John within Judaism religion, ethnicity, and the shaping of Jesus-oriented Jewishness in the fourth gospel 2021039192, 2021039193, 9789004462939, 9789004462946, 9004462937

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John within Judaism

Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity Arbeiten zur Geschichte des Antiken Judentums und des Urchristentums

Founding Editor Martin Hengel † (Tübingen) Executive Editors Cilliers Breytenbach (Berlin) Martin Goodman (Oxford) Editorial Board Lutz Doering (Münster) – Tal Ilan (Berlin) – Judith Lieu (Cambridge) AnneMarie Luijendijk (Princeton) – Tessa Rajak (Reading/Oxford) Daniel R. Schwartz ( Jerusalem) – Sacha Stern (London) Amram Tropper ( Jerusalem) – Christiane Zimmermann (Kiel)

volume 112

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ajec

John within Judaism Religion, Ethnicity, and the Shaping of Jesus-Oriented Jewishness in the Fourth Gospel By

Wally V. Cirafesi

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Cirafesi, Wally V., author. Title: John within Judaism : religion, ethnicity, and the shaping of Jesus-oriented Jewishness in the fourth gospel / by Wally V. Cirafesi. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2021] | Series: Ancient Judaism and early Christianity, 1871–6636 ; volume 112 | Includes bibliographical references. | Summary: “In John within Judaism, Wally V. Cirafesi offers a reading of the Gospel of John as an expression of the fluid and flexible nature of Jewish identity in Greco-Roman antiquity. While many have noted John’s general Jewishness, few have given it a seat at the ideologically congested table of ancient Jewish practice and belief. By interrogating the concept of “Judaism” in relation to the complex categories of “religion” and “ethnicity,” Cirafesi argues that John negotiates Jewishness using strategies of ethnic identity formation paralleled in other Jewish sources from the Second Temple and early rabbinic periods. In this process of negotiation, including its use of “high christology” and critique of Ioudaioi, John coalesces with other expressions of ancient Jewish identity and, thus, can be read “within Judaism.””— Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2021039192 (print) | LCCN 2021039193 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004462939 (hardback : acid-free paper) | ISBN 9789004462946 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Bible. John—Criticism, interpretation, etc. | Judaism (Christian theology)—Biblical teaching. | Judaism. Classification: LCC BS2615.6.J44 C57 2021 (print) | LCC BS2615.6.J44 (ebook) | DDC 226.5/06—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021039192 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021039193

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 1871-6636 ISBN 978-90-04-46293-9 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-46294-6 (e-book) Copyright 2022 by Wally V. Cirafesi. Published by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau Verlag and V&R Unipress. Koninklijke Brill NV reserves the right to protect this publication against unauthorized use. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

In memoriam Floyd Curtis Shaffer January 30, 1929–October 18, 2004

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Contents Acknowledgements xi Abbreviations xiv 1 Introduction: John and Judaism, Then and Now 1 1 The Questions, the Problems, and the Argument 1 2 Scholarly Conceptions of “John and Judaism” 5 2.1 The “Johannine Community” and the “Parting of the Ways” 11 2.2 Replacement, Supersessionism, and Expropriation in Johannine “Anti-Judaism” 15 2.3 John and the Concept of “Religion” 20 3 Some Prolegomena to the Study of John and Judaism 21 4 The Contribution of This Study 25 2 John and the Problem of Ancient “Judaism” 27 1 Introduction 27 2 “Judaism” in Antiquity: Religion and Ethnicity, Unity and Diversity 29 2.1 “Religion” or “Ethnicity”? 29 2.2 Unity and Diversity in Ancient “Judaism” 42 2.3 Modeling Diversity: “Priestly-Oriented” and “Diasporic” Modes of Identity 51 3 The Meaning Potential of Ioudaios in Antiquity: Methodological Observations 71 4 Conclusion 75 3 The Jewish People and the Children of Israel’s God in John 77 1 Introduction 77 2 Ethnos and “Peoplehood” in Greco-Roman and Jewish Antiquity: Between Genealogy and Way of Life 79 3 The Ioudaioi, Jewishness as Genealogy, and the Birth of God’s Children in John’s Gospel 95 3.1 Jewishness as Genealogy and the Boundaries of God’s People in John 7:1–10:21 98 3.1.1 John 7:14–24, 35: Eighth-Day Circumcision and a Mission to (Judaizing) Gentiles 99 3.1.2 John 8:30–59: Slaves, Mamzerim, and Doing as Abraham Did 102

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John 9:1–41: Sinners, “Godfearers,” and Doing the Will of the Jewish God 110 3.1.4 John 10:16: One Flock, One Shepherd, Different Sheep 113 3.1.5 Conclusions on John’s Use of Ioudaioi 116 3.2 The Birth of God’s Children and Their Relationship to the “World” 120 4 Conclusion 126 4 “We Have a Law …” (John 19:7) The Ancestral Law and Its Laws in John 127 1 Introduction: Ethnos and Law in Greco-Roman and Jewish Antiquity 127 2 The Ancestral Law in John 132 2.1 Moses as Lawgiver 132 2.2 Approaches to the Law in John: Statutory vs. Messianic Legal Hermeneutics 138 3 Ancestral Laws in John 145 3.1 Purity 145 3.2 The Ancestral Feasts and Shabbat 165 4 Conclusion 182 5 Reterritorializing Jewish Identity John and the Ancestral Land 185 1 Introduction 185 2 Ethnos and Land in Greco-Roman and Jewish Antiquity 186 3 John and the Ancestral Land 205 3.1 Jesus as the King of Israel, the King of the Jews, and the Kingdom of God 207 3.2 The City of Jerusalem 212 3.3 Jesus’s Death and the Regathering of the “Dispersed Children of God” 214 4 Conclusion 219 6 The National Cult, the Public Assembly, and Jewish Associations John between the Institutions of Temple and Synagogue 221 1 Introduction 221 2 National Cult, Public Assemblies, and Associations in Greco-Roman and Jewish Antiquity 221 2.1 “Common Judaism” and Public Synagogues in the Land of Israel 229

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2.2 Jewish Association-Type Synagogues 229 2.2.1 Integrated Associations in the Land of Israel 230 2.2.2 Non-Integrated Associations in the Land of Israel 232 2.2.3 Jewish Associations outside the Land of Israel 239 2.3 Summary 244 3 National Cult, Public Assemblies, and Jewish Associations in John’s Gospel 246 3.1 Strategies of Re-envisioning Sanctuary Space in John 247 3.2 The Temple and Public “Synagogue” Space in John 257 3.3 John and Aposynagōgos (9:22; 12:42; 16:2) 269 3.3.1 Aposynagōgos and ‘Synagogue’ in the Methodological Tradition of J. Louis Martyn and Raymond Brown 269 3.3.2 Aposynagōgos and ‘Synagogue’ in the Social Scientific and Rhetorical Traditions 272 3.3.3 Reading Aposynagōgos within Judaism 274 4 Conclusion 277 7 Conclusion 279 1 What This Study Did Argue 279 2 What This Study Did Not Argue 282 3 What Next? How John Became ‘Christian’ 284 Bibliography 287 Index of Ancient Sources 319

Acknowledgements This book is a revised version of a Ph.D. thesis defended in the Faculty of Theology at the University of Oslo in December of 2018. I wish to thank Professor Judith Lieu (Cambridge), Dr. Kasper Bro Larsen (Aarhus), and Professor Marianne Bjelland Kartzow (Oslo) for acting as the examination committee and for their incisive and constructive criticism. Their feedback and ongoing support have improved the project immensely and have meant a great deal to me personally. I also wish to thank the editors of Brill’s Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity series for accepting this work for publication, and especially the anonymous reviewer who offered many insightful comments. The current content of the book and any remaining errors are, of course, my own. This project was initially conceived during my first (and unfortunately my only) year in the Ph.D. program in the Religious Studies Department at McMaster University. While brief, that 2014–2015 academic year was highly formative for me. I wish to offer sincere thanks to my friends, colleagues, and former professors at McMaster, all of whom have offered much friendship, encouragement, and intellectual stimulation along the way. Of special note are Drs. Jordan Ryan, Jonathan Bernier, John Bolton, Miriam De Cock, and John VanMaaren, as well as Professors Stephen Westerholm, Daniel Machiela, Peter Widdicombe, and Eileen Schuller. Professor Schuller was especially gracious with her time while I was a student in her seminars and her doctoral teaching assistant; very many thanks to her. The Fall of 2015 brought a change of institution, as I, along with my spouse and (at the time) six-week-old son, followed my supervisor, Professor Anders Runesson, when he took up a new post in the Faculty of Theology at the University of Oslo. I wish to thank the Faculty of Theology Board for offering me a four-year doctoral fellowship, which made the move to Oslo possible and allowed for both continuity of research and the truly rich experience of studying within a Norwegian academic context. I also thank Professor Runesson for his critical insights on the project, as well as for his encouragement and enthusiasm. I could not have asked for a better supervisor. What is more, he and Reverend Anna Runesson, along with their children (Rebecca, Noah, and Rachel), became great friends. Each in their own way made my family’s adjustment to life in Norway exceedingly enjoyable and surely one of the most memorable seasons of our lives. Many thanks to the Runesson family. During my time at UiO, I benefited greatly from the insights and critical feedback of a number of people, all of whom deserve many thanks: Professors Halvor Moxnes, Diana Edelman, Marianne Bjelland Kartzow, Hugo

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Lundhaug, and Ingrid Fuglestvedt (Department of Archaeology, Conservation, and History); Dr. Vemund Blomkvist, Dr. Ole Jakob Løland, Dr. Karin Berber Neutel (now Associate Professor at Umeå University), Dr. Kari Zakariassen, Dr. Sven Thore Kloster, and Lloyd Abercrombie. Beyond the UiO community, I wish to thank Professors Daniel R. Schwartz, Zeev Weiss, and Serge Ruzer of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, each of whom graciously met with me to discuss my ideas during my time in Jerusalem as a Visiting Research Fellow in 2016. I thank Professors Liv Ingeborg Lied, Karl Olav Sandnes, and Ole Jakob Filtvedt of The Norwegian School of Theology, Religion, and Society in Oslo, where I had the privilege of working as a postdoctoral fellow in New Testament and Early Christianity from 2019–2020. Professor Filtvedt deserves special thanks for many inspiring private conversations about John’s Gospel and for reading substantial portions of the manuscript. I also thank Professors Magnus Zetterholm, Karin Herdner Zetterholm, and Samuel Byrskog of Lund University; Professor Jörg Frey of the University of Zurich; and Professor Chris Keith of St. Mary’s University, each of whom in different ways greatly stimulated my thinking and commented on significant portions of earlier drafts of the project. Worth singling out here is Professor Keith, who read the entire project in an early form and functioned as a critical yet charitable external examiner at my Maestro Seminar. Also deserving special thanks is Professor Adele Reinhartz of the University of Ottawa. Professor Reinhartz shared with me a great deal of scholarly and personal wisdom during our time together in Camaldoli, Italy for the 6th Nangeroni Meeting of the Enoch Seminar in the summer of 2016. She did so again during the Negotiating Identities conference held at Lund University in May of 2019. I wish to express my deep appreciation for her, for her scholarship, and for the impact she has had on my professional development. Sections of this book were presented in the meetings of various research groups across Europe, which provided stimulating yet friendly environments to receive excellent feedback. I wish to thank my colleagues in the Swedish– Norwegian New Testament Ph.D. Research School, the New Testament and Jewish Studies research groups at Lund University, the Oslo–Aarhus New Testament Research Seminar, and the New Testament and Early Christianity research group at UiO. The Authoritative Texts and Their Reception Research School (ATTR), funded by the Norwegian Research Council, also provided crucial training opportunities. An ATTR mobility grant for work in Jerusalem at the W.F. Albright Institute for Archaeological Research during the summer of 2017 funded the research that comprises much of chapter 4 of this book. During that stay, I had the privilege of learning from Dr. Yonatan Adler about

Acknowledgements

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his research on chalkstone vessels and ritual baths. Many thanks to Dr. Adler for granting me access to his archaeology lab and for his encouragement of my research. I also wish to thank Dr. Marcela Zapata-Meza, Rosaura Sanz Rincón, Andrea Garza, and the rest of the team in the Magdala Archaeological Project for allowing me to work with them during the 2016, 2017, and 2018 excavation seasons. My digging experience at Magdala has taught me more about archaeology and the early Jewish world of Jesus than any textbook could. Mikayla Nelson provided proofreading assistance toward the end of the publication process. Joshua Zucco helped to prepare the Ancient Sources Index. Many thanks to both. Dr. Gregory Peter Fewster (University of Toronto) deserves special thanks. Dr. Fewster has been an important dialogue partner in my academic work, but his personal friendship over the past decade has, quite literally, been a lifesaver. He has seen me through a major cycling accident, the birth of my two children in two different countries, and many other of life’s ups and downs. Many thanks to him. I wish to thank my family for their support. My mother-in-law Becca Crask and grandfather-in-law Stanley Crask have been a source of generous financial support and emotional encouragement along the way, as have been my own parents, Walter and Connie Cirafesi. My sisters, Carrie and Carmela, although separated by many kilometers, have been very supportive – Carrie graciously proofread a substantial portion of the final manuscript  – and so have my brothers-in-law, Jamey and Mark. My spouse, Jessie, and my two children, Levi and Camille, have kept me grounded with tears, laughter, and not a little homemade pizza. Many thanks to them. Finally, I wish to thank my late grandmother and grandfather, Faustine and Floyd Shaffer, both of whom shared a great interest in the Bible and its history. Floyd never took a university Bible course, but he taught himself Hebrew and knew the history of Judaism well. Only now as an adult, nearly seventeen years after his death, have I come to appreciate the impact Floyd has had on my life. Many of his old books, from Yonge’s edition of The Works of Philo to Plaut’s and Bamberger’s commentaries on the Torah, now sit on the bookshelves of my home office. I often catch myself wondering what kind of conversations we would have had if the timing of our interests had coincided. Perhaps one day I’ll find out. It is to him, to his blessed memory, and to that day I dedicate this book. WVC April 2021

Abbreviations AJEC ALD ASSB BASOR BAR BibInt BTB CBNTS CBQ CD CIJ CJZ DJD DSSSE EJL HdO ICC IEJ IJO JAAR JAJ JAJSup JBL JECS JIWE JJMJS JJS JQR JRS JRASup JSJ JSJSup JSNT

Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity Aramaic Levi Document A. Runesson, D. Binder, and B. Olsson, The Ancient Synagogue from its Origins to 200 CE: A Source Book. AJEC 72. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. Biblical Archaeology Review Biblical Interpretation Biblical Theology Bulletin Coniectanea Biblica New Testament Series Catholic Biblical Quarterly Damascus Document J.B. Frey, ed. Corpus Inscriptionum Judaicarum. 2 vols. Vol. 1, rev. ed. 1975. Gert Lüderitz, and Joyce Maire Reynolds, eds. Corpus jüdischer Zeugnisse aus der Cyrenaika. Discoveries in the Judaean Desert Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition Early Judaism and Its Literature Handbuch der Orientalistik International Critical Commentary Israel Exploration Journal David Noy et al. (vols. 1, 3), Walter Ameling (vol. 2), eds. Inscriptiones Judaicae Orientis Journal of the American Academy of Religion Journal of Ancient Judaism Journal of Ancient Judaism Supplements Journal of Biblical Literature Journal of Early Christian Studies David Noy, ed. Jewish Inscriptions of Western Europe Journal of the Jesus Movement in its Jewish Setting Journal of Jewish Studies Jewish Quarterly Review Journal of Roman Studies Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplements Journal for the Study of Judaism Journal for the Study of Judaism Supplements Journal for the Study of the New Testament

Abbreviations

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JSNTSup Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplements JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament JSOTSup Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplements LNTS Library of New Testament Studies LXX Septuagint Masoretic Text MT NEAEHL The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land. Edited by E. Stern. 4 vols. Jerusalem, 1993 New Cambridge Bible Commentary NCBC Novum Testamentum NovT NovTSup Novum Testamentum Supplements New Testament Studies NTS New Testament Tools and Studies NTTS SEG Supplementum epigraphicum Graecum SNTSMS Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah STDJ TDNT Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. Edited by G. Kittel and G. Friedrich. Translated by G.W. Bromiley. 10 vols. Grand Rapids, 1964–1976 Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism TSAJ WUNT Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft ZNW Abbreviations of ancient sources have followed The SBL Handbook of Style, 2nd ed. (Atlanta: SBL, 2014).

chapter 1

Introduction: John and Judaism, Then and Now 1

The Questions, the Problems, and the Argument

The central concern of this book is to understand how the Gospel of John negotiates Jewish identity.1 Nearly fifty years ago, the great British New Testament scholar Charles Kingsley Barrett made the simple yet insightful observation that research into the topic of “John and Judaism” is not, and really has never been, a matter of if the Fourth Gospel has a relationship to Judaism. Rather, the principal questions for investigation, rightly defined by Barrett, are: to what form of Judaism does John relate, and what is the nature of that relationship?2 These questions have occupied the pens of Johannine scholars for over a century and a half,3 and the recent burst of publications on the topic demonstrates that they continue to do so today.4 1 Chapter 2 of this study will flesh out in more detail the problematic categories of ‘Judaism,’ ‘Jewishness,’ and ‘Jewish identity.’ For discussion of some of this terminology and the questions it raises for the study of John, see J. Lieu, “Anti-Judaism in the Fourth Gospel: Explanation and Hermeneutics,” in Anti-Judaism and the Fourth Gospel, ed. R. Bieringer, D. Pollefeyt, and F. Vandecasteele-Vanneuville ([Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2001], 101–20 [104]). 2 C.K. Barrett, The Gospel of John and Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975), 13–14. 3 The most extensive history of research that I have seen on the various “contexts” of the Fourth Gospel, stretching as far back as Hugo Grotius (1679), is J. Frey, “Auf der Suche nach dem Kontext des vierten Evangeliums: Eine forschungsgeschichtliche Einführung,” in Kontexte des Johannesevangeliums: Das Vierte Evangelium in religions- und traditionsgeschichtlicher Perspektive, ed. J. Frey and U. Schnelle, WUNT 175 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 3–45. For an excellent history of research on Johannine (anti-)Judaism prior to World War II, see J. Numada, “The Repetition of History? A Select Survey of Scholarly Understandings of Johannine Anti-Judaism from Baur until the End of the Weimar Republic,” in The Origins of John’s Gospel, ed. S.E. Porter and H. Ong, JOST 2 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 261–84. For histories of post-war scholarship on John and Judaism, see D. Moody Smith, “The Contribution of J. Louis Martyn to the Understanding of the Gospel of John,” in the 3rd edition of Martyn’s History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2003), 1–19; T. Thatcher, “John and the Jews: Recent Research and Future Questions,” in John and Judaism: A Contested Relationship in Context, ed. R.A. Culpepper and P.N. Anderson (Atlanta: SBL, 2017), 3–38. 4 For example, in the past five years alone: R. Hakola, Reconsidering Johannine Christianity: A Social Identity Approach (London: Routledge, 2015), which largely follows up on his earlier monograph Identity Matters: John, the Jews, and Jewishness, NovTSup 118 (Leiden: Brill, 2005); G. Wheaton, The Role of the Jewish Feasts in John’s Gospel, SNTSMS 162 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), which includes a nearly 70 page section on “Judaism in the

© Wally V. Cirafesi, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004462946_002

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The enduring relevance of these questions is no doubt due to the complexity and significance of the problems they pose to the historian of religion, the exegete, and the theologian alike. They pose a problem for the historian because of the convolution surrounding the Fourth Gospel’s origins, cultural influences, conceptual milieu, and relationship to emerging non-Jewish “Christianity.” They are a problem for the exegete because so many of John’s compositional strategies, especially its portrayal of “the Jews” and Jewish institutions, are marked by ambiguity and multiple interpretive possibilities. And they are a problem for the modern theologian engaged in Jewish–Christian dialogue today because of the long, calamitous history of John’s use within Christian anti-Jewish hate-speech.5 The problems I wish to engage in this study are primarily the ones for the historian of religion and the exegete. To be sure, scholarship is never done in a social, political, or historical vacuum, and the research process is always shaped by the demands of one’s contemporary context. This is especially true for the study of a text like John’s Gospel, deemed sacred within one religious tradition and yet having had such a terrible and violent effect upon another. We will never be able to read John before the Holocaust, as if the words “Der Vater der Juden ist der Teufel” were never plastered on a public street sign in Nazi-era Eschenbach to inspire hatred of Jews among its residents.6 We will never be able to read John before Charlottesville or the massacre of Squirrel Hill, two expressions of anti-Semitic hate in recent American history in which John 8:44

Gospel of John”; U.C. von Wahlde, Gnosticism, Docetism, and the Judaisms of the First Century: The Search for the Wider Context of the Johannine Literature and Why It Matters, LNTS 517 (London: T&T Clark, 2015); Culpepper and Anderson, eds., John and Judaism; J. Frey, Glory of the Crucified One: Theology and Christology in the Fourth Gospel, trans. W. Coppins and C. Heilig (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2018), esp. the essays in Part 2; and A. Reinhartz, Cast Out of the Covenant: Jews and Anti-Judaism in the Gospel of John (Lanham: Lexington/ Fortress Academic, 2018). 5 On this, see the brief comments in the influential book by J.G. Gager, The Origins of Anti-Semitism: Attitudes toward Judaism in Pagan and Christian Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 151–53; L.C. Freudmann, Antisemitism in the New Testament (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1994), 264–67; S. Motyer, Your Father the Devil? A New Approach to John and ‘the Jews’ (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1997), 1–7; R.A. Culpepper, “Anti-Judaism in the Fourth Gospel as a Theological Problem for Christian Interpreters,” in Anti-Judaism and the Fourth Gospel, 61–82; and N.E. Marans, “The Place of John in Christian – Jewish Relations Fifty Years after Nostra Aetate,” in John and Judaism, ed. Culpepper and Anderson, 333–38. 6 A photograph of this street sign is accessible on the website of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (photograph number: 74571, https://collections.ushmm.org/search/ catalog/pa1179582).

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also played an effective role.7 John’s reception history – how it has been understood and used within a long line of historically conditioned contexts – will forever hover over the heads and before the eyes of Johannine interpreters. One of the hermeneutical assumptions of this book, however, is that an analytical distinction can and should be made between John’s reception history and John’s inception history. While the former might involve, for example, the study of John’s importance for the church or its reading by Christian scribes as reflected in Johannine manuscripts, the latter involves the attempt to locate the intentions of the text – its patterns of thought, compositional strategies, and negotiations of identity – within an initial but broadly conceived historical setting that makes the best sense of these intentions.8 The concept of “intention” here should not be confused with what W.K. Wimsatt and M.C. Beardsley 7 According to a report in Time Magazine by Andrew Katz, photographer Jill Mumie captured a powerful image on July 8, 2017 of a black police officer named Darius Nash protecting a group of white supremacists who were demonstrating at a rally of the KKK in Charlottesville, Virginia (https://time.com/4899668/charlottesville-virginia-protest-officer-kkk-photo/). This image would go viral only after another such rally held a few weeks later, on August 12, which was widely covered by American media outlets and involved the death of Heather Heyer. In the background of the photo, seen over the right shoulder of Officer Nash, a man carries a Confederate flag in one hand and a poster board in the other with the words “Jews are Satans [sic] children.” Three passages from the New Testament are cited on the post board; John 8:31–47 is the first. The massacre of Squirrel Hill, during which eleven worshipers at a Pittsburgh-area synagogue were shot and killed in cold blood, took place on October 27, 2018. The killer, Robert Gregory Bowers, had apparently used John 8:44 as a biographical description on a social media account. See https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jews-are-the -children-of-satan-john-8-44-danger-of-taking-biblical-passages-out-of-context/. 8 Some scholars have suggested that we cannot read John today apart from or without being affected by its dark effective history; indeed, to do so would even be unethical. See on this R. Sheridan, “Issues in the Translation of οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι in the Fourth Gospel,” JBL 132.3 (2013): 671–95 (690–91); A. Reinhartz, “John 8:31–59 from a Jewish Perspective,” in Remembering for the Future 2000: The Holocaust in an Age of Genocides, ed. J.K. Roth and E. Maxwell-Maynard (London: Palgrave, 2001), 2:787–97. My intention, of course, is neither to minimize John’s horrible Wirkungsgeschichte, nor to suggest we can read John as if 2000 years of history have not passed us by. While acknowledging this history, however, I do think it is possible to pursue an understanding of the intention of John’s text within an initial context of first-century Judaism, rather than third-, fourth-, sixteenth- or twenty-first century non-Jewish Christianity. In distinguishing between inception and reception history, I echo Anders Runesson’s work on Matthew’s Gospel and Troels Engberg-Pedersen’s on John, who have expressed the concern that, if this distinction is not made, then the risk of historical anachronism is inevitable. T. Engberg-Pedersen, John and Philosophy: A New Reading (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 330 n. 23, 332; A. Runesson, Divine Wrath and Salvation in Matthew: The Narrative World of the First Gospel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016), xvi. Runesson offers a helpful parallel that describes what is intended in this distinction: “The distinction is similar to what most would agree would be the case with texts included in the Hebrew Bible; the fact that (non-Jewish) Christians included this collection in their canon does not mean that the texts

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called already in the 1940s “the intentional fallacy,”9 the belief that an author’s intent, as something extrinsic to the text and existing only in the mind of the author, is determinative for construing the meaning of the text.10 Rather, as Jonathan Bernier has helpfully clarified in his development of the work of Ben F. Meyer, “intention” must be conceived as something intrinsic to the text, not the mind of the author: Yet, Meyer correctly observes that “the definers of the so-called intentional fallacy overlooked the far more basic issue of intention precisely as intrinsic to the text.” If intention is something intrinsic to the text, then the text, not the author’s mind, provides the primary data to be interpreted. Thus does Meyer argue that the author’s intention, or, as he also calls it, the “intended meaning,” is “intrinsic to the text insofar as the text objectifies or incorporates or encodes or expresses the writer’s message.” Of course, through interpreting the text, we might learn a great deal about the author and the author’s mind, but we do so through a procedure precisely opposite to that of the intentional fallacy, for whereas the intentional fallacy tries to understand the author in order to understand the text, intentionality analysis as advocated by Meyer tries to understand the text in order to understand the author. That such analysis can be done is demonstrated by the fact that Meyer can, along with any other competent reader of Wimsatt and Beardsley’s article on the intentional fallacy, judge that they intend in that article to critique something that they call the intentional fallacy.11 This book is a study of John’s relationship to “Judaism” by way of its inception history, understood not as a quest for the mind of a historical author or that author’s historical audience but rather as a quest to understand the text’s intentions in relationship to broader patterns in the negotiation of Jewish ethnic identity active in the Second Temple and early rabbinic periods. In this way, the book’s objective is to push one or two steps further that segment of Johannine scholarship, surveyed below, that has already long appreciated the

themselves are to be labeled ‘Christian’ when we consider them in their original historical settings” (xvi n. 9). 9 W.K. Wimsatt, Jr. and M.C. Beardsley, “The Intentional Fallacy,” The Sewanee Review 54.3 (1946): 468–488. 10 J. Bernier, Aposynagōgos and the Historical Jesus in John: Rethinking the Historicity of the Johannine Expulsion Passages, BibInt 122 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 25. 11 Bernier, Aposynagōgos, 25.

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Jewishness of John, and to encourage interpreters to conceptualize the topic no longer as “John and Judaism” but rather as “John within Judaism.”12 2

Scholarly Conceptions of “John and Judaism”

Jonathan Numada has recently observed that, while there is certainly no underestimating the hermeneutical significance of the unspeakable evils of the Holocaust for the interpretation of John’s Gospel, the terms and trajectories of contemporary debate on John’s relationship to Judaism were set in place well before the Second World War. Already in the mid-nineteenth century there was a deep concern, even in the work of some German scholarship, for the Fourth Gospel’s indebtedness to Judaism, whether with reference to some notion of its authorship, its audience, or its patterns of thought.13 As 12

13

What I mean by the phrase “within Judaism” will be explained and clarified throughout the study. Here I mention just a couple of points. First, the ethnic identity of the historical author or the historical audience is not a criterion for whether John as a text should be understood “within Judaism.” Not only is such historical data unavailable to us but such an approach would miss the point that ancient texts can discoursively construct transethnic social categories, which intend to include members of an outgroup (e.g., Gentiles) within the boundaries of an ingroup (e.g., Jews) (see chapter 3 of the current study). Such texts, regardless of the “actual” ethnic identity of author and audience, would be considered “within Judaism,” as they prioritize Jewish ethnic identity despite the inclusion other ethnic identities. The primary criterion, therefore, is a text’s self-ascribed relationship to the Jewish ethnos and preferred vision of the social world. However, and second, recent research by John VanMaaren has convincingly shown that the relationship between a text and the Jewish ethnos should be conceived in non-binary terms and as involving a range of types. VanMaaren posits five types of relationships: (1) “equivalent,” in which the primary ingroup identity envisioned by the text is all Jews; (2) “subgroup,” in which the primary ingroup identity envisioned is a subgroup of Jews such as the Yaḥad of the Dead Sea Scrolls; (3) “trans-ethnic,” in which the primary ingroup is multi-ethnic but gives central place and privilege to Jews; (4) “non-ethnic,” in which there is a dissolution of the Jews/nations boundary and ethnicity is not a marker of the primary ingroup identity; and (5) “incompatibility,” in which the primary ingroup identity envisioned by the text is incompatible with Jewishness (J. VanMaaren, “Reading Paul within Judaism: Criteria, Methodology, and Moving beyond Binaries,” paper given in the Historical Paul section of the Annual Meeting of the SBL, Boston, MA, 1 December 2020). Of these, only (5), and possibly (4), would characterize a text as “outside Judaism.” As I will argue in chapter 3, neither of these characterizes John’s relationship to the Jewish ethnos. Numada, “The Repetition of History?” 269–82, where he offers a fine discussion of the work of other non-Tübingen School German scholars, such as Christof Ernst Luthardt, Das johanneische Evangelium nach seiner Eigenthümlichkeit, 2 vols. (Nürnberg: C. Geiger, 1853); H.K. Hugo Delff, Das vierte Evangelium: Ein authentischer Bericht über Jesus von Nazareth (Husum: C.F. Delff, 1890); and Ernst Dobschütz, Probleme des apostolischen

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Numada demonstrates, this concern, also reflected in early twentieth-century British scholarship, was in large part formulated in reaction to the work of F.C. Baur and the Tübingen School, who, for their own historical, cultural, ideological reasons, cared almost nothing for Judaism, instead placing a premium on John’s conceptual affinity to Gnostic and Hellenistic religions.14 This religionsgeschichtliche Schule approach reached its climax in the work of Rudolf Bultmann, who understood John, its cultural milieu, and its sources as deriving from a world entirely outside Judaism and within the dualistic world-view of Gnostic Mandaeism. For Bultmann, Jews and Judaism within the narrative of John’s Gospel functioned merely as timeless symbols of human unbelief and opposition to God’s revelation.15

14

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Zeitalters (Leipzig: J.C. Hinrische, 1904), who did not write about John only but also the early history of Jewish–Christian–Gentile relations. Within this reactionary scholarly movement, Numada also places British scholars such as James Drummond, An Inquiry into the Character and Authorship of the Fourth Gospel (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1904); William Sanday, The Criticism of the Fourth Gospel (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1905); E.F. Scott, The Fourth Gospel: Its Purpose and Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1906 [2nd ed. 1908]); Latimer Jackson, The Fourth Gospel and Some Recent German Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1906); Percy Gardner, The Ephesian Gospel (London: Williams and Norgate, 1916); and Benjamin W. Bacon, Fourth Gospel in Research and Debate (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1918), whose subsequent 1933 book on John was titled The Gospel of the Hellenists, ed. Carl H. Kraeling (New York: Henry Holt, 1933). Numada, “The Repetition of History?” 265–69, where he contextualizes Baur and the Tübingen School within the Hegelian philosophical tradition, German nationalism, and German scholarship’s orientalizing tendencies, which prioritized the inherently positive value of the western intellectual heritage of Greece over and against eastern traditions, Judaism among them. Also on Baur’s influence on the interpretation of John, see J. Frey, “Ferdinand Christian Baur and the Interpretation of John,” in Ferdinand Christian Baur and the History of Early Christianity, ed. M. Bauspiess, C. Landmesser, and D. Lincicum, trans. R.F. Brown and P.C. Hodgson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 206–35; Frey, “Eine forschungsgeschichtliche Einführung,” 11–15. For the actual content of Baur’s position from Baur himself, see Das Christentum und die christliche Kirche der drei ersten Jahrhunderte, 2nd rev ed. (Tübingen: Verlag und Druck von L. Fr. Fues., 1860), 148–52. See especially his major commentary: The Gospel of John: A Commentary, trans. G.R. Beasley-Murray (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971 [orig. German ed. 1941]); and Theology of the New Testament, trans. K. Grobel (London: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1955), 2:27, where he says, “Taking the Jewish religion as an example, John makes clear through it how the human will to self-security distorts knowledge of God, makes God’s demand and promise into a possession and thereby shuts itself up against God. In so doing, John takes as his starting point not the Jewish striving after ‘righteousness’ but the will-towardlife which is active in every religion” (italics original). For Bultmann’s earlier work on John within a Gnostic Mandaean context, see “Die Bedeutung der neuerschlossenen mandäischen und manichäischen Quellen für das Verständnis des Johannesevangeliums,” ZNW 24 (1925): 103–43.

