged for Jesus to be put to death. So a lot of Bibles have a footnote here suggesting that the word refers to “Jewish religious leaders” or something like that. The closest equivalent I can think of in our language today is when people use the word “Washington” to refer to the government. It isn’t a criticism of a whole city and the people of it, but specifically of the “Washington governmental leaders.”

Finally, we should think about the pragmatics of Bible translation. Even if “the Jews” was an accurate translation of Ioudaioi, the way that phrase has been used throughout history should caution us against ever using the phrase, especially in a book that people will ascribe so much authority to. I remember in the TV series Community that Shirley says to Annie, “I can’t believe that I never knew you were a Jew,” to which Annie responds, “I’d say the whole word next time.” It is a somewhat funny exchange, and certain we can use the word “Jew” (as many Jewish people would). The problem with Shirley’s quote is not what she says, but how she says it. There is almost a critical tone as she says the word “Jew.” Tone cannot be communicated in written text, so this is another reason I would avoid this phrase in Bible translations. Too many people will see the phrase and embed into it later critical use of the term.

Which brings me to my final point. I was asked yesterday if critical use of the word “the Jews” began with Hitler. Sadly, not at all. The Romans often despised the Judeans for not worshiping the Roman gods, so there was already critical use of the term at play in the first century (but that does not mean John himself used it critically!). By the second century you had so many non-Jews who embraced the Gospel of John that they already began to read the phrase critically … even though they spoke in Greek. Hitler was one person in a long line of people, including Martin Luther and already Ignatius of Antioch in the second century, who took passages like this to justify their own anti-Jewish biases. It’s not just that “the Jews” became a word of derision and so we shouldn’t use it in Bible translation. We could go so far to say as the Bible itself contributed to this use of the word. John himself uses the Ioudaioi critically. For him, it didn’t mean “the Jews,” but he was critical of a group nonetheless. And ironically his criticism was simply widened to include his own people group just decades later.

We should be careful to embody the spirit of love. As John himself (ironically?) says, “Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.” (1 John 2:9-11, ESV)

Let us be careful in how we think and speak about people who oppose us … lest our words become fodder for hate. Eventually that hate will find its way back to us!