Introduction

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Bultmann’s Gnostic framework for John’s conceptual origins was met with almost immediate criticism, especially in Anglophone scholarship after the war.16 What proved to be more influential than Bultmann’s Gnosticism hermeneutic, however, was the Tübingen School’s emphasis on a strong Judaism/ Hellenism divide in antiquity: John’s use of symbolism and its “universalistic” soteriology set it within the realm of Hellenism over against Judaism’s law-bound “particularism.”17 Such an approach is evident even in the work of the great Albert Schweitzer, whose portrait of a Jewish apocalyptic Paul working within the trajectory of a Jewish apocalyptic historical Jesus bucked the overwhelming trend in the German historical-critical scholarship of his day.18 In Schweitzer’s view, John hellenized Paul’s eschatological “Mystik” of union with Christ, introducing belief in the Logos-Christ and the sacraments of the Eucharist and baptism as Hellenistic and thus distinctly “Christian” expressions of Paul’s originally Jewish message.19 John, in other words, reflects the same attitude as other non-Jewish authors of the second century, such as Ignatius and Justin, who worked hard to create a distinct “Christian” 16

17 18 19

In his The Gospel of John and Judaism, Barrett, too, was sympathetic toward the idea of seeing John in some sort of communication with Gnostic thought, with John using Gnostic ideas, in the end, to formulate an anti-Gnostic polemic. The major difference between Barrett and Bultmann, however, was that the former found such ‘Gnostic’ ideas already present in earlier sources such as the Dead Sea Scrolls rather than the later Mandaean materials. To this day, C.H. Dodd’s The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953), 97–130 remains the most thoughtful and extensive engagement with the possibility of John’s ‘Gnosticness’ and/or ‘Mandaeanness.’ Like most Johannine scholars today, Dodd ended up rejecting both as unimportant for the interpretation of John, mainly because (1) the sources are much later; (2) the stability and coherence of the category of ‘Gnosticism’ have come under such intense criticism, even in Nag Hammadi studies, so as to make it inherently misleading and meaningless; and (3) as our knowledge of Judaism has progressed over the decades, scholars have concluded that everything that Bultmann wished to accomplish with John and Gnosticism is rather easily accomplished with certain manifestations of ancient Judaism, a point concisely but powerfully made already by M. Hengel, The Johannine Question, trans. J. Bowden (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1989), 113–14. For critiques of the category of ‘Gnosticism,’ see especially M.A. Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism”: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996); K.L. King, What is Gnosticism? (Cambridge, MA: Belknap/Harvard University Press); H. Lundhaug, Images of Rebirth: Cognitive Poetics and Transformational Soteriology in the Gospel of Philip and the Exegesis of the Soul, NHM 73 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 16–19; and von Wahlde, Wider Context, 27–57. I thank Prof. Hugo Lundhaug and Lloyd Abercrombie for discussing the problem of ‘Gnosticism’ with me in personal conversations. See Numada, “The Repetition of History,” 266–69. A. Schweitzer, Die Mystik des Apostels Paulus, 2nd ed. (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1954 [orig. 1931]). Schweitzer, Mystik, 340–58.

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identity independent from Judaism. As Schweitzer says, “Die Stimmung im Johannesevangelium ist dieselbe, wie in Justins Dialog mit Trypho. Sie spiegelt die Kämpfe wieder, in denen sich das Christentum von dem Judentum, wie es sich nach der Zerstörung Jerusalems nach außenhin abzuschließen begann, losgelöst hat.”20 Three events during the mid-twentieth century radically changed the direction of Johannine scholarship. All of them have been well documented, so we need only to mention them briefly here. The first was the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls from 1947–1956, which, regardless of one’s take on their historical relationship to John’s Gospel, demonstrated that certain conceptual features in John that were normally understood to reflect its Hellenistic outlook, particularly its cosmic dualism, were, in fact, already present within the thought-world of Second Temple Judaism.21 The Scrolls, then, only strengthened the view of scholars like Wilhelm Michaelis, who, in the second revised edition of his Einleitung in das Neue Testament, was so bold as to say about John’s character: “Als Gewinn ist bisher schon zu buchen, dass der palästinensische Charakter des Johannes, der von Schlatter […] und vielen Anderen immer wieder betont worden ist […], nunmehr so klar hervorgetreten ist, dass die Versuche, eine andere Herkunft zu propagieren, eigentlich verstummen sollten.”22 20

21

22

Schweitzer, Mystik, 341–42. Just before this short paragraph, on p. 341, he clearly distinguishes John from Jesus and Paul in their concern for the fate of Israel: “Bemerkenswert ist, daß das Johannesevangelium das jüdische Volk als solches, mit Ausnahme weniger Persönlichkeiten, als logosfeindlich ansieht. Von der Sorge um das Schicksal Israels, wie sie Jesus und Paulus bewegt, weiß der johanneische Christus nichts. Er stellt einfach fest, daß die Juden, die die Weissagungen auf ihn besitzen, so verblendet sind, daß sie in ihnen nicht finden, was sie enthalten (Joh 5:45–47).” As noted by Barrett (The Gospel of John and Judaism, 2–3), the fruits of Dodd’s work in his Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel did not fall far from the tree of Schweitzer and others who saw John as a Hellenistic work. Although Dodd certainly appreciated early Judaism as one among many “backgrounds” for John, he ultimately assigned it a Hellenistic character in light of its supposed Hellenistic audience in Roman Ephesus (p. 9). See R. Bauckham, “The Qumran Community and the Gospel of John,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Fifty Years after Their Discovery, ed. L.H. Schiffman, E. Tov, and J.C. VanderKam (Jerusalem: IES, 2000), 105–115, who actually downplays the significance of the Scrolls for appreciating the Jewishness of John’s dualism, believing that such a conclusion can be draw from the Jewish sources known long before the discovery of the Scrolls; P.N. Anderson, “John and Qumran: Discovery and Interpretation over Sixty Years,” in John, Qumran, and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Sixty Years of Discovery and Debate, ed. M.L. Coloe and T. Thatcher, EJL 32 (Atlanta: SBL, 2011), 15–50; and, in the same volume, J.H. Charlesworth, “The Fourth Evangelist and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Assessing Trends over Nearly Sixty Years,” 161–82. W. Michaelis, Einleitung in das Neue Testament, 2nd rev. ed. (Bern: Berchtold Haller Verlag, 1954), 123. See also studies by W.C. van Unnik, “The Purpose of St. John’s Gospel,” Studia

Introduction

9

The second event was the publication in 1968 of J.L. Martyn’s slim but highly influential History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel, which, while retaining Bultmann’s Gemeindegeschichte reading strategy, put the proverbial nail in the coffin of Bultmann’s theory of John’s Gnostic origins. Instead, Martyn read John’s polemic against “the Jews,” and specifically its synagogue expulsion passages (9:22; 12:42; 16:2), within a reconstructed historical context of conflict between a Johannine Christian community that had broken with, or better, had been “excommunicated” from, a rabbi-led synagogue in the late first-century.23 In Martyn’s view, John ultimately recounts a “Synagogue–Church drama,”24 a story about the early separation of “Christians” and “Christianity” from “Jews” and “Judaism,” rather than the Christianizing of Gnosis as Bultmann had proposed earlier. Third, and perhaps somewhat ironically, thanks to the 1974 work of Martin Hengel, the intellectual headmaster of the New Tübingen School, the rigid dichotomy between Judaism and Hellenism, which had played such a critical role in the historical reconstructions of early Christianity by Baur and his

23

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Evangelica 1 (1959): 382–411, who placed John within the Jewish life-situation of a mission to those attending diaspora synagogues (Jews and Gentiles); and J.A.T. Robinson, “The Destination and Purpose of St. John’s Gospel,” NTS 6 (1960): 117–31, who argued that John belongs, like Philo, within the scope of Hellenistic Judaism, being entirely unconcerned with non-Jews. For Robinson, John’s goal was to prevent Jews of the diaspora from committing the same “error” as Jews in the land of Israel who rejected Jesus. Thus, whereas “Philo was commending Judaism to Greek-speaking paganism: John was commending Christianity to Greek-speaking Judaism” (130). J.L. Martyn, History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel, 3rd ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2003 [1st ed. 1968; 2nd ed. 1979]). As Numada notes, however, the groundwork for the two-level reading strategy for which Martyn became so famous was already set in place by Percy Gardner in his The Ephesian Gospel. See Numada, “The Repetition of History?” 280. On the significance of Martyn’s work for the development of the so-called ‘Johannine Community hypothesis,’ and subsequent responses to it, see W.V. Cirafesi, “The Johannine Community Hypothesis (1968–Present): Past and Present Approaches and a New Way Forward,” CBR 12.2 (2014): 173–93; Cirafesi, “The ‘Johannine Community’ in (More) Current Research: A Critical Appraisal of Recent Methods and Models,” Neot 48.2 (2014): 341–64. Further, in many ways, Martyn’s work cannot be separated from that of his contemporary and colleague at Union Seminary New York, Raymond Brown, whose ideas on the Johannine community developed very much in concert with Martyn’s, especially in his two-volume Anchor Bible commentary on John (1966, 1970) and The Community of the Beloved Disciple: The Life, Loves, and Hates of an Individual Church in New Testament Times (New York: Paulist Press, 1979). See chapter 6 of this study, where both scholars are discussed with reference to their views on the “synagogue” and “Judaism.” This is the title of Part I of his History and Theology.

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followers, collapsed.25 Hengel demonstrated that Jews both in the land of Israel (he used the term “Palestine”26) and abroad were significantly influenced by their Hellenistic neighbors, including even the unquestionably Jewish group that produced the Dead Sea Scrolls.27 That John had Hellenistic features – or at least features that would be legible within a Hellenistic context, such as its use of terms like λόγος, πνεῦμα, σάρξ – no longer disqualified it from having Jewish “origins,” which, for Hengel, primarily meant its having an author who was originally a Jew from Judea.28 A very clear outworking of Hengel’s model has recently appeared in Troels Engberg-Pedersen’s John and Philosophy. On the one hand, Engberg-Pedersen makes the strongest case to date for John’s indebtedness to ideas found in Hellenistic philosophy; on the other hand, he argues strongly that “John” – not necessarily the historical figure but rather “the one implied in the text itself” – nevertheless speaks from “within Judaism” (italics original).29 Hengel himself applied his Judaism/Hellenism model to the so-called “Johannine Question.”30 Like Martyn, Hengel viewed John in its present form, particularly its high christology, as indicative of a time in the late first or early second century, long after the Johannine “school” had broken with the “synagogue,” which, for both Hengel and Martyn was a stand-in term for Judaism as a whole.31 While “John” the historical author may have been a Jew in a previous life, the text he produced reflects now a concern for shaping an identity 25 26

27 28 29 30 31

Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in their Encounter in Palestine during the Early Hellenistic Period, trans. J. Bowden, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974 [orig. German 1969; 2nd rev. and enl. German ed. 1973]). As a general rule of thumb, the current study will use the term ‘land of Israel’ when speaking about this territory before Hadrian’s renaming of it as Syria Palaestina in 135 CE and with reference to its use in rabbinic literature. ‘Palestine’ will be used in general discussions of the land in periods after 135 CE. This study does not intend to make a contemporary political statement by means of its use of these terms. A point also made by L.I. Levine, Judaism and Hellenism in Antiquity: Conflict or Confluence? (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1998), 20. Hengel, Johannine Question, 109–113. Engberg-Pedersen, John and Philosophy, 329–44 (quotations found on p. 332). Also on John and Stoic philosophy, see G. Buch-Hansen, “It is the Spirit that Gives Life”: A Stoic Understanding of Pneuma in John’s Gospel, BZNW 173 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2010). Hengel, Johannine Question, 113–14. On the problematic use of the term “synagogue” as a synecdoche for “Judaism” by Johannine scholars, see chapter 6. Engberg-Pedersen is the most explicit I have seen in such a direct identification of “synagogue” with “Judaism” as a whole. In his comments on the synagogue expulsion passage in John 9:22, he says: “He [John] seems to be saying that the wellknown (formal) decision to exclude explicit Christ believers from ‘the synagogue’, alias Judaism, that his readers know from their own time had already – against what they might otherwise have expected – been taken then.” See Engberg-Pedersen, John and Philosophy,

Introduction

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severed from Jewishness and “Jewish particularism”;32 whether John’s audience included Jews or not, the Gospel’s raison d’être was ultimately aimed at the “Gentile-Christian.”33 While the methods, theoretical frameworks, and specific historical reconstructions have certainly multiplied and varied since the initial publications of Martyn’s and Hengel’s works,34 there has been surprisingly little deviation from the scholarly narrative concerning John and Judaism that they both helped to establish:35 John certainly came out of a Jewish milieu, but the sort of Christ-following identity the Gospel now promotes in its final form, to use the words of Hengel, “will burst the bounds of Judaism.”36 In my view, three overarching scholarly themes continue to dominate research on the topic and thus uphold this narrative. The “Johannine Community” and the “Parting of the Ways” 2.1 John’s relationship to Judaism continues to be intimately connected to certain ideas and assumptions about the existence of a “Johannine community” in conflict with “the synagogue” and an early “parting of the ways” between “Judaism” and “Christianity,” or as phrased in more nuanced studies, what came to be known as “Christianity.”37 This theme will be discussed again in

32 33 34 35 36 37

341. How this understanding of “the synagogue” works with Engberg-Pedersen’s view that the text of John speaks from within Judaism is left unaddressed. Hengel, Johannine Question, 121. Hengel, Johannine Question, 119–24. On some of the different methods used in the reconstruction of the Johannine community and thus its relation to Judaism, see Cirafesi, “Johannine Community”; and Cirafesi, “Current Research.” Again, we must add reference here to the importance of R.E. Brown’s work in his commentary and The Beloved Disciple. Hengel, Johannine Question, 122. This theme is particularly emphasized in scholarship immediately following Martyn and Brown especially in the 1970s and 1980s, e.g., by Hengel (see above); W. Meeks, “The Man from Heaven in Johannine Sectarianism,” JBL 92 (1972): 44–72; B.J. Malina, “The Gospel of John in Sociolinguistic Perspective” (Berkeley: Center for Hermeneutical Studies in Hellenistic and Modern Culture, 1985); Malina, “John’s: The Maverick Christian Group: The Evidence of Sociolinguistics,” BTB 24 (1994): 167–82; J. Neyrey, An Ideology of Revolt: John’s Christology in Social-Science Perspective (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988). See Cirafesi, “Johannine Community,” for further discussion. More recently are the nuanced treatments in Hakola, Identity Matters, 232–38, who understands John as contributing to the establishment of an “autonomous Christian religion”; J. Frey, “Temple and Identity in Early Christianity and in the Johannine Community: Reflections on the ‘Parting of the Ways,’” in Was 70 CE a Watershed in Jewish History? On Jews and Judaism before and after the Destruction of the Second Temple, ed. D.R. Schwartz and Z. Weiss, AJEC 78 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 447–507; Frey, “Toward Reconfiguring Our Views on the ‘Parting of the Ways’:

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chapter 6, but a few points should be mentioned here. First, some scholars, particularly after the publication in 1998 of the collection of essays titled The Gospels for All Christians edited by Richard Bauckham, have questioned the methodological foundations of the kind of Gemeindegeschichte developed in nineteenth-century German biblical scholarship and followed closely by American scholars such as Martyn and Raymond Brown.38 While the “all Christians” approach to Gospel audiences has had a varied reception in New Testament studies, the quest for reconstructing a specific historical “Johannine community” through mirror reading the Gospel and selectively using the Johannine Letters has been met with heavy criticism, even by scholars wishing to retain the “community” as a social-identity or rhetorically constructed category.39 But the social-identity and rhetorical approaches have had their own problems and critics as well.40 The point I wish to raise here is that, since “community”-centered approaches of all kinds are, by nature, hypothetical and easily contested, the current study proposes a reading of John within Judaism that does not intend to tie itself to any one view of a “Johannine community.” Rather, it focuses its methodological energy on the signs, signals, and identityforming values within John’s textual world, without interpretive recourse to a “community” standing behind it.41

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Ephesus as a Test Case,” in John and Judaism, ed. Culpepper and Anderson, 221–39; Frey, Glory, 39–72; J. Ashton, The Gospel of John and Christian Origins (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014), who is even stronger than Hakola in understanding John as establishing a new religion (see, e.g., p. 2); and, among her many other publications, see A. Reinhartz’s recent book, Cast out of the Covenant. Reinhartz does not see John as establishing an explicitly “Christian” identity or a new religion called “Christianity”; rather she sees John as pushing for a break – a “disaffiliation” – between Christ-confessors and Jews. R. Bauckham, ed., The Gospels for All Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audiences (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998). For discussion, see Cirafesi, “Johannine Community,” 185–88. For example, Raimo Hakola and Adele Reinhartz are key advocates for a social or rhetorical approach to ‘community’ reconstruction, i.e., the Johannine ‘community’ is not conceived as a ‘real’ or historical entity but rather a rhetorical feature of the author. See Hakola, Reconsidering Johannine Christianity; A. Reinhartz, “Forging a New Identity: Johannine Rhetoric and the Audience of the Fourth Gospel,” in Paul, John, and Apocalyptic Eschatology: Studies in Honour of Martinus C. de Boer, ed. J. Krans, NovTSup. 149 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 123–34. See especially J. Bernier, Aposynagōgos and the Historical Jesus in John: Rethinking the Historicity of the Johannine Expulsion Passages, BibInt 122 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 27–76; and chapter 6 in the present study. At the same time, I should clarify that I am not opposed to the scholarly attempt at reconstructing some kind of audience for John’s Gospel in the sense of general audience markets or what some sociolinguists call ‘virtual addressees’ in contrast to ‘actual addressees’ (see discussion in Cirafesi, “Current Research,” 354–61). What I resist in this study is the circular process of interpreting Johannine passages based upon the reconstructed

Introduction

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Second, as hinted at already, one of the fundamental pieces of the puzzle of John’s relationship to Judaism has been a certain conception, or perhaps better, lack of conception, of “the synagogue.” In chapter 6, we will see that synagogue studies as a discipline has rapidly advanced in the past three decades, but Johannine scholarship’s engagement with it has decidedly not kept up.42 “The synagogue” often stands as an amorphous concept, deployed in Johannine interpretation without much or any definition or critical reflection, and is usually anachronistically constructed in the image of the rabbinic institution of later centuries, which developed in opposition to the non-Jewish Christian “church.”43 This has led to the assumption that John uses the idea of “the synagogue” to represent flatly Jews and Judaism as a whole and, thus, John’s supposed conflict with it is understood as a conflict with Judaism. I will argue that this assumption is severely undermined when we understand John’s references to synagogues in light of recent developments in synagogue research that have highlighted the varied nature of this institution in and around the first century CE. Third and closely associated with the point above, Johannine scholarship would benefit from greater contact with recent developments in the study of the so-called “parting of the ways.” These developments have highlighted the artificiality of a clear Judaism/Christianity divide in the early centuries, and have argued against pinpointing an early date – such as the destruction of the temple (70 CE), the fiscus Iudaicus (ca. 96 CE), or even the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132–135 CE) – when Judaism and Christianity became autonomous and oppositional “religious” entities.44 The formation of what we know today as

42

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life-experience of a localized readership, a reconstruction that itself depends on interpretation of said passages. On the lack of engagement of Johannine scholars with synagogue studies, see Bernier, Aposynagōgos, 54–68. The lone example that I have found is Hakola, Reconsidering Johannine Christianity, who is certainly aware of such developments, but as far as I can tell focuses exclusively on research into synagogues of the diaspora rather than those in the land of Israel. See the discussion in chapter 6. See also the excellent critical comments in J. Lieu, “The Synagogue and the Separation of the Christians,” in The Ancient Synagogue: From Its Origins until 200 CE, ed. B. Olsson and M. Zetterholm, CBNTS 39 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 2003), 189–207 (esp. 195–97). See, e.g., D. Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); A.H. Becker and A.Y. Reed, eds., The Ways That Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007); O. Skarsaune and R. Hvalvik, eds., Jewish Believers in Jesus: The Early Centuries (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2007); J. Lieu, Neither Jew nor Greek? Constructing Early Christianity, 2nd ed. (London: T&T Clark, 2016), 31–49. This is not to suggest that Johannine scholars have been unaware of such proposals to make the “parting” a

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Judaism and Christianity was a process far messier and historically drawn out than this. For example, on the one hand, we certainly do see early attempts by some elite non-Jewish Christ-followers to create a clear, distinct, and deJudaized Christian identity at fundamental odds with, and soteriologically severed from, Jews and Judaism (e.g., Ignatius, Mag. 10:1, 3; Phil. 6:1; Epistle of Barnabas 4:6–7; 13:1–3; Justin, Dial. 47; Tertullian, Marc. 4:33; Praescr. 8).45 On the other hand, when read critically, such attempts from the elite would seem to indicate that, for many at the grass-roots level, just the opposite was believed to be the case: Christ-belief and a life lived “Jewishly” remained thoroughly compatible with one another.46 Indeed, as Paula Fredriksen notes, there is solid evidence that even well after the first century and into Late Antiquity non-Jewish Christ-followers continued to attend synagogue gatherings and practiced Jewish rituals, apparently seeing no contradiction between their “Christian” identity and a continuing attachment to Judaism and local Jewish communities.47 The issue of the “parting of the ways” is not the main topic of the current study, but it is, indeed, relevant in so far as its messy, lengthy, and socially layered nature should caution Johannine scholars against retrojecting into John the ideas of later Christian literati. Such awareness reopens critical questions that are, in my view, worth considering afresh: Is John, like Ignatius or Barnabas, really in the business of constructing a kind of “Christian” or Christ-confessing

45 46 47

phenomenon of later centuries. Indeed, Frey, for instance, clearly acknowledges that the “parting” was a long and drawn out, socially and historically complex process, and notes the difficulty that frequently presents itself in determining in the early period what is no longer “Jewish” and what is already “Christian.” See Frey, Glory, 39–72. For a helpful discussion especially of Tertullian on the “Judaism”/‘Christianity’ contrast, see S. Mason, “Jews, Judaeans, Judaizing, Judaism: Problems of Categorization in Ancient History,” JSJ 38 (2007): 457–512 (471–75). On the distinction between “being/becoming a Jew” and “being/becoming Jewish,” see M.D. Nanos, “Paul’s Non-Jews Do Not Become ‘Jews,’ But Do They Become ‘Jewish’?: Reading Romans 2:25–29 Within Judaism, Alongside Josephus,” JJMJS 1 (2014): 26–53. P. Fredriksen, “‘If It Looks like a Duck, and It Quacks like a Duck …’: On Not Giving Up the Godfearers,” in A Most Reliable Witness: Essays in Honor of Ross Shepard Kraemer, ed. S.A. Harvey et al., BJS 358 (Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 2015), 25–33, where on p. 30 n. 17 she says: “Non-Jews continued to frequent Jewish community gatherings even after they became Christian: Origen (ca. 230, Caesarea) tells his Christians not to discuss in church questions they heard raised the day before in synagogue, and not to eat meals in both places (Hom. Lev. 5.8; Sel. Exod. 12.46); John Chrysostom, notoriously before the high holidays in 387 in Antioch: Christians fast, keep Sabbath, go to synagogue, take oaths in front of Torah scrolls, co-celebrate Passover and Sukkot […]. Church canons forbid such co-celebration on through the Visigothic and Byzantine period in the seventh century […].”

Introduction

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identity severed from Jewishness and meant to disinherit the Jewish people from their covenant with the Jewish god? Does John, through its strategy of character development, expect that Jews will either stop being Jews or lose their Jewishness upon becoming loyal to Jesus?48 And does it anticipate that non-Jews who join the Jesus movement (John 4:42; 7:35; 12:20) will have nothing to do with Judaism? Or, does John instead participate in the contested and congested universe of early Jewish identity formation, offering a competing, even if exclusive, vision of Jewishness? Does John intend to “expropriate” Jewishness to non-Jews through a rhetoric of replacement, or does it mean to include non-Jews within its vision while somehow maintaining the Jewish god’s connection to the Jewish people? These kinds of questions will occupy our attention throughout this study. Replacement, Supersessionism, and Expropriation in Johannine “Anti-Judaism” A second overarching theme in the study of John and Judaism, which follows closely on the first, has to do with the hermeneutical control exerted by several conceptual categories that are usually associated with John’s “anti-Judaism”49 and continue to be used widely: replacement, supersessionism, and, more recently, expropriation. Replacement hermeneutics have deep roots in the history of Christianity, so it is a topic too large to discuss in any depth here.50 As Bruce Longenecker has noted in a study related to Paul, “replacement” stands on the more extreme end of what Longenecker calls the Christian supersessionist 2.2

48

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This appears to be Reinhartz’s position, as she argues that John rhetorically removes Jewishness from positive characters, such as the disciples, since they are never referred to directly as Ioudaioi; that is, because of John’s non-use of the label for these characters, we are to understand that, from John’s perspective, “the disciples are not Ioudaioi” (Cast Out of the Covenant, 85). On the definitional problems of such terms as “anti-Jewish”/“anti-Judaism” and “antiSemitic,” see the discussion T. Donaldson, “Supersessionism and Early Christian Self-Definition,” JJMJS 3 (2016): 1–32 (6–10); Lieu, “Anti-Judaism in the Fourth Gospel,” 103–105; and Sheridan, “Issues,” 671 n. 1, where she says: “The term ‘anti-Judaism’ is problematic in that it denotes an antithetical relationship to ‘Judaism’ as a system of beliefs and a path to God, and yet, on the whole, the Gospel of John portrays the Jewish festivals without contention (see 2:13; 5:1; 7:11; 10:22–23; 12:1, 12). The term also tends to suggest that Judaism was homogenous as a ‘religion’ in the era under discussion, when research has proven otherwise […].” For longer discussions, see R. Kendall Soulen, The God of Israel and Christian Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996); T. Donaldson, “Supersessionism and Early Christ­ ian Self-Definition,” JJMJS 3 (2016): 1–32”; and S.D. Aguzzi, Israel, the Church, and Millenarianism: A Way beyond Replacement Theology (London: Routledge, 2018).

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spectrum.51 What he means by this is that replacement frameworks are only one kind of supersessionism, in which the Jewish people are thought to have been replaced by Christians in the affection of God. The Jews are no longer God’s chosen people and they no longer have a special place in the unfolding plan of God. God has rejected them because of their rejection of Jesus, with ethnic Israel being abandoned by God in favour of the non-Jewish ‘new Israel’, the church.52 This sort of replacement supersessionism is accompanied by the logical corollary of a displacement of Judaism and a disinheriting of the Jewish people of their covenant status. It is what characterized the verus Israel hermeneutic in much patristic thinking on Jews and Judaism in antiquity,53 as well as the majority of Johannine scholarship that emerged from the Tübingen School in the 19th and 20th centuries. Such negative interpretations of John’s attitude towards Jews and Judaism continue to surface.54 For example, although she prefers the term “expropriation,” Adele Reinhartz has recently argued that, through its “rhetoric of disaffiliation,” John dispossesses the Ioudaioi – who collectively represent the Jewish people – of their place in the covenant, the Torah, and the temple, which are now brought under the authority of Jesus.55 John expropriates Jewishness from the Ioudaioi to Johannine Christ-confessors, who themselves are not presented as Jewish in the Gospel, as they are never called Ioudaioi. But, very much in distinction from previous interpreters who have likewise concluded 51 52 53 54

55

B.W. Longenecker, “On Israel’s God and God’s Israel: Assessing Supersessionism in Paul,” JTS NS 58.1 (2007): 26–44. Longenecker, “Supersessionism,” 35–36. For the seminal treatment of the topic, see M. Simon, Verus Israel: A Study of the Relations between Christians and Jews in the Roman Empire, ET Littman Library of Jewish Civilization (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986 [orig. French 1948]). See, e.g., Kerr, The Temple of Jesus’ Body, 267: “If indeed the unnamed festival represents all festivals (cf. p. 206 and n. 5) then John may be pointing in the subsequent verses to a picture of Judaism (including the festivals) in its weakness and impotence.” See also the comments made with reference to the “six stone water jars for Jewish purification” (John 2:6) in A. Köstenberger, “John,” in Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, ed. G.K. Beale and D.A. Carson (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 431, who sees in the water jars a symbol of the “barrenness of first-century Judaism.” Reinhartz, Cast Out of the Covenant, chapter 3 (esp. at p. 62). Despite the fact that Reinhartz resists the term “replacement” in favor of “expropriation,” it seems to me that “expropriation,” as she has described it, is still a form of replacement.

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that John is “anti-Jewish,” Reinhartz sees “Jewishness” as a crucial category in the Gospel’s curation of the identity of Jesus and his followers. For her, John’s Christ-confessors take on the cultural-religious markers of the Ioudaioi without becoming them – that is, they become “‘Jew-ish’ without becoming Jewish.”56 John’s “Jewishness,” therefore, is a colonized Jewishness, which is, in fact, part and parcel of its “anti-Judaism,” not a positive identity into which Christ-followers are invited to participate. According to Reinhartz, a Gentile audience, which John may have had, would thus be quite encouraged to disassociate with Jews in general because of the Gospel’s rhetorical program.57 In general, since the time of the Holocaust the term “replacement” has softened somewhat to describe not John’s wholesale rejection of the Jewish people in favor of “Christianity” but rather, more specifically, John’s christological agenda in relation to Jewish institutions, such as Moses and the law, purity, the land, and the temple. The Johannine Jesus is understood, for example, as the “new” temple that replaces the physical one in Jerusalem58 and the land in 56 57

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Reinhartz, Cast Out of the Covenant, 62. In my view, the most problematic element to Reinhartz’s use of the category of “expropriation” is two-fold: (1) It must seemingly assume that John’s Gospel has a non-Jewish author and non-Jewish audience, both of which are possible hypotheses but ultimately unfalsifiable. Expropriation, a concept apparently related to the concept of cultural appropriation in postcolonial criticism, would involve the dispossession of members of one ethno-cultural identity by members of another ethno-culture. In other words, Jews would not “expropriate” Jewishness from other Jews to non-Jews. (2) Reinhartz’s theory of expropriation requires that John’s positive characters be understood as non-Jews with whom a non-Jewish audience might identity, a point which, to me, seems to defy John’s narrative logic. It is true that John usually does not apply the term Ioudaioi to Johannine Christ-confessors – the major exception, of course, is the Christ himself (John 4:9) – but tying Jewishness entirely and exclusively to John’s use or non-use of Ioudaioi reduces John’s expansive narrative universe, which is undeniably a Jewish universe, to a single term. E.g., M. Coloe, God Dwells with Us: Temple Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2001); A. Kerr, The Temple of Jesus’ Body: The Temple Theme in the Gospel of John, JSNTSup. 220 (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002); Hakola, Identity Matters, 94–95; S.T. Um, The Theme of Temple Christology in John’s Gospel, LNTS 312 (London: T&T Clark, 2006), 187, 190; A. Köstenberger, “The Destruction of the Second Temple and the Composition of the Fourth Gospel,” in Challenging Perspectives on the Gospel of John, ed. J. Lierman, WUNT 2.219 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 69–108 (89); B. Thettayil, In Spirit and Truth: An Exegetical Study of John 4:19–26 and a Theological Investigation of the Replacement Theme in the Fourth Gospel, CBTE 46 (Leuven: Peeters, 2007); E.W. Mburu, Qumran and the Origins of Johannine Symbolism, JCTS 8 (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 48–52; H. Attridge, “The Temple and Jesus the High Priest in the New Testament,” in Jesus and Temple: Textual and Archaeological Explorations, ed. J.H. Charlesworth (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014), 213–37 (222–27). See the excellent critical discussion of the temple replacement theory in K.S. Fuglseth, Johannine Sectarianism in Perspective: A Sociological,

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which the temple resides;59 he replaces the law60 and Jewish festivals,61 and is even presented as the new and true miqveh that replaces the Jewish halakhic tradition of ritual bathing.62 The concepts of replacement and expropriation, as applied to John, indeed, make the Gospel inherently anti-Jewish, since they derive from the claim that, according to John, Judaism has, in some way or another, been displaced and the Jewish people rejected by their own god. The concept of supersessionism, however, is not innately connected to anti-Judaism, although it certainly has the potential to be. Terence Donaldson notes that supersessionism as an analytical category, “[D]escribes a situation where one entity, by virtue of its supposed superiority, comes to occupy a position that previously belonged to another, the displaced group becoming outmoded or obsolete in the process.”63 But Donaldson’s observation is specifically with reference to early Christian self-definition vis-à-vis Judaism, and so it does not intend to capture the point that such claims of superiority do not necessarily occur only in competition between two separate entities (as in the claim “Christianity” supersedes “Judaism”) but can also take place within the same entity. Thus, for

59 60

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62 63

Historical, and Comparative Analysis of Temple and Social Relationships in the Gospel of John, Philo, and Qumran, NovTSup 119 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 136–43. W.D. Davies, The Gospel and the Land: Early Christianity and the Jewish Territorial Doctrine, repr. ed. (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994 [orig. 1974]); G.M. Burge, Jesus and the Land: The New Testament Challenge to ‘Holy Land’ Theology (London: SPCK, 2010). E.g., S. Pancaro, The Law in the Fourth Gospel: The Torah and the Gospel, Moses and Jesus, Judaism and Christianity according to John, NovTSup 42 (Leiden: Brill, 1975), e.g., p. 84; A.T. Hanson, The Prophetic Gospel: A Study of John and the Old Testament (London: T&T Clark, 1991), 63; B. Lindars, John (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990), 58; J. Ashton, Understanding the Fourth Gospel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 190; S. Harstine, Moses as Character in the Fourth Gospel: A Study in Ancient Reading Techniques, JSNTSup 229 (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), 62. E.g., Dodd, Interpretation, 319–20; R.E. Brown, An Introduction to the Gospel of John, ed. F.J. Maloney (New York: Doubleday, 2003), 37; C.K. Barrett, The Gospel according to St. John: An Introduction with Commentary and Notes on the Greek Text, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978), e.g., at pp. 92, 195, 228; R.A. Culpepper, The Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel: A Study in Literary Design (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983), 418; G.A. Yee, Jewish Feasts and the Gospel of John (Wilmington, DL: Michael Glazier, 1989); Kerr, The Temple of Jesus’ Body, 205–67; J. Beutler, Judaism and the Jews in the Gospel of John (Roma: Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 2006), 28–29; Wheaton, Jewish Feasts, although he acknowledges the problem of the term “replacement” and thus prefers the term “fulfillment.” See the helpful discussion in Fuglseth, Johannine Sectarianism, 136–43. G. Burge, “Siloam, Bethesda, and the Johannine Water Motif,” in John, Jesus, and History. Vol 3: Glimpses of Jesus through the Johannine Lens, ed. P.N. Anderson, F. Just, and T. Thatcher (Atlanta: SBL, 2016), 268. Donaldson, “Supersessionism,” 7.

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example, as several scholars have noted, individual Jewish groups could hold “supersessionist” attitudes in relation to other Jewish groups: the ideology of a “true Israel” superseding wicked Israelites is strongly present in some Dead Sea Scrolls, and the rabbis seem to have understood themselves as those who superseded the prophets as interpreters and guardians of divine revelation over and against non-rabbinic Jews.64 Quite obviously, neither the Scrolls nor the rabbis intended to replace their Jewish identity with something other than Jewishness. Rather, they claim superiority within Judaism. Admittedly, neither the Scrolls nor the rabbis are a perfect parallel to John’s Gospel. Nevertheless, they provide a strong enough analogy to recognize that it is a non sequitur to assert that, because John contains christo-centric supersessionism, it must also intend to replace or expropriate Jewishness and, therefore, be “anti-Jewish” in character.65 I will argue throughout this book that John’s christo-centric exclusivism is no more “exclusive” and no “less Jewish” than that of Yaḥad-centric or rabbino-centric exclusivism.66 John’s call to “believe” (πιστεύω) in Jesus as the Jewish god’s Sent One and Messiah is not an expression of a proto-sola fide Protestant theology of salvation. Adherence to him as the only legitimate mediator of access to Israel’s god (14:6) presupposes that one has been living and will continue living “Jewishly,” learning and hearing from the father, and doing his will (6:45; 8:38, 47; 9:31). From this perspective, 64

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Longenecker, “Supersessionism,” 40; D. Boyarin, A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 205; J. Klawans, Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple: Symbolism and Supersessionism in the Study of Ancient Judaism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 203–209; I. Gafni, “Rabbinic Historiography and Representations of the Past,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature, ed. C.E. Fonrobert and M.S. Jaffee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 295–312; A. Sivertsev, Judaism and Imperial Ideology in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). For other scholars who conclude similarly about John, see Dennis, Jesus’ Death, 351; R. Bieringer and D. Pollefeyt, “Open to Both Ways…? Johannine Perspectives on Judaism in the Light of Jewish–Christian Dialogue,” in Israel und seine Heilstraditionen im Johannesevangelium. Festgabe für Johannes Beutler SJ zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. K. Scholtissek and A. Strotmann (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2004), 11–32; and S. Motyer, “The Fourth Gospel and the Salvation of Israel: An Appeal for a New Start,” in Anti-Judaism and the Fourth Gospel, 83–100. Fuglseth, Johannine Sectarianism, 136–43 is somewhat softer in his criticism, preferring to highlight the ambiguity of whether ‘replacement’ is found in John, concluding that it might be there, but it also might not be. The exclusivism of both the Yaḥad and the rabbis rested not on Torah per se, in the sense of one’s decision to accept it and so enter the community or reject it and so be excluded, but rather on their respective claims to the authoritative interpretation, mediation, and preservation of Torah. Similarly, as I will argue in chapter 4, John’s Gospel does not frame the exclusive claims of the Johannine Jesus by reference to a decision to accept Torah or Jesus but rather as a decision to accept Jesus who mediates Torah.

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John does present us with a “supersessionist” ideology, but, as I hope will become clear in later chapters, John’s supersessionism can be seen as a Jewish supersessionism, a supersessionism from within Judaism, not the supersessionism of something other than Judaism or of a non-Jewish “Christianity.”67 2.3 John and the Concept of “Religion” We come now to some brief comments on a final theme in contemporary research into John and Judaism, which will be the main topic of discussion in chapter 2. While scholars engaged in the academic study of religion have, for quite some time, been skeptical of the idea that “religion” as we typically think of it today in the Euro-American West existed in antiquity, whether at all or as a discrete category independent of one’s ethnicity, such theoretical discussions have not yet influenced Johannine scholarship.68 “Judaism” has been framed as the “Jewish religion”;69 Jewish “religious identity” has been dislodged

67

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This is not least due in part to the anachronism implied by the term “Christianity” in this period. The anachronism involved with the terms ‘Christian’ and ‘Christianity’ in the first century has been stressed particularly in the work of Pauline scholars but, in my view, there is no reason that this observation should not be applied to John’s Gospel as well. See W.E. Arnal, “The Collection and Synthesis of ‘Tradition’ and the Second-Century Invention of Christianity,” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 23 (2011): 193–215; J. Marshall, “Misunderstanding the New Paul: Marcion’s Transformation of the Sonderzeit Paul,” JECS 20 (2012): 1–29; A. Runesson, “Inventing Christian Identity: Paul, Ignatius, and Theodosius I,” in Exploring Early Christian Identity, ed. B. Holmberg, WUNT 226 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 59–92; Runesson, “The Question of Terminology: The Architecture of Contemporary Discussions of Paul,” in Paul within Judaism: Restoring the First-Century Context to the Apostle, ed. M.D. Nanos and M. Zetterholm (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), 53–78. See chapter 2 for more discussion. For now, see just a few examples: D.K. Buell, Why This New Race? Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005); S. Mason, “Jews, Judaeans, Judaizing, Judaism: Problems of Categorization in Ancient History,” JSJ 38 (2007): 457–512; C. Ando, The Matter of the Gods: Religion and the Roman Empire (Berkley: University of California Press, 2008), who offers a fine critical discussion and still finds the category of “religion” useable even if anachronistic; B. Nongbri, Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), who concludes something like Ando; and G. Woolf, “Ethnography and the Gods in Tacitus’ Germania,” in Ancient Ethnography: New Approaches, ed. E. Almagor and J. Skinner (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 133–52 (133); Woolf, Rome: An Empire’s Story (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 256–57; Fredriksen, “On Not Giving Up the Godfearers,” 26; D. Boyarin and C.A. Barton, Imagine No Religion: How Modern Abstractions Hide Ancient Realities (New York: Fordham University Press, 2016). E.g., Frey, Glory; Wheaton, Jewish Feasts, 81, et passim; Hakola, Identity Matters, 43, 195, 227–28, et passim; Ashton, Understanding, 159; Ashton, Christian Origins, 2, et passim.

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from and pitted against Jewish “ethnic identity”;70 and John’s Gospel has been understood as reflecting a move away from one “religion” (“Judaism”) toward a new “religion” (“Christianity”).71 As I will argue in the following chapter, if Johannine studies integrated the recent work of Denise Buell, Paula Fredriksen, and others on the idea that changing one’s “religion” in antiquity really meant changing one’s ethnicity,72 the result, I suggest, would be a fundamental reorientation in the way we think about John’s relationship to “Judaism.” It would mean that the notion of a departure from or break with Judaism could no longer be conceived as simply “changing religions” but rather as changing ethnic groups, severing one’s ties with the people, land, laws, and god who “ran in the blood.”73 In chs. 3–6, I will develop the argument that what scholars have often described as John’s intent to promote a separation between Judaism and something other than Judaism (if not “Christianity”) is better conceived as a separation between two different modes of Jewish identity. Both of these ways of being Jewish will be modeled and discussed in chapter 2, which will, in turn, provide the analytical framework for the rest of the book. 3

Some Prolegomena to the Study of John and Judaism

A few words should be said about several of the methodological assumptions that undergird, but are not necessarily central to, the current study. 70 71

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E.g., Frey, Glory; S.E. Porter, John, His Gospel, and Jesus: In Pursuit of the Johannine Voice (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), 150, where he makes the John and Judaism issue about “religion” rather than “race or place.” For older studies that see John recounting the separation of two entities on ‘religious’ grounds – Johannine Christians versus Synagogue Jews, see J. Townsend, “The Gospel of John and the Jews: The Story of a Religious Divorce,” in Antisemitism and the Foundations of Christianity, ed. Alan Davies (New York: Paulist, 1979), 72–97; A.F. Segal, The Other Judaisms of Late Antiquity (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987), 31: “the Johannine community has passed over the boundary between being Jewish and Christian, which was not yet passed for the synoptics.” Newer studies in this vein are Hakola, Identity Matters, 232–38; and Ashton, Christian Origins, 2–3. Buell, Why This New Race?, 44–47; P. Fredriksen, “Mandatory Retirement: Ideas in the Study of Christian Origins Whose Time Has Come to Go,” Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 35.2 (2006): 231–46. See chapter 2 for more discussion on this approach to Jewish ethnicity in antiquity. For now, see, e.g., Mason, “Jews, Judaeans,” 457–512; and several of Paula Fredriksen’s works: “Mandatory Retirement”; Augustine and the Jews: A Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism (New York: Doubleday, 2008), 6–15; “On Not Giving Up the Godfearers”; and, most recently, “How Jewish Is God? Divine Ethnicity in Paul’s Theology,” JBL 137.1 (2018): 193–212 (193–205).

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Concerning the identity of John’s author(s), its date, and Sitz im Leben, the study adopts a level of historical minimalism.74 This means it proceeds on the assumption that we simply do not know with much certainty who wrote John, who its historical addressees were and their ethnic identities, where the text was written and published, or the social-historical situation(s) out of which the Gospel came.75 In this book – which is more concerned with how John’s compositional strategies shape a type of Jewish identity – these issues will not be taken as determinative for construing the intentions of the Fourth Gospel. Adopting the perspective of a historical minimalist on these matters, however, does not mean that I interpret John ahistorically, as if John did not belong to a historical context at all. Quite the opposite. My approach to interpreting John, the main preoccupation of chapters 3–6, comes in two steps. The first is to look at the world outside John’s text in order to understand the ways in which various sources from Greco-Roman and Jewish antiquity constructed their ideas about Jewishness. Here I am interested not in establishing a specific historical context for John or a “Johannine community” but rather a trajectory of Jewish identity formation from a broader historical period – in general, but not rigidly limited to, the beginning with the Seleucid take-over of Judea (ca. 200 BCE) to the time of the Mishnah (ca. 200 CE). The second step in the procedure, then, is to look at the world inside John’s text in order to understand how the Gospel casts and constructs its own vision of Jewishness, and how its particular strategies for negotiating this vision work within a first-century Mediterranean milieu. The look to the broader historical period to which John belongs, that is, the world outside the text, will bring us into contact with a range of social, historical, and literary sources, including archaeological ones. The question this 74

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I thank Ole Jakob Filtvedt for discussing this concept and its utility for the current study with me. Filtvedt applies a similar ‘historical minimalism’ in his study on Hebrews: The Identity of God’s People and the Paradox of Hebrews, WUNT 2.400 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015), 24. All shortcomings, however, are my own. It follows, then, that the argument of the current study also does not intend to rest upon a particular view of John’s editorial composition. The study follows Frey’s recommendation that, since none of the postulated source-critical or redactional models enjoy the sort of general acceptance among scholars that they used to, priority must be given to synchronic analysis of John in its present form. See Frey, Glory, 40–41. Technically speaking, there is, and probably never has been, one final or “present form” of the text of John’s Gospel. Even the text as it stands in the NA28 is, in the end, a creation of twentieth- and twenty-first-century text-critical scholarship, having no exact correlation to any ancient manuscript. Alas, we must take our starting point from somewhere, and so this study concedes to using the NA28 as the standard critical edition of the New Testament, and thus represents the “present form” of John, even if this is quite theoretically unsatisfying.

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raises is how social and historical realia from antiquity should be brought to bear, if at all, upon a piece of literature like John, whose relationship to historical reality is often considered suspect and whose literary-theological artistry is typically given a higher interpretive priority. I wish to make two points here. First, literature, such as novels, romances, or other kinds of fictional narrative from antiquity, can nevertheless evince contact, even close contact, with certain social or historical realities. The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive; the question is what kind of contact they have. John may be a narrative full of literary and rhetorical techniques, but this does not immediately imply that it only eschews or schematizes social realia, concepts, and ideologies known from the outside world. John makes use of, for example, topography and named places (e.g., Jerusalem, Bethany, Capernaum),76 social groups known from other ancient sources (e.g., Pharisees, Ioudaioi, Levites, chief priests), and even material objects known from the archaeological record (e.g., Pool of Siloam, chalkstone vessels). Of course, John can imbue places, people, and objects with symbolism and literary significance, and just because they appear in the narrative does not mean that John is “telling it how it is” concerning the events and discourses that transpire around them.77 While I do not intend to ignore John’s literary make-up, this study rests upon the assumption that, since John itself clearly has a significant interest in the world outside the text, then so should interpreters studying its inception history. As we appreciate the fact that John is telling a story, employing a range of techniques, such as symbolism,78 irony,79 and rhetoric,80 we must also appreciate that John’s compositional strategies engage with certain realia from Mediterranean antiquity 76 77

78 79 80

On which, see R. Bauckham, “Historiographical Characteristics of the Gospel of John,” NTS 53.1 (2007): 17–36. Whether or not these events and discourses represent more literary-theological artistry than history, John certainly thinks it is providing its readers with historical testimony (John 19:35). The scholarly literature on John and history is vast. See the three volumes the SBL group John, Jesus, and History has published: P.N. Anderson, F. Just, and T. Thatcher, eds., John, Jesus, and History. Vol 1: Critical Appraisals of Critical Views (Atlanta: SBL, 2007); idem., John, Jesus, and History. Vol 2: Aspects of Historicity in the Fourth Gospel (Atlanta: SBL, 2009); idem., John, Jesus, and History. Vol 3: Glimpses of Jesus through the Johannine Lens (Atlanta: SBL, 2016). See also Jörg Frey’s recent book, Theology and History in the Fourth Gospel: Tradition and Narration (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2018). E.g., D.A. Lee, The Symbolic Narratives of the Fourth Gospel: The Interplay of Form and Meaning, JSNTSup 95 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994); C. Koester, Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel: Meaning, Mystery, Community (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003). E.g., P.D. Duke, Irony in the Fourth Gospel (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1985). This is the key to Reinhartz’s approach to John in her recent book Cast out of the Covenant, as she understands the Gospel as primarily a rhetorical document with its intention being to persuade its readers to believe in Jesus and separate themselves from the Jews.

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on the level of their significance for identity construction.81 The Gospel weaves real places, people groups, and objects known from history into its narrative fabric, whether or not the events or discourses mapped onto them are to be judged “historical.” Thus, for example, as I will discuss in chapter 3, I am skeptical of views that suggest John’s portrait of the Ioudaioi is only a rhetorical or literary schematization strategy, which aims to flatten the Ioudaioi into a universal, omnitemporal, and largely negative representation of all Jews. While the Ioudaioi as a character group and the story about their conflict with Jesus might well be John’s literary invention, the values and ideas they express about Jewish identity are not. This will become evident as we take the time to explore the broader context of the ideological debates active among ancient Jews. This context will shed light on the fact that, while the label John uses, Ioudaioi, is indeed undifferentiated (or at least less differentiated than other named groups, e.g., Pharisees, chief priests, or Jerusalemites), this group’s perspective on Jewishness might be specific, textured, and located within a particular ideological stream seen in the world outside John’s text but criticized in the world inside John’s text. This does not mean that John presents the Ioudaioi with journalistic detail as a “real” group that went toe-to-toe with the historical Jesus. It does mean, however, that their ideological approach to Jewish identity might have been shared by other Jews in antiquity, and that John’s literary presentation of their conflict with Jesus reflects debates that existed among ancient Jews more broadly. Second, the argument of this book operates not on the level of making judgments about historicity but rather on the level of how aspects of John’s compositional strategies participate in a larger ancient discourse on ethnic belonging and (Jewish) identity formation. In other words, this study is not a John, Jesus, and history project. It does not intend to mine John for what it can tell us about the historical Jesus, the historical John, or John’s historical readers. To my mind, the book’s main thesis remains unchanged regardless of one’s take on the Gospel’s value as a historical source, since ultimately it focuses on the construction of identity through compositional strategies. This focus means that, while I do not employ a narrative-critical methodology and strictly follow in my analysis John’s narrative logic, the level on which I approach John is literary, conceptual, and thematic, with an eye toward the social, historical, and literary contexts of these concepts and themes. 81

In my view, this tension is addressed well in several of the essays in T. Thatcher and S.D. Moore, eds., Anatomies of Narrative Criticism: The Past, Present, and Future of the Fourth Gospel as Literature (Atlanta: SBL, 2008), especially those by Culpepper, Reinhartz, and Conway.

Introduction

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The Contribution of This Study

Finally, this study contributes to Johannine scholarship in three principal ways. First, it integrates into the study of John new scholarly developments in cognate fields, such as the study of “religion” and “ethnicity” in Jewish and Greco-Roman antiquity, archaeology and material culture, and ancient institutions, especially synagogues. Second, the product of such integration is a fresh perspective on the variety of ways ancient Jews negotiated and gave expression to their identities – often in dialogue and debate with each other – and on the manner in which John’s Gospel is likewise engaged in a process of identity negotiation from a perspective within Judaism. Third, this study is a disciplinary boundary-crosser. In its own way, it joins the ranks of recent “within Judaism” approaches to the New Testament, which have read some of its documents, especially Matthew’s Gospel, Paul’s letters, and Revelation, not simply against the “background” of Judaism or in light of their Jewish “roots,” but as Judaism and as Jewish texts.82 This movement within scholarship has sought to re-conceptualize the entire field of New Testament as one belonging within the disciplinary realm of Jewish studies. This study, therefore, constitutes a new contribution to the “within Judaism” movement by bringing John’s Gospel – already long appreciated for its Jewish “background” – to the scholarly table for a similar kind of re-conceptualizing as itself a Jewish text. In the following chapter, I present an approach to ancient Judaism and a spectrum of Jewish identity, which will function throughout the study as an analytical framework for interpreting the way in which John negotiates key categories of Jewish ethnic identity in chapters 3–6, respectively. Chapter 3 will address the category of peoplehood; chapter 4, the Jewish law and its laws; chapter 5, the ancestral land; and chapter 6, the national cult. These chapters 82

E.g., on Matthew: A. Runesson, Divine Wrath and Salvation in Matthew: The Narrative World of the First Gospel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016); I. Oliver, Torah Praxis after 70 CE: Reading Matthew and Luke–Acts as Jewish Texts, WUNT 2.355 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013); D.C. Sim, The Gospel of Matthew and Christian Judaism: The History and Social Setting of the Matthean Community (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998); A.J. Saldarini, Matthew’s Christian–Jewish Community (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); on Paul: M.D. Nanos and M. Zetterholm, eds., Paul within Judaism: Restoring the First-Century Context of the Apostle (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015); P. Fredriksen, Paul: The Pagan’s Apostle (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017); on Revelation: J. Marshall, Parables of War: Reading John’s Jewish Apocalypse (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2001). Mark’s Gospel has been read from this perspective in a recent dissertation by John VanMaaren, titled “The Gospel of Mark within Judaism: Reading the Second Gospel in Its Ethnic Landscape” (Ph.D. diss., McMaster University, 2019). There is also a newly established section at the SBL devoted to reading the New Testament as Jewish literature.

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form the heart of the project. While, in principle, the arguments presented in each chapter could stand independently, the force of the study’s overall argument – that John’s narrative world reflects movement on this spectrum of Jewishness, from one expression of Jewish identity to another – and the contribution of the study as a whole lie in the sum of its parts.

chapter 2

John and the Problem of Ancient “Judaism” 1

Introduction

A study that sets out to address the question of John’s relationship to “Judaism” is faced with at least three methodological questions, all of which are highly debated in scholarship. The first is, plainly put, what was “Judaism” in antiquity? At the center of discussion stands dispute over the meaning, reference, and historical development of the Greek term Ἰουδαϊσμός – a term used rather rarely in the Second Temple period – and the concepts of “ethnicity” and “religion,” both of which are notoriously difficult to define and whose utility as analytical categories has been questioned within historical and religious studies scholarship. Put another way, the problem here is whether ancient “Judaism” should be understood as the religion of ancient “Jews,” as an ethno-geographical term referring to the particular way of life of the Judean ethnos, or as some configuration of the two.1 The answer one gives to this question will directly affect how that person describes “Judaism” in relation to John’s Gospel.2 Our second question closely follows the first: How ought we go about the task of describing the complex ancient phenomenon that we typically call today “Judaism”? Should we go looking for some essential characteristic, some fundamental unity among ancient Jews – a “common Judaism,” so to say – or 1 This is the central question posed and addressed by S.J.D. Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties (Berkley: University of California Press, 1999), chs. 3 and 4; and S. Mason, “Jews, Judaeans, Judaizing, Judaism: Problems of Categorization in Ancient History,” JSJ 38 (2007): 457–512. Mason is largely followed by D. Boyarin, “Rethinking Jewish Christianity: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (to which is Appended a Correction of My Border Lines),” JQR 99.1 (2009): 7–36. For a recent study on the origins of the term ‘religion,’ which comes to very similar theoretical conclusions as Mason’s study, see B. Nongbri, Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013). See more discussion below. 2 For example, Stanley Porter’s recent treatment of the related term Ioudaios in John draws a clear distinction between “race or region” on the one side and “religion” on the other. He sees John’s preoccupation with Jews and Judaism as involving religion rather than race or place, which leads to his conclusion that the Fourth Gospel, though not anti-Jewish, provided the linguistic basis for “a fundamental split between Judaism and what was to become Christianity […].” See his John, His Gospel, and Jesus: In Pursuit of the Johannine Voice (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), 150 (quote from p. 173).

© Wally V. Cirafesi, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004462946_003

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was Jewish identity so diverse in this period that we should really speak of discrete “Judaisms” with their own symbolic universes and independent cultural systems?3 The degree to which one emphasizes unity or diversity will influence the degree to which one describes a text like John’s Gospel as either part of the larger socio-religious enterprise of negotiating Jewish identity or divergent from it. Our third question has been the focus of voluminous scholarship. Its relevance to the current study is readily apparent to any student of John’s Gospel: What did it mean, according to the ancients, to be an Ioudaios?4 The term’s translation into modern languages (especially English) has been a big part of the debate: do we render it “Jew” or “Judean”? As with the term Ioudaïsmos, we find the concepts of “ethnicity” and “religion” receiving focused attention in discussion of Ioudaios and similar sets of questions being asked, which strongly influence one’s approach to John, “the Jews,” and “Judaism.” Each question above is a piece of the larger puzzle of constructing and modeling “Judaism” during a crucial period in its history (ca. 200 BCE–200 CE), a period that saw three full-fledged revolutions, the rise and fall of a Judean state, the establishment of Roman rule, a second destruction of the Jerusalem temple, and the codification of the earliest rabbinic documents. This span 3 See, e.g., S. Schwartz, “How Many Judaisms Were There? A Critique of Neusner and Smith on Definition and Mason and Boyarin on Categorization,” JAJ 2 (2011): 208–38, which deals with theoretical issues involved in the notion of ancient Judaism’s ‘diversity’ versus its ‘unity.’ The phrase ‘common Judaism’ was made popular in the work of E.P. Sanders. Especially important for the current study is his Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 BCE–66 CE (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1992), although the present work has slightly broader historical parameters. One of S. Schwartz’s important insights in his 2011 article is his instance on the need for scholars to define what in fact they mean by using the word ‘diversity’ in their descriptions of ancient Judaism. For my approach to this term, see below. However, I would add here that the terms ‘unity’ and ‘common’ are just as much in need of definition. Put in social-scientific terms, the issue here involves one’s theoretical leanings within the monothetic/polythetic spectrum of classification and attitude toward structural/agency-oriented approaches to socio-historical description. See J.Z. Smith, “Fences and Neighbors: Some Contours of Early Judaism,” in Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 1–18. 4 See, e.g., Cohen, Beginnings of Jewishness, 69–106; Mason, “Jews, Judaeans”; D.R. Schwartz, Judeans and Jews: Four Faces of Dichotomy in Ancient Jewish History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014); and the three surveys of recent scholarship by D. Miller: “The Meaning of Ioudaios and its Relationship to Other Group Labels in Ancient ‘Judaism’,” CBR 9.1 (2010): 98–126; “Ethnicity Comes of Age: An Overview of Twentieth-Century Terms for Ioudaios,” CBR 10.2 (2012): 293–311; and “Ethnicity, Religion, and the Meaning of Ioudaios in Ancient ‘Judaism’,” CBR 12.2 (2014): 216–65. Scholarship on the term Ioudaios as it relates specifically to John is addressed in chapter 3.

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of time, of course, also includes the origins of the Jesus movement and the inception history of the Fourth Gospel,5 making these broader methodological questions intensely relevant to the study of John and Judaism. This chapter, therefore, considers these three questions. The goal is to develop a heuristic model for analyzing Jewish identity in antiquity, which can then help us better understand John’s relationship to it. 2

“Judaism” in Antiquity: Religion and Ethnicity, Unity and Diversity

The question of John and Judaism naturally assumes that we know something about “Judaism” and what it meant to be an adherent of it in antiquity. But the current state of scholarship no longer allows us to assume anything. While the problems of categorizing ancient “Judaism” as either a “religion” or an “ethnicity” and modeling the tension between its unity and diversity are not new, more scholars, especially in Jewish studies, are becoming increasingly sensitive to the issues and their implications for studying Jewish identity in the ancient world. While numerous solutions to both problems have been proposed, the goal here is to provide a sketch of the major opinions and then to establish the analytical terms and trajectory for the current study. 2.1 “Religion” or “Ethnicity”? There is no consensus on whether “Judaism” of the Second Temple and early rabbinic periods should be categorized as a “religion” or “ethnicity.”6 The state of play is probably reflective of the theoretical complexity involved in such 5 This statement is true for most scholarly perspectives on John’s date, even for those putting the Gospel into the second century. The phrase “inception history,” and the idea behind it, is taken from A. Runesson, Divine Wrath and Salvation in Matthew: The Narrative World of the First Gospel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016), xvi. As Runesson says, it can include the study of “pre-textual traditions, the process of textualization, and the final form of a text.” The current study is not concerned with John’s pre-textual material (e.g., written or oral sources) or its textualization process. Rather, similar to Runesson’s approach to Matthew, it is concerned with the historical setting of John’s narrative world, whether or not that world has a basis in historical events. 6 E.g., the following scholars have put forward significant frameworks. Cohen: ethnicity that added religion to it ca. 2nd cent. BCE; Fredriksen: ethnicity; Mason, followed by Nongbri: ethnicity, and not a religion until post-Enlightenment; Boyarin: ethnicity and not a religion until 4th century CE; S. Schwartz, D.R. Schwartz, and J.J. Collins: always both ethnicity and religion. For a recent survey of these and other views, especially as it pertains to the ‘Jew’ vs. ‘Judean’ translation debate of the Greek term Ioudaios, see M. Öhler, “Judäer oder Juden? Die Debatte ‘Ethnos vs. Religion’ im auf das 2. Makkabäerbuch,” in Die Makkabäer, ed. F. Avemarie et al., WUNT 382 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 157–85 (158–66).

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attempts at categorization, as well as the natural divide between modern sociological models and the ancient data.7 The fundamental premise that a clear division can be made between “religion” and “ethnicity” in the ancient world, still active in much New Testament scholarship, has come under severe critique in recent years. In particular, Brent Nongbri’s recent book Before Religion has generated considerable discussion about whether “religion” is an adequate category by which to study ancient phenomena, especially those we associate today with the terms “Judaism,” “Christianity,” and “Islam.”8 At its core, Nongbri’s book aims to question the universality of the concept of “religion” itself and whether it really has its origins in antiquity, as is assumed by many in both the popular and scholarly arenas. Nongbri’s basic argument is that “religion” as most “modern people” would describe it – that is, as “a kind of inner sentiment or personal faith ideally isolated from secular concerns”9 – is a concept absent in the ancient world,10 and that the division between the “religious” and “secular” spheres did not arise until the modern era, specifically not until the work of Jean Bodin and John Locke in the 16th and 17th centuries, respectively.11 To this end, Nongbri attempts to re-orient not just the study of 7 See D. Goodblatt, Elements of Ancient Jewish Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 1–27 on the complexities of categorization. 8 At the 2016 meeting of the SBL in San Antonio, Texas, the Greco-Roman Religions section held a joint session with the North American Association for the Study of Religion and the Society for Ancient Mediterranean Religions entitled “After Nongbri: Was there Greek and Roman Religion in the Ancient World?” One should note, however, that concerns over the use of the category of “religion” has been circulating in historical scholarship for quite a long time. See, e.g., J.Z. Smith, “Religion, Religions, Religious,” in Critical Terms for Religious Studies, ed. M.C. Taylor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 269–84. Nongbri is followed in P. Fredriksen, “If It Looks Like a Duck, and It Quacks Like a Duck … On Not Giving Up the Godfearers,” in A Most Reliable Witness: Essays in Honor of Ross Shepard Kraemer, ed. S.A. Harvey et al., Brown Judaic Studies (Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 2015), 26. P. Esler’s work on Romans is an earlier and well-known attempt to place the early Jesus movement within the context of “ethnicity” and ethnic tensions between “Judeans” and non-“Judeans” in 1st century Rome. See his Conflict and Identity in Romans: The Social Setting of Paul’s Letter (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 38–74. 9 Nongbri, Before Religion, 7–8. 10 Nongbri, Before Religion, 2, 4. 11 Nongbri, Before Religion, 6, 9–10. Nongbri’s argument is not unlike the one put forward by Leora Batnitzky in her How Judaism Became a Religion: An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011). Batnitzky suggests that it was not until the rise of the modern nation-state and the work of German Protestant philosophers such as Kant and Schleiermacher, who created a notion of “religion” as internal, private, and detached from matters of the state, that some Jewish German Enlightenment philosophers, most notably Moses Mendelssohn, invented “Judaism” as a “religion.” It is important to note, however, that even after the Enlightenment, in non-European settings,

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“Judaism” but religion as a whole, spanning from the time of ancient Greece to modern Europe. Nongbri considers four examples from antiquity to which scholars have repeatedly turned in arguing for the birth of “religion”: the use of the term Ἰουδαϊσμός/Ioudaïsmos in 2 Macc 2:21; 8:1; 14:38 (2nd cent. BCE); the concern for philosophical theology in the writings of Cicero (1st cent. BCE); the depiction of “Christianity” alongside “Judaism” and “Hellenism” in Eusebius’s writings (4th cent. CE); and the rise of Islam (7th cent. CE). For Nongbri, what is referred to in each of these examples is not “religion” or “a religion” in the modern sense but rather notions that are fully couched within ethnicity and culture, although, as he admits, the latter two concepts are also not as straightforward as one would like.12 Thus, Ioudaïsmos in 2 Maccabees does not refer to the “religion of Judaism”; rather it refers to the ancestral customs pertaining to the Judean way of life. Nongbri’s work on Ioudaïsmos is anticipated by Steve Mason’s influential article from 2007, which deals with the question of “Judaism” by offering a historical and philological analysis of the terms Ioudaïsmos and Ioudaios (and their Latin equivalents Iudaismus and Iudaeus). By making an important methodological decision to approach these terms from an “emic” perspective, that is, from the perspective of how the ancients themselves understood and used them, Mason bypasses the tricky social-scientific category of “ethnicity” and places the terms within the context of ancient views on various politically and ethnographically demarcated people groups (ἔθνη).13 Mason argues

12 13

the concept of “religion” as a discrete category of experience disembedded from other human spheres remained foreign. In the 19th century, Bengali intellectual Bankim Chandra Chatterji was quoted as saying: “The people of our country did not perceive the independent existence of that object which is understood by the word religion. How can we name it by a familiar name when we have no understanding of it?” See R. Gupta, Being Hindu in Oslo: Youth, Change, and Continuity (Oslo: Novus Press, 2006), 114. On the late arrival of the concept of “religion” in Japan, see J.A. Josephson, The Invention of Religion in Japan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 71–93. My own approach to these concepts, especially “ethnicity,” is discussed further below. He favors the view of David Konstan, “Defining Ancient Greek Ethnicity,” Diaspora 6.1 (1997): 97–110, which emphasizes ‘ethnicity’ in ancient contexts as part of the rhetoric of social identity and difference. See also Paula Fredriksen, “Mandatory Retirement: Ideas in the Study of Christian Origins Whose Time Has Come To Go,” SR 35.2 (2006): 231–46 (232), where she emphasizes that engagement with the gods was fundamentally an “ethnic” designation, and, conversely, that one’s “ethnicity” was just as fundamentally a “cultic” designation. See, however, J.M. Hall, Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 17–19, where he criticizes the so-called ‘emic’ approach (though he does not use this term) for being a type of “superempiricism.” S. Schwartz’s description of Mason’s epistemological orientation is similar: “Mason is a straightforward

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that there was no such thing as “Judaism” meaning “the religion of the Jews,” since the ancients had no category for “religion” as we understand it today, disembedded from all other aspects of life (e.g., military, economics, poetry, government).14 This category, rather, is the creation of post-Enlightenment modernity.15 Like other ethnē, the Judean ethnos had its own ancestral myths of kinship, customs and laws (i.e., its own constitution), its own national cult, and attachment (concrete or conceptual) to an ancestral land.16 In my view, one of the most persuasive and concise pieces of primary data that Mason offers to support this claim is from Philo, Virt. 102–103:

14

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positivistic empiricist […]” (“How Many Judaisms,” 222). Despite the need for caution and perhaps a more tempered approach to the sources, the present study certainly runs in the “emic” vein of Mason’s and Fredriksen’s works. That is, it is less concerned (although not entirely unconcerned) with developing an approach to Jewish ‘ethnicity’ based upon modern socio-anthropological models, and more interested in building upon Mason and Fredriksen on what it meant to be part of an ancient ethnos. Daniel Boyarin follows much of Mason’s argument in his 2009 article “Rethinking Jewish Christianity” and, more recently, in his book Judaism: The Genealogy of a Modern Notion (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2019), but suggests that “Judaism” as a “religion” is discernible by the time of the 4th century CE, largely due to the emergence of a politically empowered Roman Christianity with its polemics against Jews. The main premises of Boyarin’s argument are: (1) There was no category of “religion” disembedded from the larger cultural-ethnic system of the Judeans, thus there was no “Judaism” – which is supposedly always taken by modern scholars to mean “the religion of the Jews” – before the 4th century CE; (2) “Judaism” as a de-ethnicized “religion,” i.e., a system of beliefs, is an invention of the church fathers, who created the concept to construct an effective Other as the object of their polemics. And (3) “Jewish Christians” were the object of particularly harsh polemicizing, since they were considered by the fathers, not as the clear Other like “orthodox” Jews, but as a heretical hybrid. They thus occupied a special place within early heresiological discourse because they were neither Christian nor Jewish but the “monstrous middle.” The category “Jewish Christian/Jewish Christianity” should, therefore, be dropped from scholarly study of Jesus-oriented Judaism. The term “Jesus-oriented Judaism/Jews” is not Boyarin’s; I have found it in the recent work of Karin Hedner Zetterholm: “Alternate Visions of Judaism and Their Impact on the Formation of Rabbinic Judaism,” JJMJS 1 (2014): 127–53; and Zetterholm, “Isaac and Jesus: A Rabbinic Reappropriation of a ‘Christian’ Motif?” JJS 67.1 (2016): 102–120. A similar point is made with regard to “Judaism” in Batnitzky, Judaism, 13–31, although she locates the invention of “Jewish religion” specifically during the German Jewish Enlightenment, not subsequent to it. Others have developed Mason’s model for an ethnos in antiquity. See most recently Öhler, “Judäer oder Juden,” 171–77, who uses the following characteristics in his analysis of 2 Maccabees: a myth of shared origins (der Mythos gemeinsamer Herkunft); the connection to a territory (Die Verbindung mit einem Territorium); shared history (Die gemeinsame Geschichte); religion (Religion), which is equivalent to Mason’s category of national cult.

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Having legislated for fellow-members of the ethnos (περὶ τῶν ὁμοεθνῶν), he [Moses] holds that newcomers must be deemed worthy of every privilege, because they have left behind blood-relatives, ancestral home, customs, sacred rites (γενεὰν μὲν τὴν ἀφ’ αἵματος καὶ πατρίδα καὶ ἔθη καὶ ἱερά … πολελοιπότας), images of the Gods, the gifts and honours too … He directs those of the ethnos to love the newcomers, not only as friends and relatives, but as though themselves in body and soul.17 Not only does Philo here hit on the constituent elements of an ethnos, but he also sets a framework for understanding “conversion” in antiquity. Rather than simply a change of religion, as many might think of it today, “conversion” to (and from) “Judaism” involved severing one’s prior commitment to their native ethnos – their blood-relations, ancestral land, laws and customs, and gods – and attaching themselves to (or abandoning) the ethnos of the Ioudaioi.18 As Paula Fredriksen has cleverly put it, in the Greco-Roman world “gods run in the blood … cult is an ethnic designation [and] ethnicity is a cultic designation.”19 Texts from the satirical poet Juvenal (Satires 14:96–106) and the Roman historians Tacitus (Hist. 5:5) and Cassius Dio (Hist. rom. 67:14:1–2) give good examples of this: a Roman’s adherence to Jewish laws (leges Iudaicum) or customs (τὰ τῶν Ἰουδαίων ἤθη; morem), especially circumcision in Tacitus’s account, is tantamount to a treacherous break with one’s own native land along with its laws and gods.20 17 18

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Translation is from Mason, “Jews, Judaeans,” 491 (italics are original). For the broader range of primary sources that substantiate his claim, see pp. 483–94. Note that Philo does not appear to make circumcision a criterion for such attachment. On the relation of the concept of conversion to the issues of circumcision and genealogy in the construction of Jewishness, see M. Thiessen, Contesting Conversion: Genealogy, Circumcision, and Identity in Ancient Judaism and Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), who challenges the scholarly idea that circumcision was monolithically equivalent to conversion and thus to Jewish identity. Fredriksen, “Mandatory Retirement,” 232. The intimate connection among ancestral laws and customs, common kinship, and gods is also seen in Herodotus’s classic text on Greek ethnicity, although he also includes the element of a shared language, which did not characterize the Jewish ethnos (“… next the kinship of all Greeks in blood and speech, and the shrines of gods and the sacrifices that we have in common, and the likeness of our way of life, to all of which it would not befit the Athenians to be false”; Hist. 8:144:2 [trans. Godley]). See R.V. Munson, “Herodotus and Ethnicity,” in Blackwell Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean, ed. J. McInerney (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2014), 341–55. An important piece of evidence supporting the idea that the Ioudaioi constituted an ethnos, which, as far as I can tell, Mason does not treat, is an inscribed relief from among the many other ethnē reliefs found at the Sebasteion in Aphrodisias (early to mid-1st cent. CE) that reads: ΕΘΝΟΥΣ ΙΟΥΔΑΙΟΝ.

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For Mason, Ioudaïsmos all the way up until the 4th cent. CE was exclusively an ethnic term, meaning philologically something like “Judaizing” or “Judaization”  – one’s bringing of another over to, or one’s own observance of, the Judean ancestral way of life. It is only the later Christian polemics of non-Jews like Origen, Tertullian, Epiphanius, John Chrysostom and others that stripped away all the rich ethnic elements of Ioudaïsmos and Ioudaios and represented them with the negative connotations of an ossified system of beliefs. Since non-Jewish “Christianity” competed with Jews over worship of the same god but was developing differently with reference to its internal organization and membership along the lines of the Hellenistic philosophies, associations, and “mystery” cults – multi-ethnic groups for initiates only – its leaders were compelled to invent and polemicize against a “Judaism” that similarly had no, or at least a severely weakened, connection to an ancestral people, laws, land and national cult.21 This included strategies in which the god of Israel himself

21

See R.R.R. Smith, “Simulacra Gentium: The Ethne from the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias,” JRS 78 (1988): 50–77 (pl. VIII, 5). This distinction between Jews/Judeans as an ethnic group in antiquity in contrast to Christ-followers as a voluntary association that lacked an ethnic criterion is developed further in S. Mason and P. Esler, “Judaean and Christ-Follower Identities: Grounds for a Distinction,” NTS 63.4 (2017): 493–515. The development of Christ-groups as multi-ethnic associations (i.e., ethnicity not a criterion for membership in the association) centered around the worship of an ethnic deity is preceded historically by similar developments in the Greco-Roman world, in which ethnic deities came to be worshiped more broadly by members of various other ethnē. Associations organized around the worship of Isis are a particularly good example of this phenomenon. While the cult of Isis was native of Egypt, it eventually spread throughout the Greek and Roman worlds to include initiates of non-Egyptian ethnicity. Perhaps the most famous literary example of this is found in book 11 of Apuleius’s Metamorphoses, in which Lucius, himself from Madaurus in Numidia, is initiated into the mysteries of Isis. Here also the goddess lists the many different names by which she is called among various ethnē but concludes the list with: “the Egyptians, which are excellent in all kind of ancient doctrine, and by their proper ceremonies accustom to worship me, do call me by my true name, Queen Isis” (trans. LCL 453). Thus, in Egypt, the worship of Isis formed an important part of the Egyptian national cult, but outside of Egypt, local associations devoted to the goddess were organized that appealed to and often included non-Egyptian devotees. See F. Dunand, Isis, Mère des dieux (Arles: Actes Sud, 2008), 105–34 (Isis in Greece and Rome), 242–74 (Isis in Africa, Spain, Gaul, Germania); R. Turcan, The Cults of the Roman Empire, trans. A. Nevill (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), chapter 2; R. Ascough, “Translocal Relationships Among Voluntary Associations and Early Christianity,” JECS 5 (1997): 223–41; P. Harland, Associations, Synagogues, and Congregations: Claiming a Place in Ancient Mediterranean Society, 2nd rev. ed. (Kitchener, ON: Philip Harland, 2013), 35–36; A. Runesson, “Judging Gentiles in the Gospel of Matthew: Between ‘Othering’ and Inclusion,” in Jesus, Matthew’s Gospel and Early Christianity: Studies in Honour of Graham N. Stanton, ed. D. Gurtner, J. Willits, and R. Burridge, LNTS 435 (London: T&T Clark, 2011), 137–38; R.E. Witt, Isis in

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was de-Judaized, with Gentile “Christians” filling the role of a “true Israel.” In Mason᾽s model, then, we see that the political-ethnographic category of ethnos in antiquity is the key to understanding “Judaism,” rather than “religion.” Mason and Nongbri have put scholarship in their debt by highlighting the ethno-historical dimensions, as well as the modern influences that are active, in the study of ancient “Judaism” specifically and ancient religion generally. But like all scholarly work, theirs is not without criticism.22 Four points can be raised briefly. First, both scholars present the modern concept of “religion” based upon a notion found in popular North American and European parlance and with descriptions such as “personal faith” and “isolable from the rest of our lives.”23 While these descriptions might indeed be reflected in various popular media outlets and university course blurbs for religious studies departments, it is highly debatable whether “most modern people,” perhaps especially outside of North American and European contexts, would describe their own religious commitments as “isolable” from the rest of life.24 Nongbri and Mason offer no scientific evidence, such as statistical or qualitative research, for their characterization of a category they wish to deconstruct. It seems to me that if one would start with an understanding of modern “religion” that accounts for the fact that, for some people groups today, what we are calling “religion” is by no means detached from one’s ethnicity, politics, and so on, then one’s conclusions about the disparity between the ancient and contemporary worlds might in fact differ. Second, embedded in the work of both scholars is a theory of the origins of concepts that needs critical reflection. Both are of the theoretical orientation that, in order for a concept to exist, such as “religion” or “Judaism” (as a “religion”), there must also exist a specific word for it. The main issue here is a lexicographical one: What is the relationship between a word and a concept? Unlike Mason’s work on the term “Judaism,” Nongbri anticipates this question: Just because there is no ancient terminological parallel to what he has proposed is the modern understanding of the term “religion,” is this reason enough to believe that the ancients did not possess a similar concept?

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the Ancient World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971), 55; and J.B. Rives, Religion in the Roman Empire (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 160–61. I wish to thank Christian Bull for discussing the cult of Isis and its development outside of Egypt with me. For an extended critique of Mason’s work, see S. Schwartz’s, “How Many Judaisms” and the appendix in D.R. Schwartz, Judeans and Jews. Quotations refer to Nongbri, Before Religion, 7–8 and Mason, “Jews, Judaeans,” 480–82 (482), respectively. See D.R. Schwartz, Judeans and Jews, 100–101 with reference to practitioners of modern Judaism.

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Nongbri, deferring to the work of nineteenth and twentieth-century philosopher of language Ludwig Wittgenstein, answers in the affirmative, suggesting that when we analyze a concept, what we are in fact doing is analyzing the use of a word.25 Mason is clearly of the same orientation when he says: “That Ἰουδαϊσμός did not yet mean ‘Judaism’ as a comprehensive system and way of life (an English -ism) seems clear because throughout the first two centuries [CE] no other Christian text used the term […].”26 In short, if there is no word for it, then there is no concept of it. Nongbri’s rejection of the idea that a concept can exist beyond the use of a single word stems from his distaste for the notion that concepts can exist beyond the use of language entirely. This is what he believes is the position of linguist Benjamin Whorf, who was most well known for his work on linguistic relativity in the first half of the twentieth century.27 Besides the fact that I think Nongbri has somewhat misrepresented Whorf’s notion of “covert concepts” or “cryptotypes” (these do not refer to ineffable concepts that exist beyond the use of language),28 Nongbri’s argument (and Mason’s as well) is out of line 25 26

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See Nongbri, Beyond Religion, 22–24. Mason, “Jews, Judaeans,” 471 (see also p. 465). For a similar criticism of Mason, see D. Schwartz, Judeans and Jews, 104: “However, even if Ioudaïsmos did not appear in those ancient texts [2 Maccabees, 4 Maccabees, and Galatians 1], one might still argue that it is legitimate for us to use ‘Judaism’ in discussing the period, for it is quite possible that the concept of what we call Judaism existed even where and when the term was not used, just as we may legitimately speak, today, about ancient Jewish ‘culture,’ ‘ethics,’ ‘sovereignty,’ ‘nationalism,’ or the like, although ancient Jewish languages had no words for such concepts. Indeed, frequently terms for phenomena come into vogue only after the phenomena have been around long enough for the language to recognize them.” See also Hall, Hellenicity, 18, who criticizes this “linguistic ‘argument from silence’,” with reference to the terms ‘gender,’ ‘class,’ and ‘culture,’ which, although we find no direct terminological equivalents in ancient Greek, this surely does not mean we cannot study these topics in antiquity. See the brief summary on Whorf and linguistic relativity in G.P. Fewster, “Symbolizing Identity and the Role of Texts,” BAGL (2013): 83–84. ‘Covert concepts,’ ‘covert categories,’ or ‘cryptotypes’ in Whorf’s thinking are actually grammatical categories (not abstract concepts) that ordinarily go morphologically unmarked in a particular language (unless occurring in a ‘test’ sentence) but are nevertheless real. Whorf gives as an example the gender system for English nouns: English nouns are not ordinarily marked for gender unless the sentence calls for the use of a personal pronoun to mark explicitly the noun’s gender. Otherwise, noun gender is ‘covert’ in English, that is, it is left up to the language user to ascertain without the help of a formal linguistic marker to know the gender of the noun being used. In other words, Whorf’s theory of ‘covert concepts’ has nothing to do with the lexicographical issue of the relation between a word and a concept, and even less with the sort of historical issues that Nongbri is attempting to highlight. See P. Lee, The Whorf Theory Complex: A Critical Reconstruction (Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1996), 166–67.

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with contemporary linguistic scholarship that has shown that a word is never unequivocally equal to a concept, and that concepts are always structured through the use of a range of words and entire discourses that possess a range of semantic domains.29 Thus, although there may not be precise ancient terms equivalent to our modern concepts of “religion” or “Judaism” as “the religion of the Jews,” this point is moot, since the results of such analysis would certainly be different if the net was cast wider to include units of language larger than individual words.30 Nongbri and Mason are certainly right to highlight 29

30

See especially James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), which itself is now quite dated. See also G.P. Fewster, Creation Language in Romans 8: A Study in Monosemy, LBS 8 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 29, who advances Barr’s cause in this matter. In fact, Whorf himself stated explicitly that, when testing for ‘covert concepts,’ “The test unit is the sentence, or sometimes small group of sentences (immediate field of discourse), not the word.” Cited in Lee, The Whorf Theory Complex, 166. See, e.g., D. Schwartz, Judeans and Jews, 109, who rightly notes that the meaning of Ioudaïsmos in 2 Macc 8:1 is constructed by the context of vv. 2–4, which describes those who “had remained in Judaism” (τοὺς μεμενηκότας ἐν τῷ Ιουδαϊσμῷ) as praying (καὶ ἐπεκαλοῦντο τὸν κύριον). As Schwartz says, it is difficult to call this description of Ioudaïsmos anything other than ‘religious’ (see below). The same is true regarding Paul’s uses of the term in Gal 1:13–14. While its occurrence in v. 13 could cohere with Mason’s ‘Judaizing’ theory, its occurrence in v. 14 does not. Here Paul’s “advancement in Judaism” (προέκοπτον ἐν τῷ Ἰουδαϊσμῷ) is set in juxtaposition not to his persecution of Christ-followers but to his zeal for his “ancestral traditions” (τῶν πατρικῶν μου παραδόσεων), which would seem to represent, for Paul, a relatively stable system of ancestral belief and practice. I would also interpret in this way the 3rd or 4th cent. CE ‘Cattia Inscription’ (CIJ 1.537; Noy, JIWE 2.584), which mentions the woman named as having lived her whole life well “in Judaism” (ἐν τῷ Ἰουδαϊσμῷ). Further, Mason’s interpretation and rendering of Ioudaïsmos in Paul as ‘Judaizing’ (recall: bringing one back over to the Judean way of life) does not account for ̈ ‘to Judaize, live in a Judean/Jewish fashion’ (see two other issues. (1) The verb ἰουδαίζω, entry in BDAG), from which, as Mason notes, is derived the noun Ἰουδαϊσμός, is apparently used only to denote the activity of non-Ioudaioi actively seeking to align themselves with the Judean/Jewish ancestral way of life (see Greek Esther 8:17; Theodotus, frag. 4; Gal 2:14; Plutarch, Cicero 7:5; Josephus, War 2:454; see even the fourth century Acts of Pilate 2:1). That is, it does not indicate the activity of Ioudaioi seeking to bring non-Ioudaioi over to the ancestral customs or to bring back over those who had deviated from or left the ancestral way of life behind. Before Ignatius’s use of the term in the 2nd cent. CE, the use of Ἰουδαϊσμός appears only with Jews/Judeans as the actors and in constructions involving a verb (or noun of action) + a prepositional phrase (ἐν τῷ Ἰουδαϊσμῷ; ὑπὲρ τοῦ Ιουδαϊσμοῦ); the only exception is 4 Macc 4:26, in which “Judaism” can be ‘denied’ or ‘renounced’ (ἐξό̈ referred to the activity of non-Ioudaioi aligning with μνυσθαι). If, then, the verb ἰουδαίζω the Judean/Jewish way of life, the verb + ἐν τῷ Ἰουδαϊσμῷ construction should probably be taken as reference to the activity of Ioudaioi – e.g., “remaining,” “acting bravely,” “progressing,” “behavior,” “living well” – within or on behalf of their own ancestral way of life or traditional beliefs and practices. (2) Mason’s interpretation of Ioudaïsmos as ‘Judaizing’ assumes that the early Jesus movement (and Paul’s early perception of it) was something

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the discontinuity between the ancient and modern uses of the terms “religion/ religious” (religio) and “secular” (saecularis), and to criticize that dichotomy as being artificial within the ancient world; “religion” cannot be spoken of independently of other social categories, especially ethnicity. They are also right to demand that future scholarship be cautious and self-critical in its use of “religion” as a second-order analytical category. But to say that Ioudaïsmos in the period before the 4th century CE did not in any way represent or presuppose a relatively stable (though certainly not uniform or static) system of belief and practice known as “Judaism” and was devoid of anything that people would today associate with “religion” (e.g., prayer or piety) appears, at least to me, to run the risk of reductionism.31 Third, Mason’s work on Ioudaïsmos and Ioudaios emphasizes the constitutive elements of an ethnic group (ἔθνος) in antiquity: kinship (even if “fictive”), ancestral laws and authoritative customs, attachment to a territory, and gods worshiped in a national cult. Thus, like other peoples of Mediterranean antiquity, Ioudaioi, whether living in Judea or abroad, were considered an ethnos by both insiders and outsiders. On this, I am entirely convinced and find nothing with which to dispute Mason and those who have argued similarly.32 Indeed,

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other than an expression of Judean/Jewish ancestral customs, since its members needed to be ‘Judaized.’ Mason says this explicitly on the final page of his article: “It becomes increasingly clear being a ‘Judaean’ and being a follower of Jesus were incommensurable categories, rather like being a Russian or a Rotarian, a Brazilian or a Bridge player” (“Jews, Judaeans,” 512). This may have been true for the non-Jewish authors writing in the 3rd and 4th century that Mason mentions, but we should not assume this reflected the view of all people, especially of non-elites (e.g., see John Chrysostom, Adv. Jud. 1:4–5, where it is obvious that his criticism of Jews and Judaism arises from the fact that members of his own congregation were celebrating the Jewish ancestral festivals). Such a dissonance is not reflected in early views of the first followers of Jesus, including Paul, who, if we are to trust the account in the book of Acts, apparently did not see the maintenance of his identity as an Ioudaios and Pharisee to be incommensurate with his being a Christ-follower (Acts 22:3; 23:6). S. Schwartz, “How Many Judaisms,” 225 notes that Mason’s argument – that Ioudaïsmos did not carry the sense of a static system of religious lore, belief, and practice but rather the sense of ‘Judaizing,’ that is, active engagement with this system – nevertheless “presupposes the disembedded existence of such a body of stuff, whether or not that body is defined as specifically religious, as opposed to ‘national’ or ‘cultural’.” See also D. Schwartz, Judeans and Jews, 95–99, where he critiques Mason’s understanding of the Greek term θρησκεία, often rendered as “religion” by translators of Josephus and the New Testament, by demonstrating that the term can indeed take the sense of an ‘authoritative system’ or refer to one’s ‘piety/religiosity.’ This differs from Mason’s (and Nongbri’s) interpretation, which centers on the notion of one’s active performance of rituals related to worship in one’s national cult, not some static system. Especially Boyarin, “Rethinking Jewish Christianity”; Fredriksen, “Mandatory Retirement.”

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this point is the methodological centerpiece of the current project. However, I do think one must take the further step of considering how each of these elements could be individually and variously deployed in discursive contexts in the service of identity construction.33 That is, we have few, if any, ancient Jewish materials that invoke all of these elements of ethnicity at any one time. Rather, certain ones are foregrounded, others are backgrounded, and still others do not make a showing at all. Ethnicity, as Konstan argues, is a socially constructed category, even in antiquity, built discursively as a text (or material artifact) attempts to shape a group’s cohesion around certain shared characteristics. What a text or a material artifact says with reference to Ioudaioi as an ethnos indicates only that part of their ethnic identity that its author wishes to foreground (see further below). Fourth, while not denying the ethnic character of Ioudaïsmos and related terms in any period of Jewish history, Seth Schwartz and Daniel Schwartz both argue that the notion of “Judaism” as also a “religion” should be retained, even if only as a second-order analytical category.34 According to Seth Schwartz, for ancient Jews, there existed a common body of tradition shaped around the dictum “One God, one temple, one Torah,” which was “unusually tightly integrated” into society, mediated through Torah by the priestly class, and, although modulated and interpreted within a multiplicity of cultural expressions, was ultimately concerned with how the people related to their god with reference to belief and practice.35 For Seth Schwartz, it is difficult to conceive of the relationship as something other than ‘religious.’36 But, as Schwartz himself says, “What is commonly called Judaism or the Jewish religion was an element in the national [or ethnic] culture of the Jews” (italics original).37 In saying this, Schwartz is not far from the view of Mason, who emphasizes that the concept of “religion” in Jewish antiquity was inseparable from the broader, more encompassing category of ethnicity.38 That is, while there do appear to

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See the similar point made in Konstan, “Defining Ancient Greek Ethnicity,” 100. S. Schwartz, “How Many Judaisms,” 235–36; D.R. Schwartz, Judeans and Jews, 93–102. In retaining “religion” as a ‘second-order’ category, I am following M. Satlow, “Disappearing Categories: Using Categories in the Study of Religion,” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 17 (2005): 287–98 (293–95). S. Schwartz, “How Many Judaisms,” 235. Although, admittedly, perhaps not conceived of within the same framework of North American or European Protestantism. S. Schwartz, “How Many Judaisms,” 235. See also, e.g., Smith, “Religion, Religions, Religious”; Fredriksen, “Mandatory Retirement”; and more recently in Fredriksen, “On Not Giving Up the Godfearers,” 25–33.

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be aspects of ancient Judaism that cohere with what we today normally associate with “religion” (e.g., prayer, piety), these aspects were fundamentally connected to and worked as expressions of one’s belonging to an ethnic group. What, then, can we conclude from this discussion of ‘religion’ and ‘ethnicity,’ and how is it relevant for the study of John and “Judaism”? First, while there has been much debate on whether and to what extent modern theories and definitions of ‘ethnicity’ map onto the ancient world, scholars such as Anthony Smith, Jonathan Hall, and David Goodblatt have provided strong arguments that there is at least some congruity between the ancient and the modern.39 Historians of Jewish antiquity, such as Mason, Fredriksen, and Satlow, have emphasized that ‘ethnicity’ in the Greco-Roman world revolved around those socially and discursively constructed characteristics associated with a group’s identification as an ethnos, whether claimed by insiders or attributed by outsiders. Four characteristics are commonly identified as a way into speaking about ancient ‘ethnicity’ and ‘ethnic groups’: (1) the notion of peoplehood/ kinship; (2) ancestral laws and customs; (3) attachment to a territory, real or imagined; and (4) worship of ancestral gods in a ‘national cult,’ with the term ‘national’ here simply indicating a politically legitimated, supra-local ethnic institution.40 On the other hand, anthropologists today, too, appear to emphasize the constructive and ascriptive nature of ‘ethnicity.’41 Smith, for example, identifies six characteristics of modern ethnic groups, each of which, in my view, quite easily fits within one of the four characteristics mentioned above: (1) a collective name; (2) a common myth of descent; (3) a shared history; (4) a distinctive shared culture; (5) an association with a specific territory; and (6) a sense of communal solidarity.42 While there seems to be a level of correspondence between ancient and modern conceptions of ‘ethnicity,’ the current study will, nevertheless, use the four ethnic characteristics commonly identified by historians to form its

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A.D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 22–30; J.M. Hall, Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 25–32; and Goodblatt, Ancient Jewish Nationalism, 1–28. See Mason, “Jews, Judaeans”; Fredriksen, “Mandatory Retirement”; Fredriksen, “How Jewish Is God?”; M. Satlow, “Jew or Judaean?,” in “The One Who Sows Bountifully”: Essays in Honor of Stanley K. Stowers, ed. C.J. Hodge et al., Brown Judaic Studies (Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 2013), 166–67. E.g., S. Jones, The Archaeology of Ethnicity: Constructing Identities in the Past and Present (London: Routledge, 1997), 56–83; T.H. Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives (London: Pluto Press, 1993), 10–12. Smith, Ethnic Origins, 22–30.

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analytical focus.43 These characteristics are not understood as exhaustive criteria of all ethnic groups in antiquity; others could have been included. The decision is largely utilitarian and heuristic, but they do seem to be the characteristics that feature most prominently in the ancient sources and appear most clearly in John. Thus, in my approach, the ideas of peoplehood, ancestral laws, land, and national cult are ethnos-related characteristics that represent concrete or conceptual sites of meaning-making. That is, they function as loci for engagement in the socially situated process of forming one’s ‘identity.’ And this discursive engagement in processes of meaning-making centered upon these ‘sites’ is how I understand the construction of ‘ethnic identity’ to take place. In the case of antiquity, texts as well as objects participate in and thus mediate identity construction, which is itself always undertaken in relation to, and even in competition with, alternative performances of meaning-making.44 Second, because ethnic identities  – Jewish, Greek, Roman, Egyptian, or what have you – are socially and subjectively constructed, they are ever and always negotiated, a term used already a number of times in this study. The term refers to the idea that ethnic identities are dynamic, relational, imply internal variation, and gains and losses, but they are not indefinitely flexible.45 The very idea that one could change their ethnic identity in antiquity (as well as today46) suggests that there was in some cases at least a semblance of discernible boundaries between ethnic groups, both ascribed to at the grassroots level and imposed by the state, no matter how ideologically constructed, fluid, or unpoliced those boundaries may have been. Third, if Jews in antiquity constituted an ethnos, then they, too, engaged similar ‘sites’ of socially situated meaning-making as members of other ethnē. However, as I will stress in the following section, the ‘Jewish ethnos’ was not 43

44 45 46

There are ethnic characteristics identified by both historians and modern anthropologists that, in my view, do not map adequately onto the specific situation of Jewish antiquity. This is particularly the case with language, since membership in the Jewish ethnos does not appear to have been linked to a particular one. John, for its part, does have an interest in rendering concepts and objects into different languages. In 1:41, Μεσσίας, a Greek transliteration of ‫משיחא‬, is translated into Greek, χριστός. Conversely, in 5:2; 19:13, 17; 20:16, objects and ideas in Greek are given their Hebrew/Aramaic equivalent. In 19:20, the Gospel notes that the titulus “King of the Jews” was rendered in three languages, Greek, Latin, and Hebrew/Aramaic, and that many of the Jews were able to read it. But John nowhere links language to membership in the Jewish ethnos; the Gospel is simply evidence for the multilingual situation of Jews throughout the Mediterranean world. The relational aspect of ethnic identity construction is a major feature of Eriksen’s work in Ethnicity and Nationalism. See Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism, 30–32. See, e.g., Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism, 39–41.

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a static, fixed, or monolithic social category. There was a high level of internal variation, with Jews throughout the Mediterranean world engaged in very different processes of meaning-making concerning their ethnic identity. Jews negotiated their Jewishness in very different, sometimes even incompatible, ways, performing their ethnicity variably and visibly through the formation of beliefs, rituals, and material culture. The socially situated performance of one’s ethnicity is how I understand the concept of “religion” as applied to the study of antiquity; such performance of one’s specifically Jewish ethnicity is how I understand the term “Judaism.”47 Thus, although aware of the potential anachronism involved, I choose to retain the term “Judaism” in this book, even if only for heuristic purposes and ease of presentation, rather than discard it entirely.48 The term “religion” is used throughout this study as a second-order analytical category to denote the beliefs and practices  – in all of their various manifestations – that emanated from one’s negotiation of their ethnicity within a social context. Retaining and cautiously using the category of “religion” provides a heuristic tool for assessing the different ways in which different Jewish groups performed elements of their ethnos-based identity. The result of such social and artifactual performances is an ‘ethno-religion’ that we call ‘Judaism,’ a phenomenon one could “remain in” or “act on behalf of” (2 Macc 2:21; 8:1; 14:38), “advance in” or have “a former life in” (Gal 1:13, 14), and “deny” (4 Macc 4:26) or “live well in” (CIJ 1.537/Noy, JIWE 2.584). Teasing out definitions like this will facilitate our discussion below of the ways in which ancient sources interpret, critique, and perform differently elements of Jewish ethnic identity. Sources vary widely in their constructions of Jewishness, with most not giving any indication that they perceive the boundaries of Jewishness to have been crossed. On the other hand, from the perspective of some Jewish authors, there were Jews who had done just that. This exposes the often-discussed tension between unity and diversity in early Judaism, the need to address this tension with reference to the category of ethnic identity, and the tension’s hermeneutical significance as we turn to John’s Gospel in later chapters. 2.2 Unity and Diversity in Ancient “Judaism” If Judaism was (and still is) an ethno-religion in which its members were (and still are) in constant and active negotiation of their ethnic identity, it should come as no surprise that the resulting expressions of Jewishness could end up looking quite differently from, even contradictory to, one another. But the 47 48

This definition is very close to Seth Schwartz’s articulation in “How Many Judaisms,” 235. As Boyarin’s recent work in Judaism, 17–22 seems to suggest doing.

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extent to which groups diverged over interpretation of their ethnos-based identity, and how to describe it historiographically, have been debated rather hotly in scholarship.49 The scholarly arena typically divides into two. On the one hand, some have taken the diversity we see in the sources to represent discrete ‘Judaisms,’ understanding each textual source as a self-contained “Judaic system.” Thus, there was a ‘Qumranic Judaism,’ ‘Enochic Judaism,’ ‘Pharisaic Judaism,’ ‘rabbinic Judaism,’ and so on. Jacob Neusner’s comment is representative of this perspective: “The issue, how do we define Judaism, is now settled: we do not. We define Judaisms, and the first step in the work of definition requires identifying the particular Judaic community that stands behind a given set of writings or that values and lives by those writings.”50 Neusner’s position stresses a critical, even skeptical, reading of individual sources, and it fixates on what in the social sciences is called a polythetic model of classification. In the Neusnerian view, ancient texts are more reflective of the ideology of the communities that produced them rather than the situations actually recounted by and in the texts themselves. Polytheticism is a method of classification that consciously refrains from putting forth a characteristic or set of characteristics as essential for membership within a group.51 It prioritizes the individual agency of texts and their associated communities, and resists seeing any elements of structure running across and undergirding “Judaism” in the singular. Thus, for example, while the rite of circumcision may have been highly regarded by Jews and practiced widely (e.g., Jub 15:11–34; 1 Macc 2:46–47; Phil 3:5; Josephus, Ant. 1:192), it was neither practiced only by Jews (Herodotus, Hist. 2:104) nor was it interpreted as having the same identitymarking function by all Jews. In 1 Macc 1:15, a group of Jews renounce their 49 50

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Himmelfarb, “Judaism in Antiquity,” 65; S.J.D. Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah, 2nd ed. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2006), 12–14; S. Schwartz, “How Many Judaisms.” J. Neusner, The Judaism the Rabbis Take for Granted (Atlanta: Scholars Press for the University of South Florida, 1994), 14. He uses the phrase ‘Judaic system’ on pp. 14, 15, and 18. As Seth Schwartz has shown (“How Many Judaisms,” 212 n. 10), Neusner’s work in the 1980s seems to have been a, if not the, driving force behind the theory of discrete Judaisms. See, e.g., Neusner’s The Religious Study of Judaism: Description, Analysis, and Interpretation, 4 vols. (Lanham: University Press of America, 1986); The Systemic Analysis of Judaism (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988); The Emergence of Judaism: Jewish Religion in Response to the Critical Issues of the First Six Centuries (Lanham: University Press of America, 2000). See also Smith, “Fences and Neighbors,” 1–18 (esp. at p. 18); and W.S. Green, “The Scholarly Study of Judaism and its Sources,” in Judaism in Late Antiquity. Part 1: The Literary and Archaeological Sources, ed. J. Neusner, Handbook of Oriental Studies 1 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 1–10. See Smith, “Fences and Neighbors”; and M. Satlow, “Defining Judaism: Accounting for ‘Religions’ in the Study of Religion,” JAAR 74.4 (2006): 837–60.

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mark of circumcision, with no clear indication that they renounce their identity as Jews.52 Old Greek Esther 8:17 says that many among the nations “circumcised themselves and Judaized” (περιετέμοντο καὶ ιουδάιζον), but the parallel to that verse in the so-called Alpha text (8:41) says “and many of the Jews were circumcised,” evidently suggesting that Jews could be Jews even before they were circumcised. And Josephus seems to indicate that adult males coming over to Judaism did not necessarily have to go all the way to the point of circumcising themselves (e.g., Josephus, War 2:454).53 In other words, for Neusner and Smith, it does not appear that we are able to reduce Jewishness to the rite of circumcision. As Smith has suggested, “Circumcision is not definitive of the taxon Jew”; therefore, the scholarly task is “achieving the goal of a polythetic classification of Judaisms […].”54 On the other hand is the view that, despite all of its apparent ‘diversity’ – whatever is meant by this term – ancient Judaism was marked by some fundamental unity, “a central core of beliefs and practices that the great majority of first-century Jews, who followed no particular party, held in common.”55 The strongest and most well-known presentation of this sort of structuralist approach to describing Judaism is found in E.P. Sanders’s Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 BCE–66 CE. Sanders’s model of ‘common Judaism’ is primarily, 52

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This is Smith’s view on 1 Macc 1:15. However, see chapter 5, where I suggest 1 Macc 1:13–15 represents a process in which these Jews do indeed break with the laws of their own ethnos, adopting the “ordinances” (δικαιώματα) and “laws” (νόμιμια) of the surrounding nations (τῶν ἐθνῶν), and thus appear to no longer consider themselves Jewish. The key point in this text that suggests these are ‘apostate’ Jews – people who no longer consider themselves Jewish (at least according to the author of 1 Macc) – is not their revocation and renouncement of circumcision but their positive, active adherence to the customary laws of the Greeks. See also Philo who seems to speak of foreskinned proselytes who “alienate” themselves from polytheism and become YHWH-oriented henotheists but are apparently not fully Torah observant (Quaest. Exod. 2:2). See Donaldson, Judaism and the Gentiles, 493–98. Smith, “Fences and Neighbors,” 13, 18. I note here, however, that polythetic classifications are not necessarily exclusive to the ‘Judaisms’ model and can be used within a modified understanding of ‘common Judaism.’ Indeed, while Satlow explicitly works with Smith’s notion of polythesis, he nevertheless argues: “‘Judaism’ is best seen as a family of communities that generally share a common sense of identity, a discourse transmitted through a more or less bounded set of authoritative texts and traditional practices” (“Defining Judaism,” 839). The key word in this quote is not ‘common’ but rather ‘family.’ While family members might be connected by a series of overlapping similarities, there might not be one feature common to every member of that family. Such a polythetic approach to describing ancient Judaism can, I think, provide the foundation for a description that successfully balances Judaism’s diversity and unity. P. Trebilco, “Jewish Backgrounds,” in Handbook to the Exegesis of the New Testament, ed. S.E. Porter, NTTS 25 (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 359–88.

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although not exclusively, a phenomenon in the land of Israel, and it is defined simply and concisely by him as “what the priests and the people agreed on.”56 For Sanders, the term ‘common’ has two senses. The first involves, as noted above, the idea of an essential unity: there were certain practices and beliefs that held the Jewish community together, with the law and the temple at the center. Second, ‘common’ also means ‘ordinary,’ that is, non-elite or nonsectarian. While a good many of our sources reflect disputes that may have occurred over interpretation of the law and control over the temple, Sanders’s point remains that ‘ordinary’ people “worked at their jobs, they believed the Bible, they carried out the small routines and celebrations of the religion: they prayed every day, thanked God for his blessings, and on the Sabbath went to the synagogue, asked teachers questions, and listened respectfully.”57 The model of ‘common Judaism,’ then, prioritizes a generalized structure to the beliefs and practices of everyday Jews. It asserts that amidst differences in the way people explained what they did – and there certainly were differences – there was from about 200 BCE to 200 CE a common thread underlying what it meant to be Jewish: “God called [the people of Israel]; being Jewish consists in responding to that call.”58 What do we make of this tension in the scholarly literature between unity and diversity in early Judaism, and how does it affect our approach to John’s Gospel? Let us take the initial part of this question first. The view of ‘Judaisms’ runs up against three criticisms.59 First, as Seth Schwartz has pointed out, development of the idea of ‘Judaisms,’ particularly in the Neusnerian and Smithian forms, was strongly influenced by similar developments that took place in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century German Gospels scholarship, particularly in writings of Rudolf Bultmann.60 Bultmann’s work especially in History of the Synoptic Tradition (orig. German edition 1921) was an attempt to peel back the editorial layers added to the Synoptics by their Evangelists in order to get at the historical ‘core’ of Jesus tradition that circulated in the earliest Christ communities before the Gospels were penned. As they are, the Gospels do not give us much, if anything at all, about the life of Jesus. Rather, they reflect the history, ideology, and life situation of separate communities (Gemeindegeschichte), which stand behind each text. Thus, there existed 56 57 58 59 60

Sanders, Judaism, 47. Sanders, Judaism, 494. Sanders, Judaism, 262–63. This is Sanders’s summary statement of ‘covenantal nomism.’ For more extensive discussion, although incorporating some of the points made above, see Ole Jakob Filtvedt, “Judaism or Judaisms in the First Century?,” Teologisk Tidsskrift 4.3 (2015): 238–50 (Norwegian). See S. Schwartz, “How Many Judaisms,” 214–15.

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discrete and self-contained ‘Christianities’ (‘Matthean,’ ‘Markan,’ so on), which were conceived as being either isolated from each other, or in F.C. Baur’s model, in direct competition with one another.61 The major difficulties with this approach, as I think an increasing number of New Testament scholars are becoming more sensitive to, is that we simply do not have very much evidence for such isolated historical communities being associated with the Gospels, and that such a theory derives from a kind of hyper-skepticism concerning the reliability of ancient texts, specifically the Gospels, to reflect the sort of socioreligious realia they purport to recount.62 Applying the excessive skepticism of earlier generations of New Testament scholarship to ancient Judaism, in my view, hinders the important task of drawing broader connections between modes of Jewish identity throughout the Mediterranean world and appreciating the historical processes that sparked their change and development. Second, the theory of ‘Judaisms’ approaches Jewish groups at a level of sociological abstraction that goes no higher than ‘species,’ positing from their differences a relation of division, not diversity.63 It does not consider unity at a higher-level, at which, for example, ‘Pharisaic Judaism’ and ‘Sadducean Judaism’ could be viewed as different species of the same genus called ‘Judaism.’ From this perspective, while its species are divided, the genus, ‘Judaism,’ is diverse. Conversely, if there were no distinctions among its species, then the genus, ‘Judaism,’ would be considered uniform, not united; and the idea of a uniform Judaism is demonstrably false for the Second Temple period (and probably for all other periods as well). The very concept of ‘diversity’ is predicated upon unity at a higher-level of sociological abstraction, while the notion of ‘unity,’ indeed, demands that there be distinctions, “plural self-definitions,”64 among 61 62

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The competitive nature of early ‘Christianity,’ e.g., Petrine vs. Pauline ‘Christianity,’ was a major, if not the central, part of F.C. Baur’s work on ‘Christian’ origins. R. Bauckham, ed., The Gospels for All Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audiences (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998) was a major critique of the Gospels-as-isolated-communityhistory model. See more recently, L. Hurtado, “Interactive Diversity: A Proposed Model of Christian Origins,” JTS NS 64 (2013): 445–62 (452–59), which emphasizes interconnectivity among early Christ-groups despite their diversity; and J. Bernier, The Quest for the Historical Jesus after the Demise of Authenticity: Toward a Critical Realist Philosophy of History in Jesus Studies, LNTS 540 (London: T&T Clark, 2016), which stresses that early Christ-groups must have had some higher level unity for there to have been diversity in the first place (see below). The following observations are derived from Bernier, Historical Jesus, chapter 5, in which he applies a similar method to past approaches to unity and diversity within early ‘Christianity.’ See also his “Ben F. Meyer and The Gospels for All Christians,” in Jesus and Christian Origins, ed. Ben Wiebe, forthcoming. Ben F. Meyer, Christus Faber: The Master-Builder and the House of God (Allison Park, PA: Pickwick Publications, 1992), 160.

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ancient Jews. The theory of ‘Judaisms’ instead works mostly, if not only, on the species level and thus with the concepts of ‘division’ among groups and the ‘uniformity’ of each group. However, even at this level, the theory staggers, because it has difficulty accounting for internal diversity within a given data set. Using the notion of ‘Pharisaic Judaism’ as an example, when one describes it as its own “Judaic system” in opposition to, say, ‘Qumranic’ or ‘Essene Judaism,’ it obscures the fact that there was internal diversity among the Pharisees themselves.65 Should we, then, consider each of these subgroups as their own “Judaic system,” their own “Judaism”? I think it more realistic that we simply make room for a diversity of self-definitions that still found unity at a level higher up with other Pharisees, and at a further level up with other Jews (more discussion below). Third, recent advances in the archaeology of the land of Israel in the late Second Temple period push strongly against any theory of ‘Judaisms.’ For example, the distribution of ritual baths (miqva’ot) and chalkstone vessels used for the practice of purification demonstrates a similarity in the material culture of Jewish sites throughout Judea and the Galilee. Scholars such as Yonatan Adler, Stuart Miller, Eric Meyers and Mark Chancey, and Boaz Zissu and David Amit have argued from the material record that ritual purity was thus a feature of a common Jewish culture practiced by the priestly elite and the poor alike, and cut across sectarian divisions (for more discussion, see chapter 4).66 While explanations of what ritual purity meant likely differed among various

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We know, for example, from early rabbinic literature of at least two ‘houses’ of halakhic interpretation among the Pharisees that were apparently active during the time of Jesus, namely Hillel and Shammai. Acts 15:5 indicates that Pharisees were among the earliest followers of Jesus, and Paul himself is presented as a current member of the Pharisees in Acts 23:6. Although dated, on diversity within the Pharisees, see R. Meyer, “Pharisees,” TDNT 9:11–35 (26–27, 31). Y. Adler, “Between Priestly Cult and Common Culture: The Material Evidence of Ritual Purity Observance in Early Roman Jerusalem Reassessed,” JAJ 7 (2016): 228–48; S. Miller, At the Intersection of Texts and Material Finds: Stepped Pools, Stone Vessels, and Ritual Purity among the Jews of Roman Galilee, JAJSup 16 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015); E.M. Meyers and M.A. Chancey, Alexander to Constantine. Vol. 3: Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, AYBRL (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 47–49 et passim; and B. Zissu and D. Amit, “Common Judaism, Common Purity, and the Second Temple Period Judean Miqwa’ot (Ritual Immersion Baths),” in Common Judaism: Explorations in Second-Temple Judaism, ed. W.O. McCready and A. Reinhartz (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008), 47–62; S. Haber, “Common Judaism, Common Synagogue? Purity Holiness, and Sacred Space at the Turn of the Common Era,” in her “They Shall Purify Themselves”: Essays on Purity in Early Judaism, ed. A. Reinhartz (Atlanta: SBL, 2008), 161–79; Sanders, Judaism, 223.

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groups,67 the fact that it was practiced so widely implies a higher-level unity among ancient Jews.68 On the other hand, Sanders’s theory of a “common Judaism,” as well as other models that have focused largely on the unity of ancient Jews,69 can tend toward essentialist definitions of Judaism (a person must have essential characteristic X or that person is not a Jew) and have not really worked out with much precision the interplay between unity and diversity.70 While, ultimately, the current study favors such a model, our task now is to modify it away from essentialism and essentializing criteria for Jewishness. With reference to unity, as mentioned above, we need to envision relations among Jews and Jewish groups at different levels of taxonomic abstraction. If we go no higher than the level of species, then we will only perceive relations of division. The higher up the sociological ladder we attempt to go, however, the more likely we are to find unity. The all-important question, of course, is: at what level can unity be determined and what is it that generates this unity? To continue our analogy from the biological sciences, I think it is most descriptively useful to conceive of unity within “Judaism” at the level of “genus,” that is, at the level 67

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See, e.g., the dispute in John 3:25 between the disciples of John the Baptist and either one Jew or a group of Jews (P66 ‫ *א‬Θ ƒ1, 13 565 al latt) from Judea. Josephus, War 2:138 recounts the practice of ritual washing as a group initiation practice among the Essenes, while Mark 7:1–4 suggests that the Pharisees (although Mark extends this to ‘all Jews’) had a tradition of ‘washing’ hands before eating even kosher food. Admittedly, Mark’s text does not mention ‘purity’ or ‘purification’ specifically. See E. Regev, “Washing, Repentance, and Atonement in Early Christian Baptism and Qumranic Purification Liturgies,” JJMJS 3 (2016): 33–60, which compares the practice of ritual immersion at Qumran and in John’s baptism, suggesting that John’s baptism, unlike immersion at Qumran, did not include the idea of purification, although the two groups shared the ideas of repentance and atonement. S. Schwartz, “How Many Judaisms,” 221, where, suggesting an approach to ritual in general based upon the work of Caroline Humphrey and James Laidlaw on Jain ritual, he says: “[R]itual may be regarded as inherently devoid of discursive meaning, but functioning to concentrate the attention of the devotees on itself so as to generate discussion and argument about meaning.” Thus, unity among ancient Jews resides in the practice of a ritual itself (purity, circumcision, Shabbat, etc.), but diversity resides in debates over its meaning. Further, as Meyers and Chancey note, the common material culture of Jewish sites throughout Palestine extends beyond ritual baths and stone vessels, to evidence of dietary habits and burial customs (Archaeology, 49). On the archaeology of purity and John’s Gospel, see chapter 5 below. E.g., James D.G. Dunn’s ‘four pillars of Judaism’ model. See his Christianity in the Making: Vol. 1: Jesus Remembered (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 287. This point is raised by McCready and Reinhartz in their introduction to Common Judaism when they suggest that the pursuit of such precision is the next logical step based upon Sanders’s work.

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of the ethnic group, with diverse species, a wide spectrum of interpretative embodiments, operating below it. “Judaism” itself, however, stands in unity with another genus, another ethnic group, at a higher level, namely with what is traditionally called “Samaritanism.” This unity is at the level of “family,” and we can call this higher-level family “Yahwistic Israel.”71 At the level of genus, the ethnic group, “Judaism” and “Samaritanism” have a relation of division, whereas at the level of family there is unity between them, since both ethnoreligions competed (quite vehemently) over claims to be the proper heirs of ancient Israelite heritage, or as Gary Knoppers says, “to continue the legacy of the descendants of Jacob.”72 What generates unity within the genus “Judaism” is the act of engagement in the socially situated process of meaning-making involving the sites of ethnic identity formation discussed above – peoplehood/kinship, laws, land, and national cult. Anyone who claimed membership in the Jewish ethnos took part in this process of identity formation, even if the result was indifference or antagonism.73 Diversity within “Judaism,” however, springs to life and “species” are born in the process of negotiation and the construction of one’s ethnicity. As an example, Philo and the author of 1 Maccabees both discourse on the 71

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R. Pummer, The Samaritans: A Profile (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), 25. On pp. 34–35, Pummer rightly draws attention to the need for explicit definition of the terms ‘Samaritan’ and ‘Samaritanism.’ Some scholars have apparently employed the term simply as ‘an inhabitant of Samaria,’ while others have chosen the narrower definition ‘Yahwistic Samarian.’ Pummer argues persuasively that it is not until the 2nd cent. BCE that ‘Yahwistic Samarians’ – those YHWH-worshiping Israelites in the north who remained in the land and repopulated it after the Assyrian deportations – became ‘Samaritans,’ members of ethno-religion separate from its sibling Judaism, with its own site for cultic worship on Mt. Gerizim, Pentateuchal scriptures, priesthood, and ritual celebrations. Thus, while ‘Yahwistic Samarians’ are found in the Hebrew Bible, ‘Samaritans’ are not. G. Knoppers, Jews and Samaritans: Their Origins and History of Their Early Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 12. Both Knoppers and Pummer argue that there was much closer contact between Jews and Samaritans throughout their history than has been supposed in past scholarship, and that there was a slower, more gradual process that led to their split, even after which there was still some contact. There is an abundance of evidence that indicates both Jews and Samaritans identified themselves as ‘Israelites.’ The Jewish texts 1 Maccabees and Ben Sira, for example, are replete with Israel-language (see D. Goodblatt, “Varieties of Identity in Late Second Temple Judah [200 BCE–135 CE],” in Jewish Identity and Politics between the Maccabees and Bar Kokhba: Groups, Normativity, and Rituals, ed. B. Eckhardt, JSJSup 155 [Leiden: Brill, 2012], 11–27); and inscriptions from the island of Delos identify “those who offer first-fruits to the holy temple on Gerizim,” i.e., Samaritans, as “Israelites” (SEG 32:809 [150–50 BCE]; SEG 32:810 [250–175 BCE]). My statement “anyone who claimed membership in the Jewish ethnos” is meant to reflect the fluid and perspectival nature of ‘ethnicity’ in antiquity. See Satlow, “Jew or Judaean?,” 166–67.

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ancestral land of the Jews and the “holy city” of Jerusalem. On the level of the discursive act, it is a point of unity between them. How each interprets the land in relation to the construction of identity is, however, very different. That is, the land is clearly an important designator for both authors, but the demands of their geopolitical and ideological contexts lead them to interpret this part of their ethnic identity in different directions. This does not, in my view, mean that we should describe Philo and 1 Maccabees as discrete “Judaic systems” or attach isolated communities to each of their texts. Rather, even though roughly a century separates them, they represent different expressions (“species”) of a common Jewish ethnicity (“genus”) lived and interpreted within the confines of different social, political, and economic institutions. This last point means that such a vertical taxonomic hierarchy needs to be merged with a sort of grid that charts (to the best of our ability) differences in the social parameters and institutional contexts of our various sources. The idea here is that, quite obviously, not all ancient Jews lived and constructed their identities within the same contexts with regard to socio-political legitimacy.74 For example, as will be discussed further in chapter 6, in the 1st century, the priestly establishment in Jerusalem held “official” state control and functioned as the sanctioned liaison between the people and their Roman imperial overlords. Jews in Judea and the Galilee who looked to the priesthood as their official leadership functioned within a very different set of institutional realities than those who, for whatever reason, lived outside the Judean priesthood’s range of authority. Their patterns of “religion,” the performances of their ethnicity, took place within a framework of identity that revolved around, for example, direct participation in the politics of official institutions, such as the national cult in Jerusalem and public synagogues throughout the land of Israel, both of which facilitated civic administration on the supra-local and local municipal levels, respectively.75 Jews with a diasporic identity, whether living abroad or in “diasporic” situations in the land, constructed their identities outside (not necessarily in opposition to) the realm of the Judean priesthood, in contexts regulated by the authority of Greco-Roman courts and cults, or in socio-political organizations modeled upon the Hellenistic associations that had no “official” status in the land of Israel. Their patterns of “religion” involved fundamentally different orientations toward the national cult and the public synagogue, since in diasporic contexts neither of these institutions 74 75

For such a grid constructed for modeling the diverse socio-political nature of the synagogue in the first century, see A. Runesson, The Origins of the Synagogue: A Socio-Historical Study, CB NTS (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 2001), 40–41. See chapter 6 for more discussion on the institutions of synagogue and temple, specifically.

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functioned as the primary platform for the enactment of one’s ethnic identity. This distinction between “priestly-oriented” and “diasporic” modes of Jewish identity will now be discussed further. Modeling Diversity: “Priestly-Oriented” and “Diasporic” Modes of Identity If Judaism was an ethno-religion in antiquity that cohered around processes of meaning-making involving the concepts of peoplehood, law, land, and national cult, then the many lived interpretations of these categories generated its diversity. We are now in a position to model this diversity from a survey of the primary sources. This survey will be filled out further and in greater detail in the following chapters devoted to John’s Gospel (chs. 3–6). As eminent social theorist and cultural historian Peter Burke describes, historians use models – whether consciously or unconsciously – to simplify the pool of data in order to understand it, and to “emphasize the recurrent, the general, and the typical, which it presents in the form of clusters of traits or attributes.”76 What the model below aims to do is present a spectrum of Jewish ethnic identity that operates, as Daniel Schwartz says, on “the level of the general analysis of trends in ancient Judaism […].”77 In developing it, I am not intending to present ‘criteria’ for Jewishness, nor am I attempting to reify labels for Jewish identity that never existed in antiquity. Rather, the model attempts to simplify, capture, and classify expressions of Jewishness by discerning their general and recurrent orientations concerning the categories of peoplehood, law, land, and national cult. The heuristic benefit of developing a model like this is that it operates on a high enough sociological plane to analyze how a particular source engages in the negotiation of Jewishness at its most general and typical levels. Practically, it will open up for us some possible ways in which John’s Gospel negotiates Jewishness from a more analytically holistic vantage point. One way, then, in which the diversity of Jewish ethnic identity formation can be modeled is along a spectrum with priestly-oriented and diasporic modes of identity formation at its opposite poles.78 ‘Priestly-oriented Judaism’ is a 2.3

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P. Burke, History and Social Theory (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), 28. Schwartz, Judeans and Jews, 23. In what follows, some readers will perhaps notice that this basic dichotomy has affinity with Morton Smith’s and J.Z. Smith’s earlier descriptions of Hellenistic “religions” more broadly, which they argued had both “homeland” (or “locative” or “native”) and “diasporic” (or “utopian”) manifestations, each accompanied by distinctive techniques and strategies within their particular settings. See M. Smith, “Religions in Hellenistic Times,” in Dartmouth College Comparative Studies Center, Report of the 1965–1966 Seminar

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term used in this study to classify and describe Jewish identities that orbited around active participation in and integration into the public politics of the land of Israel and viewed the Judean priesthood as comprising the official leadership of the Jewish ethnos. Whether a source speaks about or is authored by an actual priest is, while potentially relevant, not the fundamental criterion for classifying its expression of Jewishness as ‘priestly-oriented.’ Rather, similar to the way I will define ‘diasporic’ identity below, ‘priestly-oriented’ refers to Jewish identity set within a particular political situation. Major characteristics of this type of identity are the following: an emphasis on a genealogical notion of Jewish peoplehood (see chapter 3); an approach to Jewish law that emphasizes its constitutional and statutory value (see chapter 4); a territorialist self-understanding, that is, a commitment to the land of Israel as a ‘real’ political idea (rather than imagined or metaphorized) and the concept of a Jewish ‘state’79 (see chapter 5); and the centrality of the Jerusalem temple cult

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on Religions in Antiquity, ed. J. Neusner (Hanover: Dartmouth College Comparative Studies Center, 1966), 158–63; and J.Z. Smith, Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 121–43. While the frameworks of M. Smith and J.Z. Smith help to place the dichotomy presented below within the broader context of the development of Hellenistic ‘religions,’ the dichotomy I develop is more of an adaptation of the ones formed and described in Schwartz, Judeans and Jews, 21–47; and M. Himmelfarb, A Kingdom of Priests: Ancestry and Merit in Ancient Judaism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 11–52. These scholars draw the basic dichotomy between “priestly” Judaism and “rabbinic” Judaism (D.R. Schwartz) or priestly Judaism and scribal Judaism (Himmelfarb). Both see a basic divide between, on the one hand, Jews whose authority derived from birth (priests) and, on the other hand, Jews whose authority derived from one’s training and ethical merits. I, however, wish to stress the categories of political context and sociopolitical legitimacy, along with geographical setting and attitudes toward genealogical definitions of Jewishness, as key analytical features. Furthermore, I think D.R. Schwartz is basically right to defend the use of generalizations and dichotomies for analytical purposes (see Judeans and Jews, x–xii). The recent trend in the study of ancient Judaism has been to resist and deconstruct generalizations and potentially binary oppositions in order to appreciate difference, complexity, and the ‘fluid’ nature of identity construction reflected in the sources. While this trend is indeed a positive corrective to past scholarship that severely overgeneralized and reduced Judaism of the Second Temple period to a single “basic character” (Grundcharakter), overcompensating by separating and isolating sources based on their different views turns the historian, as D.R. Schwartz says, into an antiquarian list maker, without the ability to draw historical connections, make inferences, and attempt to paint a compelling historiographical portrait of the period. In other words, while dichotomies certainly need to be scrutinized and problematized by the data, they are useful tools for assessing and categorizing, even if loosely, ancient phenomena. The term “state” here borders on my use of the term “nation.” If by “nation” I am referring to a supralocal ethnic entity, my use of “state” refers simply to the political autonomy of that entity and, in the Weberian sense, that entity’s unique but self-proclaimed right to the use of legitimate violence.

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as the public geopolitical locus of the Jewish god’s interaction with the Jewish people and vice versa (see chapter 6).80 I turn now to outline some of these characteristics in a brief survey of ancient sources. If we recall Sanders’s definition of ‘common Judaism’  – “what the priests and the people agreed on”81 – then, I suggest, the “common” Jewish person in the land of Israel could be described as gravitating toward the priestly-oriented side of the spectrum. “Common Jews” were probably often taught Torah by priests,82 and they participated in public assemblies and law courts in which Torah functioned as the governing constitution and priests functioned as judges, magistrates, and village scribes.83 And, of course, any involvement in the Jerusalem temple complex was mediated and administered by the work of the twenty-four priestly courses.84 80

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My description here is largely influenced by D.R. Schwartz, Judeans and Jews, 21–47 et passim. My use of ‘statehood’ here is not meant to reflect the historical situation of Judean Jews under the Roman state but rather the ideological vision and desire that characterized priestly-oriented groups. Sanders, Judaism, 47. E.g., Sir 45:17; Josephus, Ant. 4:304; War 3:252; 6:291; Philo, Hypoth. 7:11–14; m. Yom 7:1. The texts cited from Josephus do not explicitly recount priests teaching Torah to public assemblies, but they do associate the responsibility of the Torah with the priestly class. See Sanders, Judaism, 170–73 for a compelling argument that priests in the late Second Temple period retained their traditional duties of Torah teaching, rather than surrendering them to lay groups such as the Pharisees. See also S. Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society 200 BCE to 640 CE (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 13. Further, while Philo writes apologetically within his situation in the Egyptian diaspora, in Hypoth. 7:11–14 he is speaking about Moses’s institution of the Israelite public assembly in which priests were to teach the sacred laws to the general gathering. For Philo, the fact that Jews everywhere continue this custom of public education proves their virtuous character. Deut 17:8–13, 18; 31:9; 2 Chron 17:7–9; ALD 13:6; T. Lev. 8:17; Philo, Spec. 4:190–91; Josephus, C. Ap. 2:165, 184–88. On the role of priests in synagogues and other public assemblies from the pre-70 era, see D. Binder, Into the Temple Courts: The Place of the Synagogues in the Second Temple Period, SBLDS 169 (Atlanta: SBL, 1999), 355–60. On synagogues as public institutions in the land of Israel, especially in the first century CE, see Runesson, Origins, 169–235, 237–400; L. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 45–80. Cf. 1 Chron 24; Josephus, Ant. 7:365; m. Sukkah 5:6; Caesarea Inscription. The Caesarea Inscription, probably dated to the 3rd or 4th cent. CE and found in the remains of a synagogue, is comprised of three small fragments that list the twenty-four priestly courses as mentioned in 1 Chron 24, along with their surnames and the localities to which they had moved after the destruction of the temple in 70 CE. While the inscription is thus of a later date than what occupies the current study, it does seem to give witness to an earlier time that is indeed relevant and is also, perhaps, evidence that priestly-oriented Judaism continued even into Late Antiquity. See M. Avi-Yonah, “A List of Priestly Courses from Caesarea,” IEJ 12.2 (1962): 137–39.

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The Hasmonean Revolt and its establishment of a political kingdom (167–63 BCE) reflect an understanding of Jewish ethnic identity that clearly revolves around the priestly-oriented side of the spectrum. For example, 1 Maccabees 2–4 narrates how Mattathias and his sons, Judas most prominent among them, made war against the Greeks to redeem the land of Israel (i.e., Judea), cleanse the temple in Jerusalem, defend the people from its foreign oppressors, and reinstitute the ancestral laws (e.g., 1 Macc 1:28, 52; 2:40, 56; 2:7).85 The state was governed by a succession of Hasmonean priest-kings, individuals who held simultaneously the office of Judean high priest and ruler of the people (e.g., 1 Macc 14:41; Josephus, Ant. 13:299). The numismatic evidence is illustrative on this point. Coins struck during the reign of Mattathias Antigonus, the last of the Hasmonean rulers (ca. 40–37 BCE), depict on the obverse an ivy wreath and the inscription in Greek “Antigonus the King”; on the reverse is an image of the double cornucopia, with the words “Matityahu the high priest and council of the Judeans” inscribed in paleo-Hebrew.86 One of these coins uniquely depicts on the obverse, along with its Greek inscription, the symbol of the menorah and, on the reverse, the showbread table of the Jerusalem temple with its inscription in paleo-Hebrew.87 Beyond their monetary role within the Judean economy, these coins quite clearly carried significant political and propagandistic weight by publicly circulating a territorialist and priestly-oriented type understanding of belonging in the Jewish ethnos.88 85

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D. Mendels, The Land of Israel as a Political Concept in Hasmonean Literature (Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1987), 47 says: “Whereas until 140 [BCE] 1 Maccabees never includes the Land as a declared goal of the war of the Hasmoneans (although it emphatically mentions the Torah, the People, and the Temple), from that year the Land is added as a goal of the war.” See also D.R. Schwartz, Judeans and Jews, 11–20, where he describes 1 Maccabees as priestly ‘Judean’ historiography, in contrast to the ‘Jewish’ historiography of 2 Maccabees. See Y. Meshorer, Ancient Jewish Coinage. Vol 1: Persian Period through Hasmoneans (New York: Amphora Books, 1982), 87–94 and plate 54, esp. p. 88, where Meshorer suggests that these coins need to be interpreted in light of the intense political competition between Antigonus and Herod, the latter also striking coins for the purpose of propaganda and self-legitimization. Meshorer, Ancient Jewish Coinage, 1:92–97; R. Hachlili, The Menorah, the Ancient Seven-Armed Candelabrum: Origin, Form, and Significance, JSJSup 68 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 41–42. Coins from the Hasmonean period, especially those minted by Alexander Jannaeus (104–77 BCE), were probably still in circulation within local Jewish villages during the first century CE. Evidence of this is the large amount of Jannaeus coins discovered, for example, in recent excavations in Magdala (Galilee) in strata dated to the first century CE. This might indicate that Jews even during this later time under the Romans came into daily contact with Hasmonean-era political ideology.

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Political interest associations (αἱρέσεις) such as the Pharisees and Sadducees  – whose activity was apparently confined to the land of Israel  – did not have direct control over official Judean civic operations, but their constituents at times worked closely with the Judean king and/or high priest (often times the same person; see above) to influence public policy (Josephus, Ant. 13:288–298; War 2:411–416).89 There was nothing that formally required or prevented a priest from also being a Pharisee or Sadducee; the former was a status granted by birth, while the latter derived from voluntary membership.90 While we do have some evidence that Pharisees could be priests themselves (e.g., a man named Jozar mentioned in Josephus, Life 197), it is the Sadducees who have traditionally been more closely associated with the priestly class.91 Despite the sharp tensions we sometimes see recounted between Pharisees and Sadducees, usually over interpretation of the ancestral laws (e.g., Josephus, Ant. 13:297; Acts 23:7–8), both of these groups seem to express values that reside on the priestly-oriented side of the identity spectrum. They were both active within the realm of Judean priestly politics, both sought to preserve politically the Jewish homeland (πάτρις), and both gave pride of place to the city of Jerusalem, its temple, and its cult.92 89 90

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See the similar approach to the political nature of the Pharisees and Sadducees in Runesson, Divine Wrath, 233–59. On the Pharisees and Sadducees as modeled upon the Hellenistic voluntary associations, see A. Baumgarten, “Graeco-Roman Voluntary Associations and Ancient Jewish Sects,” in Jews in a Graeco-Roman World, ed. M. Goodman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 93–111. This is largely because of the origins of the name ‘Sadducee,’ which is probably derived from the name ‘Zadok,’ the high priest during the reign of David (e.g., 2 Sam 8:17; 1 Chron 24:3; Ezek 40:46). According to Josephus, Ant. 13:288–98 (cited above), John Hyrcanus, high priest and king of Judea from 135–104 BCE, was closely associated with the Sadducees, but there is no explicit mention of their being priests or connected to the Jerusalem temple. Acts 4:1 lists the Sadducees along with “the priests and the captain of the temple” (see also Acts 5:17). And later rabbinic sources seem to group together the Sadducees and the Boethusians – the latter apparently formed around a Herodian-era priestly family named Boethus (Josephus, Ant. 15:320) – as polemical opponents of the Pharisees/rabbis (cf. t. Sukkah 3:16 where ‘Boethusian’ is used and its parallel in b. Sukkah 48b were ‘Sadducee’ is used; Midr. Tanḥ., Aḥare Mot 7 [Buber]; Pesiq. Rab. 172b; Midr. Pss. 78:18). On this, see D.R. Schwartz, Judeans and Jews, 125. See the important study by H. Birenboim, “‘A Kingdom of Priests’: Did the Pharisees Try to Live Like Priests?,” in Was 70 CE a Watershed in Jewish History? On Jews and Judaism before and after the Destruction of the Second Temple, ed. D.R. Schwartz and Zeev Weiss, AJEC 78 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 59–68, who, going against a major contingent of scholarship, argues that the Pharisees did not attempt to undermine the role of the temple and the priesthood, but rather saw it as their mission to provide common Jews with accessibility to temple experiences that perhaps caused some of the tensions we see between them and

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At the far end of the priestly-oriented pole we could place the ‘Zealots,’ Josephus’s “Fourth philosophy” (Ant. 18:9, 23). As Martin Hengel’s classic work and Steve Mason’s recent magnum opus on the Jewish War have shown, the ‘Zealots’ and their role in the events of 66–73 CE are complicated historical matters.93 However, we do have solid evidence that, at the very least, indicates many of those associated with this group were themselves priests, some even high priests.94 Their vision of a theocratic state and inclination toward violence, much like their Maccabean predecessors, seems to have been inspired at least in part by Israel’s tradition of ‘zealous’ priests, especially Phineas who had special significance in the tradition as having violently cleansed Israel from its idolatry and intermingling with foreign nations (Num 25:7–13; Sir 45:23; 1 Macc 2:24–26, 54).95 Although more difficult to interpret than the Hasmonean coinage, numismatic evidence from ancient Gamla in the Golan Heights, a town described by Josephus (War 4:1–83) as a place of intense fighting during the early period of the revolt, seems to link the ideology behind the war effort (whether or not officially ‘Zealot’) with Jerusalem and its priesthood. While its inscription is a matter of current debate, the obverse of the so-called ‘Gamla Coin’ has the image of a chalice.96 As Mordechai Aviam and Danny Sion have

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the Sadducees. In other words, while the Pharisees may have clashed with the Sadducees as their rival political party, we have no evidence for such conflict between the Pharisees and the official leadership of the priesthood or the temple complex. But even if we grant that most or even all Sadducees were themselves priests, it does not follow to suggest that Pharisees were therefore non-priestly or anti-priesthood. M. Hengel, The Zealots: Investigations into the Jewish Freedom Movement in the Period from Herod I until 70 A.D., trans. D. Smith (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988 [orig. German 1961; 2nd ed. 1976]); S. Mason, A History of the Jewish War: A.D. 66–74 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 444–50. Hengel, Zealots, 62–63 et passim; Mason, Jewish War, 447–49. Hengel, Zealots, 149–77; Goodblatt, Ancient Jewish Nationalism, 101–107; G. Aran, “The Other Side of the Israelite Priesthood: A Sociological-Anthropological Perspective,” in Was 70 CE a Watershed in Jewish History?, 43–58, who discusses the influence of the Phineas-as-violent-zealot tradition both in ancient and modern expressions of Judaism and other contemporary religions. The traditional reading of the Gamla coin’s inscription has been: “For the Re[demption] of Jerusalem the H[oly],” possibly corresponding to the Jerusalem silver sheqels that have the inscription “Jerusalem the Holy” or “Holy Jerusalem.” Several bronze coins from the Herodian Quarter (see note below) have the inscription “Of the Freedom of Zion.” The inscription on the Gamla coin is fragmented and extremely difficult to read. In my view, however, the shared image of the chalice is enough to postulate some sort of association with the priestly complex in Jerusalem. For a newer reading, which suggests the inscription actually reads something along the lines of “In [or of] Gamla” and thus expresses no connection with Jerusalem whatsoever, see Mason, Jewish War, 350–51. Mason, however,

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both noted, the chalice on this coin is intended as an imitation of the chalice depicted on Jerusalem silver sheqels minted in years one to four of the war; they were discovered during Nahman Avigad’s excavations in the Herodian Quarter, the home of a sizeable portion of Jerusalem’s priestly elite during the late Second Temple period and probably some sort of command center during the Roman siege.97 Thus, the ‘Zealots’ and others invested in the revolt against Rome in 66–73 CE represented a continuation of the type of identity values we saw with the Hasmoneans: Jerusalem is the religio-political capital of a Judean state that has its own ancestral laws (τοὺς πατρίους νόμους), and its people must not be ruled by foreign nations,98 who are themselves objects of God’s coming wrath.99 After 70 CE, with the spawning of an administrative power vacuum due to the destruction of Jerusalem and destabilization of the priestly administration, Jewish groups – including some Jesus-oriented ones (see below) – seem to have continued their debates and competed for control over the Judean public assembly.100 On the one hand, while the early rabbinic movement does not address the similarity of this coin, particularly its image of the chalice, to those found in Jerusalem’s Herodian Quarter. The symbolic meaning of the chalice on these coins is uncertain. A possible interpretation, however, is that it visually represents the cup of YHWH’s wrath mentioned in various passages from the Hebrew Bible (Jer 25:15; Isa 51:17, 22–23; Job 21:20; Pss 60:3; 75:8). While some of these texts refer to Israel’s drinking from the cup as part of God’s judgment upon it, others refer to the nations upon whom God is about to pour out his wrath (Jer 25:15; Isa 51:23) or to the wicked in general (Ps. 75:8). I thank Diana Edelman for suggesting these biblical texts as possible contexts for the chalice image on the Gamla and Jerusalem coins. 97 M. Aviam, “Reverence for Jerusalem and the Temple in Galilean Society,” in Jesus and Temple: Textual and Archaeological Explorations, ed. J.H. Charlesworth (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014), 142–43; D. Sion, “The Coins Minted at Gamla,” http://www.antiqui ties.org.il/article_eng.aspx?sec_id=17&sub_subj_id=312&id=521; N. Avigad, The Herodian Quarter in Jerusalem (Jerusalem: Keter, 1989), 78–79. 98 See Eleazar’s speech in Josephus, War 7:320–36. 99 On the continuity and persistence of the priestly element in conceptions of Jewish ‘nationalism’ – a term I have not used but nevertheless seems to cohere with my description of priestly-oriented Judaism  – see Goodblatt, Ancient Jewish Nationalism, 71–107 (pp. 87–107 deal specifically with the revolt against Rome). 100 The Mishnah appears to recount some of the debates that continued between the Pharisees/rabbis and the Sadducees (e.g., m. Yad. 4:6–7). Today, scholars are increasingly suggesting that the ‘sectarian’ debates and diversity that seem to have characterized pre70 Judaism in the land of Israel continued for years, even centuries, after the destruction of the temple as well. See, e.g., J. Magness, “Sectarianism before and after 70 CE,” in Was 70 CE a Watershed in Jewish History?, 69–89; M. Goodman, “Sadducees and Essenes after 70 CE,” in Crossing the Boundaries: Essays in Biblical Interpretation in Honour of

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was still marginal in the years and even centuries following 70 and was probably itself of a diverse socio-religious composition,101 the rabbis generally attempted to re-orient ideologically the practice of purity rituals, the festivals, and the politics of the land away from a territorialist mode of identity.102 On the other hand, the second century CE also saw priestly-oriented expressions of Jewishness live on in the efforts of the Second Great Revolt. While the popularity of the historical Shimon Bar Kokhba and his campaign among the rabbis is a matter of scholarly debate,103 the evidence of the revolt’s priestly orientation is clear. For example, an Aramaic divorce bill from 135 CE begins with ‫“( בעשרין לסיון שנת תלת לחרת ישראל לשם שמע[ו]ן בר כסבה נ[שי]א ישראל‬On the twentieth of Sivan, year three of the freedom of Israel, in the name of Shim[o]n son of Kosibah, the pr[in]ce of Israel”; P. Hev/Se 13 ll. 1–2).104 Even more telling are the coins Bar Kokhba struck and circulated during the war years (132–135 CE). Silver tetradrachms have the image of the temple’s façade, the Showbread Table, and the place-name “Jerusalem” in Paleo-Hebrew on the obverse, with the lulav, ethrog, and the inscription “Year X of the Redemption of Israel” on the reverse. “Eleazar the Priest” is inscribed in Paleo-Hebrew on the obverse of silver denarii, with floral imagery (common in cultic contexts) inscribed on the reverse. And similar to the introduction to P. Hev/Se 13, large bronzes were inscribed with the epithet “Shimon prince of Israel.”105 This evidence indicates that a priestly-oriented type of understanding of the Jewish

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Michael D. Goulder, ed. S.E. Porter, P. Joyce, and D.E. Orton, BibInt 8 (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 347–56. This view stands in contrast to the one that views ‘sectarianism’ as having died out after 70, and along with it all forms of priestly-oriented Judaism. See S.J.D. Cohen, “The Significance of Yavneh: Pharisees, Rabbis, and the End of Jewish Sectarianism,” HUCA 55 (1985): 45. See, e.g., C. Hezser, The Social Structure of the Rabbinic Movement in Roman Palestine, TSAJ 66 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), 69–77, 492. E.g., see H. Guggenheimer, Seder Olam: The Rabbinic View of Biblical Chronology (Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), 111, where Guggenheimer suggests that the miraculous presentation of the first conquest in the Seder Olam 11 on Joshua might have been written in the wake of the disaster of the Bar Kokhba Revolt and intended to “discourage any new attempt to reconquer the Land.” See especially A. Reinhartz, “Rabbinical Perceptions of Simeon Bar Kosiba,” JSJ 20 (1989): 171–94 (182), who suggests the rabbis did indeed support the revolt, and P. Schäfer, “Bar Kokhba and the Rabbis,” in The Bar Kokhba War Reconsidered: New Perspectives on the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome, ed. P. Schäfer, TSAJ 100 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 1–22, who suggests they did not. Aramaic text of P. Hev/Se 13 is from Yardeni and Cotton, DJD 27. For a history of scholarship on this papyrus, see W.V. Cirafesi, “Rethinking P.Hev/Se 13 and P.Yadin 18 and the Social and Legal Contexts of Mark 10:12” (paper presented at the 2015 annual meeting of the SBL, Papyrology and Early Christian Backgrounds section, Atlanta, GA, 22 November 2015). See Y. Meshorer, Ancient Jewish Coinage. Vol 2: Herod the Great through Bar Cochba (New York: Amphora, 1982), 264–77.

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ethnos – a territorialist interpretation in which the land is a real entity to be politically possessed and administered by Judean priestly leadership, the Torah is the Judean constitution,106 the Jerusalem temple was the exclusive place of worship, and Judean Jews were the particular people of this state – lived on well after the events of 70.107 At the other end of the ethnos-identity spectrum is ‘diasporic’ or ‘diasporicoriented’ modes of Jewishness. The terminology of diaspora/diasporic is notoriously difficult to define, and it can be approached from a number of sociological, cultural, and historical angles.108 In this study, diaspora/diasporic is not only, or even primarily, a matter of geography or traumatic exile from homeland.109 Rather, similar to my definition of ‘priestly-oriented’ identity above, diaspora/diasporic refers, in the first place, to a political situation  – as Daniel Schwartz succinctly defines it, “life under foreign rule”110 – with its 106 That the Torah continued to function in the second century CE as the socio-political constitution of Jews living in, or very near to, the land, see other marriage papyri from the Judean desert, such as P. Yadin 10 ll. 2–3 and P. Mur. 20 l. 3. 107 Aran thus says that the Hasmoneans, the ‘Zealots’ of the First Revolt, and the Bar Kokhba rebels are “family relatives” (Aran, “The Other Side,” 46). I am much more inclined, therefore, to see 135 CE as a more decisive event in the political dissolution of priestly-oriented Jewishness than 70 CE. The Romans seem to have been more thorough (and ruthless) in their response to the Second Revolt, which included population deportations, the restructuring of Jerusalem as a Roman city renamed Aelia Capitolina, and the relocating of many of Jerusalem’s elite up to the Galilee. But even after 135, it should be noted, priests and priestly-oriented type identities continued to exist, although certainly not with the same visions of statehood and temple-centered worship. Several studies have pointed to the influence of priests and priestly ideology in Late Antique Judaism: J. Magness, “Heaven on Earth: Helios and the Zodiac Cycle in Ancient Palestinian Synagogues,” DOP 59 (2005): 1–52; M.J. Grey, “Jewish Priests and the Social History of Post-70 Palestine” (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, 2011); M.D. Swartz, “Liturgy, Poetry, and the Persistence of Sacrifice,” in Was 70 CE a Watershed in Jewish History, 393–412. 108 See, e.g., R. Cohen, Global Diasporas: An Introduction, 2nd ed., Global Diasporas (London: Routledge, 2008). For a recent theoretical and historical treatment of the concept as it pertains to Jewish (esp. Talmudic) studies, see D. Boyarin, A Traveling Homeland: The Babylonian Talmud as Diaspora (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). 109 In his A Traveling Homeland, Boyarin has effectively dismantled the idea that trauma – some act of oppressive force that leads to the dispersion of a people from a homeland – is in every case the cause of diaspora. For him, diaspora is best understood as a synchronic cultural situation applicable to people who participate in a doubled cultural (and frequently linguistic) location, in which they share a culture with the place in which they dwell but also with another group of people who live elsewhere, in which they have a local and a trans-local cultural identity and expression at the same time. Diaspora, then, is not always (although it frequently is) the product of exilic trauma; it is, instead, fundamentally a cultural situation. It involves a “doubled cultural location,” which incorporates the sharing of a local and trans-local cultural identity. 110 D.R. Schwartz, Judeans and Jews, 5.

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concomitant expressions of identity. While diaspora can, and indeed often does, involve physical displacement, it can also be imagined within one’s subjective cultural-political situation; that is, it can also be ideological. Thus, while the identities of most Jews of the Second Temple period could be described as ‘diasporic,’ since most lived outside the land of Israel, diasporic also, as I aim to show, effectively describes some aspects of some Jews in the land as well. Major characteristics of a ‘diasporic’ type of identity are the following: a greater, although not exclusive, emphasis on a ‘cultural’ approach (i.e., based on behavioral norms) to Jewish peoplehood and greater openness to the “conversion” of Gentiles (see chapter 3); an approach to Jewish law that emphasizes its cultural, metaphorical, and eschatological value (see chapter 4); an imagined or metaphorized connection to the land of Israel and Jerusalem as the ‘mother-city’ of the Jewish people (see chapter 5); and a vision of a transformed (whether through metaphor or apocalyptic) temple sanctuary democratizing access to the Jewish god (see chapter 6). I turn now to outline a few of these characteristics in a brief survey of ancient sources. Pre-70 diasporic modes of identity formation seem to negotiate Jewishness with a level of remoteness (real or conceptual) between the community on the one side and the land of Israel and its national cult on the other. For example, the book of Tobit, a Jewish novel set in 8th century Nineveh but probably reflecting life outside Israel in the late 3rd or early 2nd century BCE,111 looks back in time when Tobit was in his own country, “the land of Israel” (1:4), in the northern province of Naphtali.112 He was distinguished among his kin for his faithfulness to the priestly service in Jerusalem, that “holy city” home to the eternal dwelling of God (1:5–7; GI 13:8–9). But Tobit’s former life in “the good land” (14:4) is remote from his present way of life as a captive in Nineveh. For him now, the land is not the site of public administration, national government, or the priestly service, but rather it exists in his ethnic memory as a place

111 There are two Greek versions of Tobit, typically called GI , the shorter text, and GII , the longer text. In light of the four Aramaic MSS and one Hebrew MS of Tobit found at Qumran (4QToba–d ar and 4QTobe), the scholarly consensus seems to be that GII is the favorable text, although both largely agree in content. Above, I only note the specific version cited when there is a difference between versions. For a full discussion of the MSS tradition of Tobit, see J.A. Fitzmyer, Tobit (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2003), 3–15. 112 Note that the Tob 1:2 says Tobit was taken into captivity from “Thisbe, which is to the south of Kedesh Naphtali in Upper Galilee, above Asher toward the west, and north of Phogor” (trans. NRSV, based upon the text in Codex Sinaiticus). This means that from Tobit’s perspective, the “land of Israel” was inclusive of the Galilee and not restricted to Judea.

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of great emotional and theological reflection. To somehow participate in his ancestral but now distant land and its national cult, Tobit must metaphorically interpret his “acts of charity” (ἐλεημοσύνη) as cultic offerings acceptable before God (δῶρον γὰρ ἀγαθόν ἐστιν ἐλεημοσύνη πᾶσι τοῖς ποιοῦσιν αὐτὴν ἐνώπιον τοῦ ὑψίστου; GI 4:11),113 and he must think of a time in the future when not only all the scattered children of Israel “will be gathered together and come into Jerusalem” but also when “all the nations in the entire earth [πάντα τὰ ἔθνη τὰ ἐν ὅλῃ τῇ γῇ] will turn and fear God truly” (14:5–7; see also 13:11).114 The idea of a future (whether or not ‘eschatological’) regathering of “scattered” Israel into the land is found in other early Jewish texts (e.g., 2 Macc 1:24–30; 2:17; Pss Sol 8:28; T. Naph. 8:3), but, to my knowledge, only here in Tobit 14 is this regathering concept put directly beside a clear openness toward the idea of non-Jews coming to, worshiping, and partaking in the blessings of Israel’s god as non-Jews, apparently without demanding any level of formal assimilation into the Jewish ethnos.115 In other words, while there is still a clear distinction 113 This is not to forget that Jews abroad in the Second Temple period could “participate” in the politics of the land and the up-keep of the temple cult through contributing the half-shekel (two Athenian drachmae) tax (Josephus, Ant. 3:194–96). Such long-distance participation, however, is obviously quite different from active engagement in the Jewish public assembly, the politics of self-rule in Judea and the Galilee, and the offering of animal sacrifices in the temple. 114 Letter of Aristeas (2nd cent. BCE) reflects a slightly different (Egyptian) diasporic orientation, in which the “excellence” (ἐκπρεπῶς) of the land, the city of Jerusalem, its temple, and priestly service are described with affectionate detail (83–99), but, as Hacham says, Aristeas “places no special emphasis on their sanctity” (N. Hacham, “Sanctity and the Attitude towards the Temple in Hellenistic Judaism,” in Was 70 CE a Watershed in Jewish History?, 157). True knowledge of God is presented as ‘universal’ (see esp. 187–294, the question-and-answer segment between the king [Ptolemy II Philadelphus?] and the 70 Jewish scholars) and honoring him is “done not with gifts and sacrifices but with purity of soul and holy conviction, since all things are fashioned and governed by God in accordance with His will” (234; cf. 170 in which offering sacrifice is symbolic of the offering of one’s own soul). The fantastical story of the translation of the Jewish law into Greek, of course, is a prominent feature of Aristeas’s diasporic interpretation of membership in the Jewish ethnos: (1) now Alexandrian Jews need not travel to the holy land for Torah instruction; they can receive it their native tongue in their native city (on this, see Noah Hacham, “Exile and Self-Identity in the Qumran Sect and in Hellenistic Judaism,” in New Perspectives on Old Texts: Proceedings of the Tenth International Symposium of the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature, 9–11 January 2005, ed. E.G. Chazon and B. Halpern-Amaru, STDJ 88 [Leiden: Brill, 2010], 3–22); and (2) for Aristeas, the law, and study of it, revolves primarily around the pursuit of virtue, piety, and “righteousness according to the soul” (128–69, esp. 147), rather than its implementation as the constitutional law of the land. 115 In this regard, Tobit has contact with the tradition of trito-Isaiah (42:6; 49:6; 60:3; 66:18). However, for Tobit, conversion – that is, proselytism involving ethnic assimilation into the

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between Jews and non-Jews, in Tobit’s interpretation here neither Jewish genealogy nor proselytism is apparently a criterion for participating in the Jewish god’s eschatological ingathering.116 The result for Tobit is that, while non-Jews do not become Jews, they do appear to become Jewish, boundary-crossers who have attached themselves to the god of the Jews.117 We can identify interpretations of the land of Israel and the national cult that belong further down on the diasporic end of the spectrum. Philo, for example, can speak in Flacc 45–47 about Jerusalem as the “holy city” (τήν ἱερόπολιν) of the Jews, as their “mother-city” (μητρόπολιν), and the “seat of the holy sanctuary of the most high god” (ἵδρυται ὁ τοῦ ὑψίστου θεοῦ νεὼς ἅγιος).118 At the same time, however, he says that, for the generations of Jews who have been born and raised in regions throughout Egypt, the land of Israel is most decidedly not their homeland (πάτρις). That distinction belongs to Egypt.119 Besides, the Jews, Philo reasons, are far too numerous for one country to hold them all in the first place.120 In fact, they have gone out and established their own colonies in other countries. For Philo, the land of Israel itself is important to the Jewish ethnos only in so far as it is the land of Jerusalem, the city of the most high god. But even Philo’s understanding of the divine dwelling has

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people – does indeed seem to be an option for non-Jews: in 1:8 the text (GII) reads: “A third tenth I would give to the orphans and widows and to the converts [προσηλύτοις] who had attached themselves to Israel.” See T.L. Donaldson, Judaism and the Gentiles: Jewish Patterns of Universalism (to 135 CE) (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2007), 45. Here Donaldson makes the insightful observation that Tobit 14, strikingly, says nothing about the ‘law,’ ‘covenant,’ ‘circumcision,’ or ‘commandments,’ which “suggests strongly that these Gentiles are expected to share in the joys of the coming age as Gentiles, and not as end-time proselytes to Judaism.” On the concept of non-Jews being Jewish, sometimes also described by scholars as Judaizing Gentiles, especially in Paul, see the discussion in M. Nanos, “Paul’s Non-Jews Do Not Become ‘Jews,’ But Do They Become ‘Jewish’? Reading Romans 2:25–29 within Judaism, Alongside Josephus,” JJMJS 1 (2014): 26–53. Philo also has a high appreciation of the priesthood and its service (e.g., Spec. 4:190–91), although he can interpret the priesthood, too, especially the role of the high priest, metaphorically to fit his diasporic context (e.g., Fug. 108–112). See J. Leonhardt-Balzer, “Priests and Priesthood in Philo: Could He Have Done without Them?,” in Was 70 CE a Watershed in Jewish History?, 127–53. Contrast Philo’s view here with that of another Egyptian Jew, Artapanus (2nd cent. BCE), who not only saw Egypt as a proper ancestral home to Jews, but even seems to attribute the very origins of Egyptian culture to his Hebraic ancestors, especially Abraham and Moses (apud. Eusebius, Praep. Evang. 9.18, 23, 27). See A. Momigliano, Alien Wisdom: The Limits of Hellenization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 116; I. Gafni, “Babylonian Rabbinic Culture,” in Cultures of the Jews: A New History, ed. D. Biale (New York: Schocken Books, 2002), 230. See also Philo, Agr. 65; Legat. 205, 281.

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a boundless cosmic bent to it.121 In Spec. 1:66, he says that, since God could never be restricted to a physical building in the first place, “we should suppose that the entire world is the temple of God” (ἱερὸν θεοῦ νομίζειν τὸν σύμπαντα χρὴ κόσμον εἶναι).122 Perhaps even more importantly, God’s house resides in the soul: “Therefore, be zealous, O soul, to become the house of God (θεοῦ οἶκος), a holy sanctuary (ἱερὸν ἅγιον)” (Somn. 1:149; cf. 2:250–51).123 While Philo can view the Mosaic law as the civic constitution of a particular people (e.g., Flacc 50), he, at the same time, demonstrates the openness and relevance of Israel’s law to outsiders. Donaldson notes that, for Philo, the law of Moses is “both a handbook of virtue and a civic constitution coherent with the laws of the cosmos.”124 In other words, Moses’s law and Plato’s philosophy ultimately speak the same language. Even further, however, Philo says in Migr. 56–59 that the “people” (λαός), that is, the “great nation” (τὸ ἔθνος τὸ μέγα) of Israel is, in reality, “all lovers of wisdom and knowledge” and is made up of “world-citizens” (κοσμοπολίτης), not just Ioudaioi.125 Philo’s vision of ‘Israel’ here and his apparent openness toward non-Jews embracing the law and becoming members of the Jewish ethnos in texts like Virt. 102–103, 179 no doubt came as a result of his attempt to negotiate Jewish ethnic identity within his Alexandrian situation.126 But, while his framework coheres quite 121 See Donaldson, Judaism and the Gentiles, 222. 122 See also 1 Kgs 8:27 (in its context). 123 Cf. Pauline texts on these concepts as well: 1 Cor 3:16–17; 2 Cor 6:14–7:1; Eph 2:20–22; 1 Tim 3:15. 124 Donaldson, Judaism and the Gentiles, 220. 125 Donaldson, Judaism and the Gentiles, 222. See also pp. 272–78, where Donaldson concludes that Philo actually evinces two patterns of ‘universalism,’ i.e., Gentile inclusion, namely proselytism (through Torah observance) and the philosophical pursuit of virtue by mean of which one can “see God.” 126 Another important text that, like Philo, possibly reflects both a second or first century BCE Egyptian milieu and an openness toward non-Jews becoming part of the Jewish ethnos is Joseph and Aseneth. One of the prominent ways of approaching Aseneth’s ‘conversion’ has been to associate it quite closely with a particular historical situation in which ‘conversion’ was a significant issue within diasporic Judaism. That is, Aseneth’s conversion is cast as representative of Jewish proselytism in the Hellenistic world and is indicative of the entire work’s goal of addressing the socio-religious conflict in which Jews (particularly in Egypt) found themselves with their Gentile neighbors. R.D. Chesnutt, From Death to Life: Conversion in Joseph and Aseneth, JSPSup 16 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 254–55, suggests that Jos. Asen. mirrors to a significant degree the real milieu in which Jews “lived in dynamic tension with Gentiles and struggled to maintain a distinctive Jewish identity; one in which table fellowship and intermarriage with Gentiles, including even marriage between a convert to Judaism and a born Jew, were live issues; and one in which there was some discord centering on the perception of the Gentile convert in the Jewish community.” This view has been problematized by D.R. Schwartz, who

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closely with what we saw in Tobit, it contrasts considerably with the stream of thought found in the book of Jubilees, which understands the category of ‘people’ within a strictly genealogical framework, that is, one that asserts Jewishness by birth rather than by practice or merit, and envisions non-Jews, rather, as irrevocably damned (Jub. 1:29; 16:18; 19:18; 15:26; 23:24; see chapter 3).127 While Tobit and Philo can be classified on the diasporic side of the identity spectrum concerning their attitudes toward non-Jews, Jubilees can be described as priestly-oriented. Pre-70 negotiations of Jewish ethnicity along the diasporic scale provided an ideological infrastructure for post-70 visions of Jewishness without a national political and cultic center.128 The identity building strategies we see in Tobit and Philo, for example, are a short step from what we see reflected in some rabbinic sources from the tannaitic period. While Jerusalem and the land remain pivotal sites of meaning-making for the rabbis, the Mishnah ideologically reinterprets “acts of loving kindness” (‫ )גמילות חסדים‬and the study of Torah on the same level of efficacy as the temple service (m. Avot 1:2; m. Peah 1:1; cf. GI Tob 4:11).129 It also metaphorically interprets the practice of ritual immersion suggests that at least some Jews during this time, Josephus being one of them, believed non-Jewish women were in fact unable to become Jews through conversion as were men, since women were unable to be circumcised. Instead, non-Jewish women were simply subsumed under the identity of their Jewish husbands, never actually becoming Jews. From this angle, the issue of a non-Jewish woman needing to convert before she could marry a Jewish man may not have been much of an issue, at least not to all Jews (“Doing Like Jews or Becoming a Jew? Josephus on Women Converts to Judaism,” in Jewish Identity in the Greco-Roman World, ed. J. Frey, D.R. Schwartz, and S. Gripentrog, AJEC 71 [Leiden: Brill, 2007], 93–109). However, see the interesting proposal made recently by M. Thiessen that Aseneth’s eight-day process of transformation is meant to parallel the biblical tradition of male circumcision that was to take place on the eighth day (“Aseneth’s Eight-Day Transformation as Scriptural Justification for Conversion,” JSJ 45 [2014]: 229–249). 127 See especially Thiessen, Contesting Conversion, 67–110. Also unlike Philo is the claim of Jub. 8:13 that Jerusalem is the “center of the navel of the earth” (see M. Niehoff, Philo on Jewish Identity and Culture, TSAJ 86 [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001], 37–42, where she argues that only in his later works does Philo introduce a focus on Jerusalem in his myth of Jewish origins; see also chapter 5). Because (1) Jubilees focuses on Jewish genealogy and Jerusalem as the nation’s cultic center, (2) fourteen manuscripts of the work, all in Hebrew, were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, and (3) the work constitutes a priestly re-telling of the Genesis account, we seem to have solid evidence for categorizing Jubilees as a priestly-oriented expression of Jewishness in the second or first century BCE. We have, however, no certain evidence regarding its relation to the official political position of the Judean priesthood, whether it reflects participation with or separation from it. 128 Post-70 Jewish responses to the destruction of the temple is a topic that has been handled by a number of scholars. How the Gospel of John factors into this will be addressed in chapter 6 of this study. 129 For a range of strategies implemented in rabbinic sources to deal with the diasporic situation in the land spawned by the events of 70, see D. Marx, “The Missing Temple: The

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in a miqveh by relating it to the cleansing power of Yom Kippur sacrifices by which God “cleanses” Israel. In m. Yom 8:9, R. Aqiva exegetes Ezek 36:25 (“as it says, And I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean”) in combination with Jer 17:13 (“and it says, O Lord, the hope of Israel”). The Hebrew word ‫( מקוה‬miqveh), used in the Jeremiah text, usually takes the meaning of ‘hope’ in the Hebrew Bible, but in post-biblical Hebrew it can also refer to ritual immersion baths. R. Aqiva, of course, knows this, and thus concludes on the basis of his inter-textual reading: “Just as the immersion pool [‫ ]מקוה‬cleans the unclean, so the Holy One, blessed be he, cleans Israel” (trans. Neusner). God, in other words, is the ‘miqveh of Israel,’ the people’s true ‘ritual bath,’ in the sense that the practice of ritual immersion is understood as a metaphorical embodiment of the ‘hope’ that God’s cleansing work on Yom Kippur brings. Furthermore, while we never see the rabbis of any period recast the nation of Israel as comprised of simply any “lover of knowledge” as in Philo, some rabbinic sources do likewise interpret the ethnic category of ‘people’ with, at least in principle, an openness toward non-Jews. Tractate Baḥodesh 1 and 5 of the Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael (redacted mid-3rd cent. CE), for example, present the giving of Torah at Sinai as, originally, a public event that took place outside the land of Israel, that is, as an event that was open to any nation who wished to come and receive the Torah (‫)כל הרוצה לקבל יבא ויקבל‬.130 In these chapters, Torah is likened to desert, fire, and water, because “just as these three things are

Status of the Temple in Jewish Culture Following its Destruction,” European Judaism 46.2 (2013): 61–78. While the redaction of the Mishnah is usually dated to the late second and early third centuries CE, scholars have argued that tractate Avot as a whole (not just chapter 6, which has been known as a later addition from the Geonic period) was a later addition. G. Stemberger, for example, has argued that Avot is an anti-Karaite response: “Der Traktat ist vielmehr sehr langsam gewachsen, erst im Kampf gegen die Karäer zentral und durch das Gebetbuch zur Volksschrift geworden” (“Mischna Avot: Frühe Weisheitsschrift, pharisäisches Erbe oder spätrabbinische Bildung?” ZNW 96 [2005]: 243–58 [257]). This is a highly speculative hypothesis and seems an unreasonably late date. The redactor of the early fourth century Pseudo-Clementine Homilies seems to be aware of tradition of Torah transmission reflected in Avot (2:38; 3:18–19; 11:29). A. Tropper, “Tractate Avot and Early Christian Succession Lists,” in The Ways that Never Parted: Jews and Christians in late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. A.H. Becker and A. Reed (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 2007), 159–88, argues Avot 1–5 is indeed mishnaic. He further discusses Avot in relation to apostolic succession lists in the fourth century and suggests that the tractate fits well within a broader context of handling schisms and the need to consolidate power in the Jewish community. Many thanks are due to Karin Zetterholm for discussing this issue with me and offering literature recommendations on the topic. 130 Text from Lauterbach, 2:198 (line 84). See K.H. Zetterholm, “Alternate Forms of Judaism,” 128; M. Hirshman, “Rabbinic Universalism in the Second and Third Centuries,” HTR 93.2 (2000): 101–15.

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free to all who come into the world, so also are the words of Torah free to all who come into the world.”131 On the one hand, this rabbinic attitude toward Gentiles seems quite similar to some non-rabbinic texts from the post-70 period, which also display an openness towards the nations within their conception of the ancestral law and the people (e.g., Rev 7:9; 21:22; T. Levi 5:1–3; 18:6–9).132 On the other hand, it contrasts with both non-rabbinic and other rabbinic texts that portray a more closed-off point of view: Apocalypse of Abraham (which also construes cultic worship metaphorically in 29:19: “the sacrifices and gifts of justice and truth in the age of justice”) envisions the nations only as objects of God’s wrath (chs. 29–31; cf. Jub. 23:24);133 4 Ezra clearly views the Sinai event as a special experience of Israel alone (9:26–37); and Sifre to Deuteronomy §345 (redacted mid-3rd cent. CE) asserts that “the Torah is betrothed to Israel and is therefore like a married woman in relation to the nations of the world,” and thus that for non-Jews to take on the requirements of Torah would be tantamount to adultery. At this point in our modeling of Jewish diversity, we have worked on opposite sides of a diasporic–priestly-oriented dichotomy. But, alas, as Daniel Schwartz mentions, “[T]he value of dichotomies is as a schematic tool that facilitates analysis rather than in capturing all the diversity that was really out there in history.”134 In other words, we should expect to encounter sources that complicate the dichotomy. Two groups of sources we have yet to cover do just that: 131 Trans. Lauterbach, 2:237. The Mekhilta also evinces a clear openness to Gentiles participating in the Jewish ethnos, but apparently through proselytism via circumcision (Nezikin 18). 132 On the Apocalypse of John as a Jewish text, see J. Marshall, Parables of War: Reading John’s Jewish Apocalypse, ESCJ 10 (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2001). On the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs as representative of a Jesus-oriented form of Judaism in the second century CE, see D. Frankfurter, “Beyond ‘Jewish Christianity’: Continuing Religious Sub-Cultures of the Second and Third Centuries and Their Documents,” in The Ways That Never Parted, 131–43 (esp. 134–35). Rather than Jewish texts with Christian interpolations, Frankfurter considers the idea that the Testament (along with 5 and 6 Ezra and the Ascension of Isaiah) emerged in communities of halakhically observant prophecyoriented Jews who at some point had come to embrace Jesus as the Messiah, while retaining a Jewish, or even priestly self-definition. And as K.H. Zetterholm says: “In addition to their strong interest in prophecy and prophetic traditions, these texts are concerned with Torah observance, Israel’s past and future, the end-time salvation of a remnant of Israel, the inclusion of Gentiles into the covenant with Israel’s God, the fate of non-Jesusoriented Jews, and in the case of the Ascension, with heavenly ascent” (“Alternate Visions of Judaism,” 128). 133 The translation of Apocalypse of Abraham used here is R. Rubinkiewicz, OTP vol. 1. 134 Schwartz, Judeans and Jews, 83.

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(1) those that occupy a middle ground on the spectrum, having both diasporic and priestly-oriented qualities; and (2) those that suggest some ancient Jews did not simply interpret their ethnic identity differently but, at least according to the ideological perspective of a source’s author, broke the boundary of the ethnic group altogether. Sources occupying what I consider to be a “middle ground” on the Jewish identity spectrum communicate attitudes that can be described as “priestlyoriented” in some respects but nevertheless are expressed from a position outside the official realm of the Judean public arena. One example of this situation is Jewish groups with priestly dispositions who apparently lived outside the land of Israel, a phenomenon we see throughout the Second Temple period.135 Such groups established their own temples, sometimes in direct competition with the one in Jerusalem and, in the case of the Oniad temple in Leontopolis, even outfitted with a Levitical priesthood and (non-animal) sacrificial service.136 Such Jewish establishments quite obviously would not have had the same Greek- or Roman-sanctioned authority in public administration as the official Judean priesthood and temple cult.137 Unlike the metaphorical and apologetic interpretation of cult and land we saw in Philo, in which the unique status of Jerusalem and Philo’s socio-political situation outside the land are held in tension, these sources indicate that at least some ancient Jews felt no need to metaphorize the ‘mother-city’ and had no qualms about offering cultic worship somewhere else.138 Such expressions of Jewishness were evidently not ideologically governed by the same commitment to an ethnic city-center and centralized ethnic cult as those expressions that were ideologically aligned with the Judean priesthood. Thus, for analytical purposes, we can 135 E.g., Ezra 8:17; P. Cowley 30/Porten no. B19 line 1; Josephus, Ant. 13:62–73 (cf. War 7:407– 36); CJZ 72 (SEG 17.823); Acts 19:14. 136 See Runesson, Origins, 403–36, and ASSB pp. 274–94 for the literary and archaeological evidence for Jewish temples outside Jerusalem. The 5th cent. BCE Elephantine papyrus P. Cowley 33/Porten no. B22 lines 10–11 and Josephus, War 7:430, although separated by a significant span of time, both indicate that such Jewish temples could be the site of Levitical offerings but without animal sacrifices. The Elephantine papyrus is explicit on this. The text from Josephus says that Ptolemy gave Onias “an extensive territory as a source of revenue, to yield both abundance for the priests and large provision for the service of God” (trans. Thackeray). This large piece of land seems to have the function of providing crops for the subsistence of priests and the offering of vegetation sacrifice. Nothing is said of animal sacrifice. 137 This certainly does not mean that these institutions were apolitical. In War 7:407–36, Josephus associates the Roman destruction of the Oniad temple in Leontopolis with the seditious activity of refugee Sicarii in that area toward the end of the First Jewish War. 138 See m. Menah. 13:10; t. Menah. 13:12–15, in which some early rabbis appear to grant the ‘House of Onias,’ known from Josephus, a restricted legitimacy.

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say that, while priestly elements are indeed present, there is a significant component of diasporic strategy to this type of meaning-making process; hence, its placement on the “middle ground” of the identity spectrum. Inside the land of Israel, too, some Jews, perhaps especially those who participated in the Yaḥad–Essene network, seem to have held priestly-oriented type values while at the same time employing diasporic strategies to form their identity.139 There is little doubt that the Yaḥad–Essene group (however this ‘group’ is modeled historically and sociologically; see chapter 6) was interested in and even included priests, yet the group seems to have had its own conceptions of the Jewish ancestral cult, its own assembly practices, its own system of community justice and regulation, and even its own communal meals in which priests participated and held authoritative positions.140 However, in contrast to those who had established physical Jewish temples away from Jerusalem (such as the Oniad temple), some literature among the Dead Sea Scrolls, such as 4QShirShabba–f, employs diasporic strategy that transforms the earthly temple into a heavenly one, in which the group, as members of an ideal human priesthood, serve the god of Israel alongside an angelic priesthood.141 The emphasis on participation with the angelic priestly 139 On this point, see Schwartz, Judeans and Jews, 83–84. 140 E.g., Philo, Prob. 80–83; Josephus, Ant. 18:18–22; War 2:128–32; 1QS 5:2–13; 6:2–7; cf. Pliny, Nat. hist. 5:15:73. Current scholarship on the Dead Sea Scrolls and the so-called Qumran ‘community’ paradigm is in a state of flux. The traditional paradigm, in which documents from Qumran are equated with a single “sect” or subgroup, usually of the Essenes, has been called into question most recently by Gwynned de Looijer, who argues that the Scrolls, in fact, reflect a broad array of backgrounds within Judaism of the Second Temple period (Gwynned de Looijer, The Qumran Paradigm: A Critical Evaluation of Some Foundational Hypotheses in the Construction of the Qumran Sect, EJL 43 [Atlanta: SBL, 2015]). On the priestly-oriented type identity of the Essenes and some Dead Sea Scrolls, see W.V. Cirafesi, “The Temple Attitudes of John and Qumran in the Light of Hellenistic Judaism,” in Christian Origins and Hellenistic Judaism: Social and Literary Contexts for the New Testament, ed. S.E. Porter and A.W. Pitts, TENT 10 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 315–39. 141 On the diasporic character of the ideological (and often apocalyptic/mystical) transformation of physical sanctuaries into otherworldly sanctuaries accessible to those outside the ethnic homeland in Hellenistic ‘religions,’ see Smith, Drudgery Divine, 125–26, 142 n. 43. On this strategy in the Dead Sea literature specifically, see R. Elior, The Three Temples: On the Emergence of Jewish Mysticism, trans. D. Louvish, LLJC (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), chapter 8. On angelic worship in other but similar Qumran texts, see E. Chazon, “Lowly to Lofty: The Hodayot’s Use of Liturgical Traditions to Shape Sectarian Identity and Religious Experience,” RevQ 101 (2013): 3–19 (11–15); E. Chazon, “Liturgical Function of the Cave 1 Hodayot Collection,” in Qumran Cave 1 Revisited: Proceedings of the Sixth IOQS, Ljubljana 2007, ed. D.K. Falk, S. Metso, and E. Tigchelaar; STDJ 91 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 137–48; J. Angel, Otherworldly and Eschatological Priesthood in the Dead Sea Scrolls, STDJ 86 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 132–45; P. Alexander, The Mystical

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service despite human unworthiness (4QShirShabba 2 5–6) provided a powerful identity building tool in the group’s effort to transform their sacred space, if only temporarily, as a response to those with formal political control of ethnic cult in Jerusalem (see chapter 6). What makes the diasporic strategy of identity formation reflected in the Dead Sea texts different from the strategies we see used in Philo and Tobit? Despite an apparent lack of formal connection to official public institutions, we get the sense in some Qumran material that the group aims to participate in – or better, control – Judean public administration. The problem, of course, is that from the vantage point of these texts, the ancestral cult, the ‘mothercity,’ and even the land itself have all been polluted and defiled by both foreign nations and unfaithful Israelites. Atonement, therefore, must first be made for them and oppressive leaders deposed before the group, that is, ‘true Israel,’ can repossess the land and gain control of a purified and reconstituted temple (e.g., 1QS 8:6; 4Q175 23–30). Philo and Tobit stand in contrast to this notion of civic reintegration; neither entertains the Yaḥad’s idea of politically repossessing the land and the earthly temple. They also evince stronger patterns of openness to Gentile outsiders that run against the apparent separatist ideology of some of the Scrolls. On the other hand, the Qumran texts also contrast with the identity building strategies of those who built physical temples away from Jerusalem. Unlike them, the Qumran group was willing to exist on the margins, so to say, and engage in metaphorical reinterpretations of the cult sanctuary, its sacrifices, and its priesthood. Thus, within the analytical framework of the current study, the Qumran documents include both diasporic and priestly-oriented modes of identity, which position them somewhere in the middle of our spectrum of Jewish ethnic identity formation.142 Stephen Wilson has marshalled a range of evidence in support of the idea that, from the ideological viewpoint of some sources, Jews in antiquity could break altogether with their Jewishness, and thus no longer occupy any place Texts: Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice and Related Manuscripts (London: T&T Clark, 2006), 85–90, 101–110. C. Fletcher-Louis offers a significant critique of this view in All the Glory of Adam: Liturgical Anthropology in the Dead Sea Scrolls, STDJ 47 (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 281–93, where he emphasizes that Songs of Sabbath Sacrifice is devoted to the subject of humanity’s engagement with, and even metamorphosis into, the angelic divine, rather than angelic priests. 142 My presentation here coincides with the work of Y.M. Gillihan, Civic Ideology, Organization, and Law in the Rule Scrolls: A Comparative Study of the Covenanters’ Sect and Contemporary Voluntary Associations in Political Context, STDJ 97 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), who argues that the Rule Scrolls present an “alternative civic ideology” along the lines of other voluntary associations.

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on the spectrum of Jewish ethnic identity.143 I mention just two examples here: 1 Macc 1:11–15 and m. Avot 3:11.144 In 1 Macc 1:11–15, certain Jews, who appear to have been Jews by birth, have made “a covenant with the surrounding ethnē” (διαθήκην μετὰ τῶν ἐθνῶν τῶν κύκλῳ), pledging to do their ordinances (τὰ δικαιώματα τῶν ἐθνῶν) and re-growing their foreskins (epispasm) as a sign of their rejection of the “holy covenant” (ἀπέστησαν ἀπὸ διαθήκης ἁγίας).145 There is, thus, a double movement on the part of these ‘unfaithful’ Jews: they have rejected the laws of their own ethnic group and, simultaneously, attached themselves to the laws of other ethnic groups (ἀπέστησαν ἀπὸ διαθήκης ἁγίας καὶ ἐζευγίσθησαν τοῖς ἔθνεσιν).146 From the perspective of 1 Maccabees, they have, indeed, ‘converted.’ Undoing one’s circumcision as an act of severing oneself from the Abrahamic covenant is probably what the phrase ‫המּפר בּריתֹו‬ ‫ שׁלּאברהם אבינוּ‬in m. Avot 3:11 refers to as well. Nearly the same wording is used in b. Sanh. 99a (‫ ;)המּפר בּריתֹו שׁלּאברהם‬and in b. Sanh. 38b, Adam is said to have made himself foreskinned again (‫)מושך בערלתו‬, which is connected to his breaking of the covenant. Similar wording is used in b. Sanh. 44a about Achan, who is also said to have broken the covenant.147 Therefore, at least some later rabbis, too, seem to have understood that it was possible for a Jew, in this case a male, to break completely with his Jewishness by undoing his circumcision. The apparent ability Jews had to break with their Jewishness is an important analytical point to make going forward in this study. It encourages us to ask whether John’s Gospel negotiates an identity that we can plausibly say intends to stay on the spectrum of expressions of Jewish ethnicity, or whether it contains compositional strategies that move in the direction of a departure from the people, laws, land, and national cult of the Jewish ethnos, such as we see in 1 Macc 1:11–15 and m. Avot 3:11. In the model presented here, this is the type 143 See S.G. Wilson, Leaving the Fold: Apostates and Defectors in Antiquity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), 23–65. One of Wilson’s important insights is that the notion of Jewish “defection” to ‘Christianity’ is a phenomenon we do not see until after Constantine (p. 64). 144 As noted in discussion above, Smith might well be right that Jews like those mentioned in 1 Macc 1:11–15 might not have considered themselves to have departed from their Jewishness, but it seems almost obvious that the author of 1 Maccabees sees it this way. 145 On Jews who appear to have been re-growing their foreskins and thus “breaking the covenant” (i.e., breaking with Judaism), see M. Zetterholm, The Formation of Christianity in Antioch: A Social-Scientific Approach to the Separation between Judaism and Christianity (London: Routledge, 2003), 72–73. 146 Such a phenomenon of ethnic boundary crossing, in which there is not only a losing of ethnic identity but also a gaining of one, has been observed by Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism, 39. 147 M. Zetterholm, Christianity in Antioch, 73.

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of ‘break’ we would expect to see if John were a text expressing a rejection or departure from Jewishness. 3

The Meaning Potential of Ioudaios in Antiquity: Methodological Observations

Our attempt at a broad and selective sketch of interpretations of Jewish ethnic identity from the late Second Temple period to the early rabbinic era has so far not dealt with a much more restricted but nevertheless important problem: the meaning of the Greek term Ioudaios. Here I wish simply and briefly to lay a methodological foundation for the following chapter, which is concerned with the question of what it meant to be an Ioudaios in antiquity. The problem of Ioudaios involves the same set of questions as Ioudaïsmos – is it a ‘religious’ or ‘ethnic’ term?  – but has primarily been addressed as a problem of translation, especially into English and German: should Ioudaios be rendered today with the ‘religious’ term ‘Jew’ or the ‘ethnic’ term ‘Judean,’ ‘Juden’ or ‘Judäer’?148 As is the case with Ioudaïsmos, framing the issue in such binaries tends to obfuscate the term’s multifaceted nature: Cohen, Mason, and Nongbri have shown that the Ioudaioi in antiquity were certainly viewed as an ethnos, but, as Seth Schwartz and Daniel Schwartz have also shown, ancient Ioudaioi had beliefs and practices that we would typically associate today with ‘religion.’ In other words, like Ioudaïsmos, Ioudaios is an ethno-religious term, one capable of encompassing a variety of expressions of identity (see chapter 3). 148 E.g., Mason, “Jews, Judaeans”; D.R. Schwartz, Judeans and Jews (and other publications); Satlow, “Jew or Judaean?”; see the forum of top scholars commenting on the issue at http://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/jew-judean-forum/, which is entirely devoted to the problem of translating Ioudaios; R. Sheridan, “Issues in the Translation of οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι in the Fourth Gospel,” JBL 132 (2013): 571–95. One of the few treatments, at least that I am aware of, that is less focused on translation and more interested in describing the particular identity features of John’s Ioudaioi is C. Bennema, “The Identity and Composition of ΟΙ ΙΟΥΔΑΙΟΙ in the Gospel of John,” TynBul 60.2 (2009): 239–63. In it, Bennema shows that John’s Ioudaioi are a composite group of Torah and temple loyalists who had the chief priests as their main leaders; he has also demonstrated that John presents the chief priests as the real ‘masterminds’ of Jesus’ death. In other words, Bennema argues, rightly to my mind, that John’s Ioudaioi are closely bound up with the activity of the Jerusalem priesthood, both in their concern to defend and control Jewish public institutions (synagogue, temple, Torah) and in their effort to have Jesus executed. For more discussion, see chapter 4. For a thorough survey of the range of issues associated with Ioudaios, see the series of articles published by D. Miller (note 4 above).

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While a decision in translation is important for anyone engaged in the task of making readable translations of ancient texts for modern readers, translation should not be the determining factor in ascertaining a word’s meaning, or even its ultimate goal.149 That is, while translation is part of the quest, it is not equivalent to meaning. This is especially true for a word like Ioudaios, which, for example, can be used twice in a single passage to denote groups of people in very different geopolitical situations, with different translations of each being quite feasible: Τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς τοῖς κατ᾿ Αἴγυπτον Ιουδαίοις χαίρειν οἱ ἀδελφοὶ οἱ ἐν Ιεροσολύμοις Ιουδαῖοι καὶ οἱ ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ τῆς Ιουδαίας εἰρήνην ἀγαθήν (2 Macc 1:1) To the brothers and sisters, the Ιουδαίοις throughout Egypt, greetings [from] the brothers and sisters, the Ιουδαῖοι who are in Jerusalem and in the land of Judea (translation mine). The second occurrence of Ioudaioi in this passage could very well be translated ‘Judeans.’ After all, there is an explicit linkage of the people to the land of Judea and its capital city. It is much more difficult, however, to translate the first occurrence of the term this way, especially if Philo’s comments in Flacc 45–47 (see above) – that generations of Ioudaioi living in Egypt considered Egypt their home country, not Judea – reflect in any sense the social realia of his day and are not merely apologetic. The Egyptian Ioudaioi in 2 Macc 1:1 have no ‘real’ connection to the ancestral land; rather, their values and orientations have been shaped by a translocal ethno-religious bond with those Ioudaioi that do. As Daniel Schwartz argues throughout his book Judeans and Jews, the English term ‘Jews’ (and the German Juden) is a better fit for Ioudaioi in such contexts.150 But a problem remains: neither ‘Judean’ (a place-name) nor ‘Jew’ (an English ethnonym) encapsulates all that Ioudaios can refer to in the ancient world. They do not capture the idea that groups of Ioudaioi could form their identities around very different interpretations of membership in the ethnos, some around, for example, genealogy and a political and administrative attachment to Judea and the Jerusalem cult, and others around metaphorical reimaginings 149 On this point, see S.E. Porter, Linguistic Analysis of the Greek New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2015). 150 This is contrary to Mason’s view in which Ioudaios denoted a ‘Judean,’ that is, a member of the Judean ethnos (a political-ethnographic category), who represents the entire local Judean culture, no matter where one actually lived (“Jews, Judaeans,” 490).

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of the cult and attitudes of openness toward non-Jews as such. In other words, in my view, Daniel Schwartz is ultimately right to argue that, for analytical purposes, we need both ‘Judean’ and ‘Jew’ to talk about Ioudaioi in antiquity, and that our work does not stop with making a choice about translation.151 We need to evaluate instances of the term’s use within particular contexts and attempt to discern what sorts of orientations and values have been rhetorically mapped onto a specific group given the Ioudaioi label. The linguistic concept of ‘sense and reference,’ used by some scholars with varying degrees of success, could be helpful in this respect.152 Stanley Porter, building largely on John Ashton’s earlier work on the topic, describes the concept succinctly: “Reference is the procedure by which speakers or writers, by means of words (or word groups), identify and invoke entities in the real world. It is sense that relates the words to other words, and hence has the potential for negative meaning” (italics mine).153 Thus, a term’s ‘reference’ is its object, in the case of John’s Ioudaioi, an ethno-religious people group known from antiquity. Its ‘sense’ – whether positive, negative, or neutral, its relationship to other groups, and its defining features of identity – is dependent on its linguistic presentation in text.154 Thus, to return to our example from 2 Macc 1:1 above, it matters very little how we translate Ioudaioi into English, or any other language for that matter. Of more importance is determining the specific values, convictions, and practices that are embossed upon an individual or group with reference to their conception of membership in the ethnos of the Ioudaioi. When it comes to the issue of Ioudaioi in John, then, the goal of the present study will be to consider how the text positions groups that go by this label on the spectrum of Jewish identity as sketched above. However, for clarity’s sake, 151 See also A. Runesson, “Inventing Christian Identity: Paul, Ignatius, and Theodosius I,” in Exploring Early Christian Identity, ed. B. Holmberg, WUNT 226 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 59–92. 152 See especially J. Ashton, “The Identity and Function of the ᾽Ιουδαῖοι in the Fourth Gospel,” NovT 27.1 (1985): 40–75; R. Bieringer, D. Pollefeyt, and F. Vandecasteele-Vanneuville, “Wrestling with Johannine Anti-Judaism,” in Anti-Judaism and the Fourth Gospel, ed. Bieringer, Pollefeyt, and Vandecasteele-Vanneuville (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 18–22; S.E. Porter, John, His Gospel, and Jesus: In Pursuit of the Johannine Voice (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), 158–60. 153 Porter, John, 159. 154 Thus, considering the ‘sense’ of Ioudaios can cohere quite well with approaches to Ioudaios in John’s Gospel that see the use of the term as a purely literary or rhetorical invention of the author. ‘Sense’ is something constructed discursively (much like ‘ethnicity’ in antiquity), whether or not it has grounding in a ‘real world’ object. Although John may use Ioudaioi as ‘stock characters’ and as part of its literary fabric, it is indefensible, even absurd, to suggest that Ioudaioi as a historical group of people did not exist in the real world of the first century.

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in a similar vein as D.R. Schwartz’s suggestion, when I do use the term ‘Judean/s,’ I use it restrictedly to refer to Ioudaioi who can be classified on the priestlyoriented end of the identity spectrum who embodied, in belief and practice, their ethnic identity in direct connection with the geopolitically demarcated land of Judea. I use much more frequently, however, the broader terms ‘Jew/s’ and ‘Jewish’ since they can also encompass the category of ‘Judeans;’ that is, in my view, priestly-oriented type ‘Judeans’ can also be described as ‘Jews,’ while not every ‘Jew’ can be described as a ‘Judean.’ More often, then, I will use the terminology of ‘priestly-oriented Jews’ and ‘diasporic Jews’ to distinguish between and to describe types of identities that are classifiable on my heuristic spectrum of Jewishness. Groups that could be said to occupy a middle ground on the spectrum of Jewish identity, such as the Yaḥad–Essene network and those Ioudaioi who built temples to the god of Israel away from Jerusalem, need their own attention. As I will discuss in more detail in chapter 6, the Yaḥad–Essene network was comprised of priestly-oriented type Judeans who, nevertheless, shaped their identity within the context of an ideological diaspora. While they cannot be fully described as priestly-oriented ‘Judeans’ in an ‘official’ political sense, such ‘official’ political control does seem to have been at least one of the aims of the group, even if only ideologically; and, after all, the group was based in and throughout Judea. Thus, in certain places I will use the term ‘Judean Jews’ to describe members of the Yaḥad–Essene network. On the other hand, the identity formation process of those Ioudaioi who built temples outside of Judea away from Jerusalem seems to have flowed in the opposite direction: their priestly-oriented values were not attached to the Judean geopolitical realm, but, rather, transitioned toward the values and political situations characteristic of geographically diasporic Jews. The broader term ‘Jews’ seems adequate to describe this type of Jewish identity. The idea that Ioudaioi, as groups or individuals, could transition or move in different directions along the spectrum of Jewish identity suggests that the term Ioudaios does not have a static referent. It always refers to members of the Jewish ethnos, but it is dynamic in that it can invoke quite different and changing constructions of identity. The key, though certainly not the only, historical impetus for such transitions appears to be the phenomenon of exile and reconstitution. For example, if we reach back to the start of the Second Temple period, the diasporic-type Judahites returning from exile in Babylonia, where they apparently had their own Levitical sanctuary (Ezra 8:17), transitioned to become priestly-oriented-type Yehudim, as Ezra the great priestscribe establishes Yehud as an official Persian province and the temple of “the

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god who lives in Jerusalem” (Ezra 1:3, et passim.). If we fast forward to the last days of the Second Temple, the life of Josephus, as Daniel Schwartz has compellingly argued, is an example of an individual’s transition of identity but in the opposite direction: a former Judean priest, shaped since his youth by the goals and ideals of priestly-oriented Jewishness, Josephus is diasporized when he is taken into Vespasian’s court in 67 CE to spend the rest of his days in Rome as a translator and court historian. The impact of this transition is seen in the evolution of his writing about the Jewish War. As Schwartz argues, Josephus moves from a priestly-oriented type of account of the war in his early work (his War is usually dated to the mid-70s CE) to a more diasporic type of account in his later work (Antiquities is usually dated ca. mid-90s CE).155 4

Conclusion

This chapter has set out to accomplish three things. The first was, by critically engaging and drawing upon recent scholarship, to present Jews of antiquity as constituting an ethnos that had similar characteristics to other ethnic groups such as myths of kinship, laws, land, and a national cult. Second, since anyone who claimed or was given the ethnic label Ioudaios was engaged in various negotiations of their membership in the ethnos, we can envision a higher-level unity within Judaism that transcended divisions between groups. Thus, on the one hand, some of the sharpest conflicts we see in the Second Temple period come at lower sociological levels, that is, between groups who were most similar, whether competing over the same institutions (e.g., Pharisees and Sadducees) or sharing a similar cultic ideology (e.g., Qumran group and the Jerusalem-based priesthood). On the other hand, I argued that expressions of Judaism from ca. 200 BCE–200 CE generally fell on two sides of an ethnic spectrum: priestly-oriented forms, shaped around direct participation in the public administration of the land of Israel led by the Judean priesthood, and involving a closed understanding of relations with non-Jews; and diasporic forms, characterized often by conceptually remote constructions and metaphorical reimaginings of land and cult, and possessing a stronger element of openness toward Gentiles. Third, we outlined an approach to the term Ioudaios that 155 See D.R. Schwartz, Judeans and Jews, 48–61. We could also add to these examples the good many Judean priests who became members of, or at least influenced, the early rabbinic movement after 70 CE, a movement that became fundamentally ‘diasporic’ in character, being without temple and administrative control of the land (see Hezser, Rabbinic Movement, 70–71).

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distances itself from the concerns of modern translation and draws a distinction between translation and meaning. While Ioudaios always refers to a member of the Jewish ethnos, where and how an author places a group of Ioudaioi on the spectrum of Jewish identity is a product of that author’s discursive activity. The following chapters, then, will examine how the Gospel of John is actively engaged in the negotiation of the fundamental elements of Jewish ethnicity – people (chapter 3), laws (chapter 4), land (chapter 5), and national cult (chapter 6) – and thus attempt to describe the way in which its narrative world relates to the spectrum of identity presented above. That is, our main task moving forward is to understand how John’s narrative world works within the broader world of ancient Greco-Roman and Jewish identity construction.

chapter 3

The Jewish People and the Children of Israel’s God in John 1

Introduction

The popular adage from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, “What is in a name?” has cleverly made its way into scholarly discussion about the meaning and translation of the term Ioudaios. For Michael Satlow, Juliet’s famous suicidal frustration over the essential meaninglessness of labels, in her case ‘Montague’ and ‘Capulet,’ is a catchy way to get at his fundamental point about the anxiety scholars have expressed over translating Ioudaios as either ‘Jew’ or ‘Judean.’1 In the end, Satlow sympathizes with Juliet. His answer to “What is in a name?” is thus: “Somewhat less than meets the eye.”2 That is, the term Ioudaios is, in fact, “largely a flexible ethnographic trope – a term that, like the modern ‘Jew’ or ‘Jews,’ is inherently ambiguous.”3 In the previous chapter, I charted a basic approach to the problem of Ioudaios that runs in a similar methodological direction. Ultimately, preoccupation with the translation of Ioudaios as either “Jew” or “Judean” is destined to repeat the scholarly anxieties of the past.4 This is particularly the case if one approaches the label by means of the categorical binary of ‘ethnicity’ vs. ‘religion,’ as if ‘Judean’ is solely an ethnic term and ‘Jew’ a solely ‘religious’ one. As we saw in the last chapter, this sort of binary opposition is problematic, not least because it treats, even if implicitly, ‘religion’ as if it existed at all in antiquity or as a native category independent of ‘ethnicity.’ Ioudaios, however, 1 M. Satlow, “Jew or Judaean?” in “The One Who Sows Bountifully”: Essays in Honor of Stanley K. Stowers, ed. C.J. Hodge et al., Brown Judaic Studies (Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 2013), 165, 174. See also the title of Cynthia Baker’s, “A ‘Jew’ by Any Other Name?” JAJ 2 (2011): 153–80. 2 Satlow, “Jew or Judaean?” 174. 3 Satlow, “Jew or Judaean?” 167. See also the discussion, which includes the issue’s relevance for modern forms of Judaism as well, in A. Runesson, “Entering a Synagogue with Paul: First-Century Torah Observance,” in Torah Ethics and Christian Identity, ed. S. Wendel and D.M. Miller (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), 11–26 (11–14). 4 For an excellent three-part history of research that outlines such anxieties, see D. Miller: “The Meaning of Ioudaios and its Relationship to Other Group Labels in Ancient ‘Judaism’,” CBR 9.1 (2010): 98–126; “Ethnicity Comes of Age: An Overview of Twentieth-Century Terms for Ioudaios,” CBR 10.2 (2012): 293–311; and “Ethnicity, Religion, and the Meaning of Ioudaios in Ancient ‘Judaism’,” CBR 12.2 (2014): 216–65.

© Wally V. Cirafesi, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004462946_004

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is always both ‘ethnicity’ and ‘religion’5 – ‘ethnicity,’ because the term denoted people who claimed membership in a particular ethnos or were placed there by others; and ‘religion,’ because we can, from an analytical perspective, speak of a wide variety of beliefs and practices couched within the ‘ethnicity’ of ancient Ioudaioi that we today might associate with ‘religion.’6 Thus, while we need in our vocabulary both English terms, ‘Judean’ and ‘Jew,’ to capture the values and orientations inscribed onto Ioudaios in actual instances of discursive use and to appreciate the term’s dynamic (not necessarily ambiguous) character, our analytical choice is not between ‘ethnicity’ or ‘religion.’ Rather, the decision to use ‘Judean’ or ‘Jew’ must derive from the nature of the subject’s discursively situated engagement with categories of one’s ethnic identity.7 In other words, to invoke Shakespeare’s Juliet once more, the smell of the rose is more important than its name, particularly (in our case) its English one (or German or French, etc.).8 In the present chapter, then, I am less concerned with the translation debate, and far more concerned with engaging the issue of Ioudaioi in John’s Gospel by asking questions such as: What was the legitimizing basis of one’s participation in an ethnos in Greco-Roman antiquity? How was one considered an Ioudaios, that is, a participant in the Jewish ethnos? How does John’s Gospel negotiate Ioudaios in relation to these strategies of ‘peoplehood’? How does John’s Ioudaios relate to other ethnic identities, namely the Samaritans (4:1–42) and Greeks (7:35; 12:20)? How do two other key categories found in the Gospel – “the world” and “the children of god” – factor into the Johannine vision of ‘peoplehood’? Since the body of scholarship devoted to some of these questions is already rather large, my aim is not necessarily to contribute an altogether new reading of the ancient sources but rather to approach them through a different descriptive lens, namely the priestly-oriented – diasporic spectrum of Jewish identity that was sketched in the previous chapter. Furthermore, I have no intention of providing a detailed exegetical analysis of John’s 71 instances of Ioudaios. Rather, the goal is to consider the term in relation to the identity-values and understandings of Jewishness that John maps onto groups with the Ioudaios label, and then to discern their relationship to other categories of “people” 5 Pace Satlow, “Jew or Judaean?” 167. 6 S.J.D. Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 3–7. 7 See chapter 2, where the categories of people, laws, land, and national cult are described as sites of meaning-making regarding one’s ethnic identity but are not necessary criteria for determining it. 8 As Satlow, “Jew or Judaean?” 168 says, following the work of C.P. Jones on the terms ἔθνος and γένος in Herodotus: “[T]he narrative context determines how a group is designated.”

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within the Gospel’s narrative world. That is to say, who specifically the Ioudaioi are in John – for example, whether they are “the religious leaders,” or “all Jews everywhere,” as various scholars have argued – is not the foundational question. Rather, the primary question, even if stated somewhat awkwardly here, is how are the Ioudaioi Ioudaioi? What symbols and concepts, what institutions and ideologies shape their attitudes, orientations, and self-understandings with reference to peoplehood? Exploring these questions first within a broader Greco-Roman and Jewish context will allow us, then, to explore who John’s Ioudaioi are within a broader interpretative framework. 2

Ethnos and “Peoplehood” in Greco-Roman and Jewish Antiquity: Between Genealogy and Way of Life

One of the major contributions that classical historian Jonathan Hall has made to our understanding of ethnic identity in antiquity, particularly among the Greeks, is that conceptions of Hellenic identity (what he calls “Hellenicity”) changed as a response to certain social and historical processes.9 The years following the Persian Wars (480/79 BCE) and the introduction of the “Barbarian Other” through the influential medium of the Attic poets, Hall says, produced a shift in the definition of Hellenicity in which “cultural criteria came to replace ethnic ones.”10 Indeed, Herodotus’s famous statement on ‘Greekness’ in Hist. 8:144:2, which in many ways anticipates Alexander’s program of Hellenization a century later, demonstrates this shift, as it is an attempt to place the restrictive notion of blood relations on the back burner and “broaden the defining criteria of Hellenicity beyond purely ethnic elements.”11 9 J.M. Hall, Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 179–80, 189–205. 10 Hall, Hellenicity, 189. 11 Hall, Hellenicity, 190. Beyond Herodotus, see Thucydides, Hist. 7:63:3: “I would have you – those of you that is who have hitherto been accounted Athenians without being so  – reflect how well worth preserving is the proud feeling that because of your knowledge of our language and your imitation of our ways you have been admired throughout Hellas, and in point of advantage have had no less a share in our empire than ourselves, while as regards the fear you inspired in our subjects and the freedom from injury you enjoyed you have had a much greater share” (trans. LCL 169, 127). See also Isocrates, Pan. 50: “And so far has our city distanced the rest of mankind in thought and in speech that her pupils have become the teachers of the rest of the world; and she has brought it about that the name ‘Hellenes’ suggests no longer a race [γένος] but an intelligence [διανοία], and that the title ‘Hellenes’ is applied rather to those who share our culture [παιδεύσεως] than to those who share a common blood [τοὺς τῆς κοινῆς φύσεως]” (LCL 209, 149).

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In Hall’s ‘etic’ model, the term ‘ethnicity’ is, as it is in much of the anthropological literature, narrowly equated with, or at least inherently linked to, the concept of ‘genealogy’ (expressed by words such as γένος, φύσις, etc.). ‘Culture,’ on the other hand, has to do with a group’s shared behaviors, customs, laws, and language.12 However, if we set Hall’s dichotomy within the model presented in chapter 2 of this study, the opposition he identifies in the Greek sources is not between ‘ethnicity’ and ‘culture’ but rather between ‘genealogy’ and ‘culture.’13 These two categories, subsumed within the larger category of ‘ethnicity,’ are two modes of constructing a notion of ‘peoplehood.’ That is, they are two modes of engaging the compound-question of who and how one belonged to a Hellenic ethnos and thus participated in ‘Greekness,’ one emphasizing the notion of genealogical descent and the other a cultural way of life. As Gary Farney notes, in Greek and Roman antiquity, one’s citizenship in a city-state was often conceived as more important than one’s ethno-genealogical origins, and these were at times kept quite distinct.14 While such origins, however discursively constructed, were never erased or devoid of a certain social currency (good or bad), they were typically “nested” within one’s citizenship in a larger politically governing body. Thus, Cicero in his Laws 2:5 could speak of ethnic outsiders, those with a non-Roman ancestry such as the wise Cato (and really all native Italians during the late Republic) as having two citizenships and “two homelands” (duae patriae), one by birth (for Cato, Tusculum) and one by law (Rome). The latter, of course, far outweighed the importance of the former, with the Roman patria subsuming one’s patria by birth. However, even insiders, those who claimed a more ancient and “pure” Roman gentes, were faced with the fact that, in the aftermath of Rome’s social wars with its Italian allies (91–88 BCE) and its ever-increasing status as a supra-ethnic imperial power, ‘Romanness’ was being increasingly linked to, and was eventually defined by, its complex system of civic citizenship.15 As William Arnal notes, while the Romans were themselves an ethnos, built at one time upon the ideological foundation of Roman genealogy, 12 13

14 15

On Hellenic genealogy, see Hall, Hellenicity, 125–71. My point of departure with Hall’s model is that I understand ‘culture’ as a category embedded within ‘ethnicity’ in antiquity, not in a binary relation with it. The concepts of ‘genealogy’ and ‘culture’ or ‘a way of life’ are both interwoven in discourse about membership within an ethnos, but are indeed different interpretations of, or perhaps emphases on (?), how one could be included in such a group. In this way, I am closer to the approach of John M.G. Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora: From Alexander to Trajan (323 BCE–117 CE) (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996), 402. G.D. Farney, Ethnic Identity and Aristocratic Competition in Republican Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 28–29. Farney, Ethnic Identity, 8–9, 28–30.

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this became decreasingly the case over time as the empire became more and more culturally integrated, and, partly as a result, its actual ruling classes less and less Roman. Eventually Roman citizenship itself became a purely political marker, indicating simply a subject of the Roman state, with no ethnic signification at all (when the citizenship was extended to all free residents of the empire in 212 CE by Caracalla).16 The history of Jewish antiquity reflects a similar social landscape, in which opinions about Jewishness varied widely and involved both genealogical and cultural/civic expressions. Approaching the question diachronically, Shaye J.D. Cohen says that, before the 2nd century BCE, Ioudaioi were defined principally by birth, with strong, impermeable boundaries drawn up between the Judean ethnos and non-Judean-born outsiders.17 Following the Hasmonean revolt, especially as a result of John Hyrcanus I’s program of forced conversion of the Idumeans, the term Ioudaios accrued two new meanings: Ioudaioi became “all those, of whatever ethnic or geographic origins, who worship the God whose temple is in Jerusalem (a religious definition), or who have become citizens of the state established by the Judaeans (a political definition).”18 The result of this change in definition was that the boundary between insiders and outsiders became more permeable: non-Ioudaioi could become Ioudaioi, outsiders could become insiders, and Jewishness, much like in Hall’s description of Hellenicity, was no longer interpreted within a strict genealogical framework.19 In other words, “Judaism” (Ioudaïsmos) was born. Aspects of Cohen’s approach have been criticized recently. John Collins has argued that the ‘religious’/cultural component of Judaism goes all the way back to the early Second Temple period,20 and Seth Schwartz has argued that Judaism had both ‘religious’ and genealogical definitions both well before and well after the Hasmoneans.21 While the issue of whether we should talk about Judaism as a “religion” at any point in antiquity is a matter of category definition, there is no doubt that many, if not all, ancient Jews retained, on 16 17 18 19 20 21

W.E. Arnal, “Doxa, Heresy, and Self-Construction: The Pauline Ekklēsiai and the Boundaries of Urban Identities,” in Heresy and Identity in Late Antiquity, ed. E. Iricinschi and H.M. Zellentin, TSAJ 119 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 73 n. 64. Cohen, Beginnings of Jewishness, 109. Of note is that Cohen, like Hall above, equates ‘ethnicity’ and ‘genealogy.’ I do not. Cohen, Beginnings of Jewishness, 109. Cohen, Beginnings of Jewishness, 110. J.J. Collins, The Invention of Judaism: Torah and Jewish Identity from Deuteronomy to Paul (Oakland: University of California Press, 2017). S. Schwartz, “How Many Judaisms Were There? A Critique of Neusner and Smith on Definition and Mason and Boyarin on Categorization,” JAJ 2 (2011): 208–38.

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some level, a genealogical element in defining their Jewishness well after the Second Temple period (see below). Indeed, as Jeffrey Rubenstein has shown, even some Babylonian rabbis of the 6th and 7th centuries CE reserved a special place for genealogical descent within their discursive strategies.22 Nevertheless, Cohen’s general thesis remains intact. The only improvement worth making, in my opinion, is to clarify that genealogical and cultural definitions of Jewishness existed synchronously before and after the Hasmoneans, although, as Cohen’s work sufficiently demonstrates, not with the same degree of emphasis or prevalence. Writing with reference to Jewish communities abroad, John Barclay insightfully notes that by the Hellenistic and early Roman periods, it was “precisely the combination of ancestry and custom[,] which was the core of Jewish identity in the Diaspora.”23 For example, while Josephus twice links his individual identity, as a priest, to his birth, his γένος (War 1:3; Vit. 1),24 he also says in C. Ap. 2:210: “To all who desire to come and live under the same laws with us, he [Moses] gives a gracious welcome, holding that it is not family ties alone [οὐ τῷ γένει μόνον] which constitute relationship [εἶναι τὴν οἰκειότητα], but agreement in the principles of conduct [ἀλλὰ καὶ τῇ προαιρέσει τοῦ βίου νομίζων]” (C. Ap. 2:210; LCL 186, 378–79). Philo, for his part, can assert in Virt. 189 that one’s “nobility,” their “good birth” (εὐγένεια), is a matter of “purity of mind” and not biological inheritance, but he can elsewhere express utter distain for those Jews who “have forgotten the teaching of their race and of their fathers [λήθῃ τῆς συγγενοῦς καὶ πατρίου διδασκαλίας]” (Praem. 162; LCL 341, 414–15). And even thoroughly acculturated authors such as Aristobulus, who describes his fellow Hebrews using the political metaphor of “citizen” (πολίτης; 3:1), claims King Solomon as one of his “parents” (προγόνος; 5:3).25 Thus, it seems Jews, particularly within diasporic settings, were quite able to hold in

22 23 24 25

J.L. Rubenstein, The Culture of the Babylonian Talmud (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 80–101. Barclay, Jews, 404. See S.J.D. Cohen, “ἸΟΥΔΑΙΟΣ ΤΟ ΓΕΝΟΣ and Related Expressions in Josephus,” in Josephus and the History of the Greco-Roman Period: Essays in Memory of Morton Smith, ed. F. Parente and J. Sievers, Studia Post-Biblica 41 (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 23–38. See Barclay, Jews, 405–13 for a range of other sources that suggest Jews abroad held genealogical and cultural definitions of Jewishness simultaneously. We could also mention here the non-Jewish sources that refer to the Jews as a ‘nation’ that had a body of ancestral customs that identified those belonging to it (Cicero, De Provinciis Consularibus 5:10; Tacitus, Hist. 5:4; and Suetonius’s remarks in Dom. 12:2 on the extension of the fiscus Iudaicus to include those who not only practiced Jewish ways but also those who were Jews by birth yet did not practice their ancestral customs).

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tension understandings of their Jewishness as both a matter of genealogy and a way of life.26 Opening the door more widely to cultural definitions of Jewishness in light of the Greeks’ cultural-political approach to defining Greekness also meant opening the door to the idea that one could become an Ioudaios by adopting Jewish practices, and, conversely, stop being an Ioudaios by abandoning such practices.27 Josephus’s account, for example, in Ant. 20:38–48 of Izates, King of Adiabene, describes the king’s awareness that “he could not be thoroughly a Jew unless he were circumcised” (μὴ ἂν εἶναι βεβαίως Ἰουδαῖος, εἰ μὴ περιτέμνοιτο; 20:38). Although the king’s mother and his advisor attempt to dissuade him from doing the deed, encouraging him to worship the Jewish god without circumcision (20:41), his desire to become a Jew is fanned into flame by a certain Galilean Ioudaios named Eleazar, who encourages him to have the operation done. Izates receives proselyte circumcision and effectively rules the people of Adiabene as a Jew,28 and he is subsequently blessed by the Jewish god for it (20:39, 49).29 On the other hand, texts like 1 Macc 1:11–15 and m. Avot 3:11 (cf. b. Sanh. 38b, 44a, 99a) offer a picture of Jews by birth who have, according to the authors, either “broken the covenant” or fully assimilated into their Hellenistic ethno-religious contexts, abandoning their Jewishness by

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27 28

29

Outsiders also could apparently attribute one’s Jewishness to both birth and mode of conduct. One inscription from Delphi mentions a person named Amynthas, who “beforehand was living as an Ioudaios” (ἕως κα ζῇ Ἰουδαῖος; FD III 2:247, l. 4). Another from Delphi of a similar type defines an Ioudaios by reference to τὸ γένος Ἰουδαῖον (SGDI II 2029, l. 4). See S.J.D. Cohen, “Crossing the Boundary and Becoming a Jew,” HTR 82.1 (1989): 13–33; Barclay, Jews, 403. There has been some debate in the history of scholarship over whether a proselyte was always expected to circumcise in ancient Judaism, particularly since Philo does not seem to mention it as requirement for the proselyte in Quaest. Exod. 2:2 and Virt. 102–104. See Cohen, “Crossing the Boundary,” 27–28; N. McEleney, “Conversion, Circumcision, and the Law,” NTS 20 (1974): 328–33; J. Nolland, “Uncircumcised Proselytes?” JSJ 12 (1981): 173–94. Cohen notes, however, that, in general, outside the Adiabene narrative, Josephus takes a negative attitude towards conversion, and usually portrays individuals who convert as suffering “unhappy consequences.” See S.J.D. Cohen, The Significance of Yavneh and Other Essays in Jewish Hellenism, TSAJ 136 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 201–202. Thus, while ‘conversion’ is possible, for Josephus it is highly undesirable. In my view, the tension in Josephus’s view toward non-Jews is explained by, on the one hand, his priestly lineage, which stressed distinction and genealogical exclusion, and, on the other hand, his diasporic Roman context of writing, which would have encouraged him to present Judaism as a body of customs and cultural traditions that non-Jews could adopt or engaged positively with.

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such acts as re-growing their foreskins (epispasm) and attaching themselves to the ancestral laws of other ethnē.30 While these literary examples of boundary-crossing are no doubt ideologically charged and intended to construct clear-cut cases, scholars such as Cohen, Barclay, Ross Kraemer, Magnus Zetterholm, and Terence Donaldson (among others) have demonstrated from various sources that Gentile relations with the Jewish ethnos were, in fact, quite variegated and often difficult to parse out.31 Cohen has generated a seven-category schema in an attempt to delineate these relations, ranging from a Gentile’s simple “admiration” of some aspect of Jewish life all the way to “conversion,” i.e., becoming him- or herself an Ioudaios.32 Similarly, Donaldson develops four “patterns of universalism,” according to which Gentiles related to Jews and Judaism, from “sympathization” on one end of the spectrum to “conversion” on the other, with “ethical monotheism” and “participation in eschatological salvation” somewhere in the middle.33 Although, as each of the scholars noted above in some way 30

31

32

33

On Jews who appear to have been re-growing their foreskins and thus “breaking the covenant” (i.e., breaking with Judaism), see M. Zetterholm, The Formation of Christianity in Antioch: A Social-Scientific Approach to the Separation between Judaism and Christianity (London: Routledge, 2003), 72–73. Cohen, “Crossing the Boundary”; Barclay, Jews, 403–15; R.S. Kraemer, “On the Meaning of the Term ‘Jew’ in Greco-Roman Inscriptions,” HTR 82.1 (1989): 35–53; M. Zetterholm, Christianity in Antioch, 185–202; T.L. Donaldson, Judaism and the Gentiles: Jewish Patterns of Universalism (to 135 CE) (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press). Cohen, “Crossing the Boundary.” See also the sketch of Jewish attitudes towards Gentiles in M. Goodman, Mission and Conversion: Proselytizing in the Religious History of the Roman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 38–59, where Goodman demonstrates that Jews in antiquity had a high level of “tolerance” for Gentile idolatry outside the land of Israel; and pp. 60–90, where he demonstrates that, in general, Jews outside the land of Israel did not pursue proselytism among Gentiles to any great extent. On p. 88, Goodman draws an interesting conclusion: “To the extent, therefore, that Jews apparently openly through the synagogues in the period offered a hope of God’s blessing to gentiles who did not convert, they undermined any effort they might wish to make to win such converts.” I should note here that it is not clear whether ‘conversion’ (whether via circumcision, marriage, or some other means of measuring full participation in the Jewish ethnos) was necessary before a Gentile could ascribe to the ethnonym Ioudaia/os, as Kraemer’s study has shown (“Meaning”). Plutarch, Cicero 7:5, for example, considers as a ‘Jew’ anyone who associates with Jewish customs, i.e., who “Judaizes.” Donaldson, Judaism and the Gentiles, 467–505. The studies especially by Cohen, Kraemer, and Donaldson build upon John Gager’s well-known treatment of Gentile attitudes toward Jews before the rise of Christianity, which went a long way to show the frequently positive relations that existed, against a large body of scholarship that assumed the presence of a universal anti-Judaism throughout Greco-Roman antiquity. See J.G. Gager, The Origins of Anti-Semitism: Attitudes toward Judaism in Pagan and Christian Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), esp. pp. 35–112. One of the main elements of Gager’s critique of

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acknowledge, what is meant by “admiration” and “sympathy” is frequently difficult to define with precision and “conversion” could mean and look differently, at least theoretically, depending upon the particular community. Three points arise from their work that are worth mentioning here. First, some sources indicate that Gentiles could relate to a Jewish community as Gentiles, without necessarily coming over to the Jewish ethnos. Gentiles could worship the god of Israel, perhaps even exclusively, but do so without fully adhering to Torah. As example evidence, we can look to several kinds of material: Tobit’s eschatological godfearers who worship the god of Israel and bury their idols (14:6);34 Philo’s foreskinned proselytes who “alienate” themselves from polytheism and become YHWH-oriented henotheists but apparently not fully Torah observant (Quaest. Exod. 2:2);35 the rabbinic Noahide laws for the “righteous Gentile” (t. Avod. Zar. 8:4; b. Sanh. 56b);36 and evidence from throughout the Mediterranean, which demonstrates a high level of ethnic inter-play and exchange between Jews and non-Jews, particularly within the institutional context of association ‘synagogues’ (e.g., IHierapMir 23; IEph 1677; Acts 14:1; 18:4; see chapter 6).37 Second, despite the sometimes high level of affiliation Gentiles could have, as Gentiles, with Jewish communities and within some expressions of Jewish eschatology, this did not mean that friendly Gentiles were considered formal members of the community or covenant people.38 They may, in the end, be partakers of eschatological salvation, but one nevertheless had to be a

34 35 36 37

38

past scholarship is that scholars have tended to take some of the negative statements about Jews made by famous Greek and Latin authors (Cicero, Apion, Tacitus, Seneca, and Juvenal) as typical of the period as a whole. Not only is it important to consider a broader range of literary evidence, but it is also important to consider the epigraphic and papyrological sources as well. Ross Kraemer, for example, has shown from a range of Greek and Latin inscriptions throughout the Mediterranean Diaspora that Ioudaia/os could be used in a variety of ways, including as an indicator of geographic origin, as a proper name for children, and, importantly, as an indicator of pagan attraction to Judaism. See Kraemer, “Meaning,” esp. pp. 38–48. Donaldson, Judaism and the Gentiles, 499–505. Donaldson, Judaism and the Gentiles, 493–98. Cohen, “Crossing the Boundary,” 22. On other expressions of universalist attitudes in early rabbinic literature, see M. Hirshman, “Rabbinic Universalism in the Second and Third Centuries,” HTR 93.2 (2000): 101–15. For a discussion of these inscriptions and others, and on the fact that associations were a site for high levels of ethnic interaction including Jews and non-Jews, see R. Last, “The Other Synagogues,” JSJ 47 (2016): 330–63. See also Donaldson, Judaism and the Gentiles, 450–66, which surveys epigraphic data from the Diaspora for Gentile sympathy for Judaism. Cohen, “Crossing the Boundary,” 22–23.

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descendant of Abraham to be included within, and partake of the special blessings reserved for, Abraham’s children (Gen 12:1–3; 17:9–14); hence, in the view of some Jews, the need for ‘conversion.’ Proselytes who fully joined themselves to the Jewish people, their laws, land, and national cult through a process usually (but perhaps not always)39 pinnacled by circumcision,40 were considered, at least by some Jews, to be “added to the house of Israel” (Jdt 14:10), Jews “in body and soul” (Philo, Virt. 102–103) and “in every sense” (b. Yeb. 47b), and children of Abraham in their own right (Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael Nezikin 18). True, such “new-comers” (ἐπηλύτης), to use Philo’s terminology, retained the “proselyte” label after their conversion, even until their deathbeds,41 and were regarded as a distinguishable sub-group within the Jewish community, indicating that, according to some authorities, they were never really able to traverse the genealogical divide.42 This seems to have been particularly true for Gentile slaves owned by Jews, whose circumcision (in the case of male slaves) was, according to the rabbis, compulsory for their use in a Jewish home. Although circumcised, as long as they were slaves, they were Gentiles, not Jews (t. Avod. Zar. 3:11).43 Indeed, in general, slaves in antiquity were known to occupy an ethnically ambiguous category of human being. As Catherine Hezser says, “They were uprooted from their family, nation, and religion of origin and became members of a denationalized pool of slaves who, since they were seen as culturally neutral, could easily assume the cultural and religious identity of their respective masters.”44 Cohen notes that upon manumission, Gentile slaves attained the status of proselyte within the community, and thus, while slaves, “they were regarded, by rabbinic law at least, as proselytes-in-the-making.”45 Jewish manumission inscriptions from the Black Sea render a slightly different picture. In these 39 40 41

42

43 44 45

See note 28 above. Recall from chapter 2 that even outsiders like Tacitus and Juvenal mention acceptance of circumcision as basically equivalent to the acceptance of Judaism. Indeed, sixteen out of the eighteen known inscriptions mentioning the “proselyte” label appear on epitaphs. Rome: CIJ 21, 68, 202, 222, 256, 462, 523; Jerusalem: CIJ 1385, 1390; Bagatti and Milik nos. 13, 21, 31; Avni and Greenhut no. 19; Venosa: CIJ 576; Cyrene: Lüderitz no. 12; Caesarea Maritima: Lifshitz no. 2. For example, as Cohen, “Crossing the Boundary,” 30 notes, m. Bik. 1:4 states that, when a proselyte brings first fruits, s/he should not recite “Our god and god of our fathers” or the formula from Deut 26:3, “I have come into the land which the Lord swore to our fathers to give us.” See discussion in C. Hezser, Jewish Slavery in Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 35–41. Hezser, Jewish Slavery in Antiquity, 26. Cohen, “Crossing the Boundary,” 25.

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sources, Gentile slaves (male or female) released by their Jewish owners are never themselves given the label Ioudaia/os or proselytos, but rather are given stipulations that, upon gaining their freedom, they must “remain true to the prayer hall” (IJO 1, BS 24), show “deference and devotion” to it while being “under the joint guardianship of the congregation of the Jews” (IJO 1, BS5; IJO 1, BS6; IJO 1, BS7; IJO 1, BS17; IJO 1, BS18), and “fear God” (θεὸν σεβῶν; IJO 1, BS7).46 In other words, while these former Gentile slaves are encouraged, even required, to maintain a positive relationship to the Jewish community, we get no sense from these inscriptions that they were to become Jews when they are manumitted. At most, we can say they were intended to become “godfearers.” The fact, however, that freed slaves and those considered proselytes remained distinguishable sub-groups with certain halakhic regulations placed upon them is no reason to doubt that at least some Jews viewed Gentile converts to the Jewish ethnos as, in fact, truly Jews and, as Cohen himself puts it, “just like the native born.”47 Third, such openness to Gentiles, as Gentiles and as proselytes to Judaism, is generally, though perhaps not exclusively, a diasporic identity value. Sources like those mentioned above have their discursive origins in contexts of higher levels of cultural exchange and assimilation, and lower (or non-existent) levels of official participation in priestly-oriented Judean political life. In other words, these expressions of Judaism benefited greatly from framing Jewishness as a matter of belief and practice, or as, in the words of J.Z. Smith, “convinced religion,”48 something that could be adopted and engaged with positively 46 47

48

For text and commentary on these inscriptions, see ASSB nos. 121–129. Cohen, “Crossing the Boundary,” 28. Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael to Exod. 12:49 (Pisha 15) ends boldly with a similar statement: “This passage [‫ ]הכתוב‬comes to declare the proselyte equal to the born Jew with respect to all the commandments of the Torah” (Lauterbach 1:86). However, Cohen argues that proselytes, even circumcised ones, never received real equality with the native-born Israelite. This was probably true in some sectors of Judaism, most notably those (priestly-oriented Jews) that held to exclusively genealogical definitions of Jewishness in the first place (see below). But, in my view, Cohen does not give Philo and the sages responsible for b. Yeb 47b enough credit for their statements that converts really did become Jews/Israelites, at least in their socio-religious rights and privileges within the community. While they could always be distinguished in some sense from Jews by birth, proselytes were to receive the full benefits of membership in the covenant people of Israel’s god. J.Z. Smith, “Native Cults in the Hellenistic Period,” History of Religions 11 (1971): 236–49 (238). On p. 237 he describes the intense diasporization of native cults in the Hellenistic period, a process having a concomitant and characteristic openness to “converts from other ethnic groups.” Smith’s theoretical model builds on the classic work of Belgian historian of religions, Franz Cumont, Les religions orientales dans le paganisme romain (Paris: Librairie orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1929); George La Piana’s, “Foreign Groups in Rome,”

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by outsiders, rather than as a strictly genealogical concept closed-off to outsiders.49

49

HTR 20.4 (1927): 183–403; and Morton Smith’s typology of native and diasporic cults in “Religions in Hellenistic Times,” in Dartmouth College Comparative Studies Center, Report of the 1965–1966 Seminar on Religions in Antiquity, ed. J. Neusner (Hanover: Dartmouth College Comparative Studies Center, 1966), 158–63. There are some potential examples of openness to Gentiles in priestly-oriented sources. (1) John Hyrcanus I’s forced conversion of the Idumeans (Josephus, Ant. 13:257–58) and Aristobulus I’s forced conversion of the Itureans (Ant. 13:318–19). But these events are special cases, in which conversion to Judaism, capped by circumcision, is more a side-effect of conquest than Jewish missionary activity (although, admittedly, this distinction depends on how one defines ‘mission’ here). Josephus himself seems to present the cases rather negatively as forced conversions, a picture that contrasts with Strabo’s assertion that the conversions were done voluntarily (Geog. 16.2.34). See Cohen, Yavneh, 201–202. Indeed, the stark contrast between 1 and 2 Maccabees in their accounts of the early Hasmoneans and in their attitudes toward Gentiles seems to confirm this general dichotomy between priestly-oriented Judaism, characterized by separatism and genealogical exclusion (1 Maccabees) and diasporic Judaism, characterized by greater openness to non-Jews (2 Maccabees). (2) According to Matt 23:15; Acts 15:5, the Pharisees, whom I group within priestly-oriented Judaism in this study (see chs. 2 and 6), are said to “travel across sea and land” to make a proselyte (προσήλυτος) and demand Gentiles who are joining the Jesus movement abroad to circumcise and submit to Torah. Three comments are needed here: (a) Pharisaic openness to Gentiles in these passages is characterized with reference to activity outside the land of Israel. Although we have no evidence other than the lives of Paul and (maybe) Josephus that Pharisees traveled abroad, this kind of activity is what the Matthean Jesus implies; it is not hyperbole for “trying really hard.” See A. Runesson, Divine Wrath and Salvation in Matthew: The Narrative World of the First Gospel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016), 385. (b) The Pharisees, according to Matthew and Acts, are not open to Gentiles as such, but as those who needed to come over to the Jewish way of life for salvation. This contrasts, in some ways, with the views of the Matthean Jesus and other views expressed within the early Jesus movement. Jesus in Matthew, like the rabbis, seems to reserve a spot in the kingdom for the ‘righteous Gentile,’ a Gentile who is sympathetic toward Jesus’s followers but not directly connected to him or fully integrated into the Jewish community (Matt 25:31–46). And the Jerusalem community, facing the increasing challenge of the spread of the gospel in the diaspora, decides that Gentiles, as Gentiles, can be added to the movement without circumcision but with their own halakhic prescriptions (Acts 15). Therefore, while the Pharisees do share a thread of diasporic thought in their openness to Gentile ‘converts’ abroad, they differ from certain strands of the early Jesus movement, and other diasporic expressions of Judaism, in the level and kind of openness. (3) Donaldson, Judaism and the Gentiles, 45–47, suggests that Sir 10:19–22 represents a case, albeit a strange and uncharacteristic one for Sirach, of openness to Gentiles via ‘conversion.’ In this passage, the “seed of humanity” (σπέρμα ἀνθρώπου), not the “seed of Abraham,” is described as the “honorable seed” and as “those who fear the Lord,” while “the dishonorable seed” is “those who transgress the commandments” (v. 19). In contrast to the LXX, which refers to “the rich, the eminent, and the poor,” two Hebrew manuscripts of Ben Sira (MSS A, B) include in the “honorable seed” the ‫“( גר זר נכרי ורש‬the sojourner, wayfarer, alien and pauper”), whose “boast is the fear of the Lord.” As Donaldson notes,

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Such values of openness toward Gentiles, with a concomitant emphasis on defining Jewishness within a cultural framework of beliefs and practices, were clearly not shared by all ancient Jews. Scholars such as Christine Hayes, Martha Himmelfarb, Daniel Schwartz, and Matthew Thiessen have each argued in various ways that there was a discernible contingent of Jews in the late Second Temple period who continued to reject the possibility of Gentile conversion, sought to reify a strong boundary between Jews and non-Jews, and thus stressed genealogical definitions of Jewishness.50 There are several sources that illustrate this approach to Jewish identity. First, 4QMMT B 75–82 seems to build on the vision of genealogical exclusion and endogamy found in Ezra–Nehemiah (e.g., Ezra 2:59–63; 10:1–44; Neh 7:61–65; 13:23–27). The document is fragmentary, so a decisive interpretation is allusive. But Hayes has persuasively argued that the document means to prohibit intermarriage between native Jews and Gentile converts who, by nature of their non-Jewish lineage, were considered to profane the “holy seed” of ordinary Israelites and the “most holy seed” of Israelite priests.51 4QMMT, then, works within a trajectory already set in the early Second Temple period that viewed the genealogical divide between Jews and non-Jews as insurmountable, something not even marriage could resolve. Israel is distinct from other nations, and that distinction is built into the DNA of its people.

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however, Ben Sira’s use of these Hebrew terms “do not go beyond their scriptural meanings.” As such, Ben Sira, a text that generally has very little to say that is positive about Gentiles, does not envisage these groups of people as becoming Israelites, and retains its basic genealogical approach to Jewishness. C.E. Hayes, Gentile Impurities and Jewish Identities: Intermarriage and Conversion from the Bible to the Talmud (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 8–10, et passim; M. Himmelfarb, A Kingdom of Priests: Ancestry and Merit in Ancient Judaism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006); D.R. Schwartz, Agrippa I: The Last King of Judaea, TSAJ 23 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1990), 125–28; D.R. Schwartz, “On Two Aspects of a Priestly View of Descent at Qumran,” in Archaeology and History in the Dead Sea Scrolls: The New York University Conference in Memory of Yigael Yadin, JSP 8, ed. L. Schiffman (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990), 157–79; M. Thiessen, Contesting Conversion: Genealogy, Circumcision, and Identity in Ancient Judaism and Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Hayes, Gentile Impurities, 82–89. Hayes provides powerful, and ultimately convincing, arguments against Himmelfarb’s interpretation of 4QMMT B 75–82 that the prohibition in this text is of marriage between Jewish priests and Jewish women of non-priestly families. Himmelfarb argued this in an earlier article, basically following the interpretation of the editors of 4QMMT in DJD 10 (“Levi, Phineas, and the Problem of Intermarriage at the Time of the Maccabean Revolt,” JSQ 6 [1999]: 1–24), but her view remains unchanged in Himmelfarb, A Kingdom of Priests, 27–28.

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Second, 4QFlorilegium (4Q174 frag. 1 1.21.2 ll 3–4) excludes from the ideal temple “an Ammonite, or a Moabite, or a mamzer [one born of an illicit sexual union], or a foreigner, or a proselyte [‫]גר‬, never, because his holy ones are there.”52 Whereas 11QT 40:6 seems to indicate that ‫גרים‬, probably of the third or fourth generation,53 can enter the temple as far as the court of women, 4QFlor takes a more exclusive approach, outlawing non-genealogical Jews of any type from entering God’s “house” in general (see ll. 2–3). Thus, as Hayes notes with reference to this scroll: “Gerim are forever and always segregated and excluded from entry into the congregation of the Lord (presumably in both its senses of intermarriage and sanctuary access).”54 Third, the Dead Sea texts above can be read in light of two other pieces of evidence that show that, beyond the Scrolls, some Jews considered proximity to the god of Israel to be a matter of genealogy, pushing even Gentile converts to the periphery. The first is CIJ 2.1400, an inscription from late Second Temple Jerusalem publicly warning that anyone who is ἀλλογενῆς and who enters the inner-courts of the temple will be responsible for their own death.55 While, as Cohen has noted, it may have been impossible in antiquity to discern who was a Jew and who was ἀλλογενῆς by outward appearance alone,56 CIJ 2.1400 nevertheless vividly illustrates the priestly-oriented ideology of ethnic, but specifically genealogical, exclusion.57 The second is Josephus’s account in Ant. 19:332–34 of Simon, a Jerusalemite and native Jew (ἐπιχώριος) who was skilled in the laws, and his criticism of Agrippa I. Simon asserted that Agrippa, a descendent of proselytes and an Idumean by descent, was not “holy” (ὅσιος) and would rightly be excluded from the temple because entry into it was fitting 52 53 54 55

56 57

‫הואה הבית אשר לוא יבוא שמה [… עד ]עולם ועמוני ומואבי וממזר ובן נכר וגר עד עולם כיא‬ ‫ קדושו שם‬Text and translation is from DSSSE p. 352.‫ ממזר‬is typically rendered ‘bastard,’ ‘one born of a forbidden union’ (BDB s.v.). J. Baumgarten, “Exclusions from the Temple: Proselytes and Agrippa I,” JJS 33 (1982): 215– 25 (216); Schwartz, “Priestly View,” 165. Hayes, Gentile Impurities, 62. See also Schwartz, “Priestly View,” 165; Thiessen, Contesting Conversion, 104. The inscription reads: “No alien may enter within the balustrade around the sanctuary and the enclosure. Whoever is caught, on himself shall he put blame for the death which will ensue” (Μηθένα ἀλλογενῆ εἰσπορεύεσθαι ἐντὸς τοῦ περὶ τὸ ἱερὸν τρυφάκτου καὶ περιβόλου. Ὃς δ’ἂν ληφθῇ, ἑαυτῶι αἴτιος ἔσται διὰ τὸ ἐξακολουθεῖν θάνατον; Greek text and modified translation from E.J. Bickerman, “The Warning Inscriptions of Herod’s Temple,” JQR 37.4 [1947]: 387–405). Of course, foreigners were allowed in the outer court, the Court of Gentiles, which was open to all. See Josephus, C. Ap. 2.103–109; cf. the levels of holiness mentioned in m. Kelim 1:6–9. Cohen, Beginnings of Jewishness, 67. See discussions in Hayes, Gentile Impurities, 61–62; Thiessen, Contesting Conversion, 105–106.

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only for those “inborn” or Jews by birth (ἐγγενής). Agrippa responds to Simon while sitting in a theatre, with a statement difficult to interpret: εἰπέ μοι … τί τῶν ἐνθάδε γινομένων ἐστὶ παράνομον. Thiessen notes that most interpretations have understood τί τῶν ἐνθάδε γινομένων (“What of the things happening here”) as referring to events taking place in the theatre, which Simon would have considered unholy and in violation of Jewish laws; since Agrippa had allowed such activities to happen, he is deemed unholy.58 Some scholars, then, even suggest emending ἐγγενής in 19:332 to εὐαγής (“pure”), a word otherwise unknown to Josephus, to clarify that the issue at stake for Simon was purity not genealogy. However, Schwartz, followed by Thiessen, rejects both the emendation and the translation that understands τί τῶν ἐνθάδε γινομένων as referring to events in the theatre, arguing that Agrippa is merely asking Simon what his problem is, i.e., “What is the issue?” Indeed, ἐνθάδε – in my view, the key term in the utterance – can be used temporally (“now”) as well as locatively.59 Reading it temporally renders the emendation needless and provides a logical bridge between Simon’s genealogical critique and Agrippa’s desire to know what is currently irking Simon. Thus, Schwartz concludes that Simon’s criticism of Agrippa is aimed at preserving the sanctity of Temple – a bastion of priestly Judaism. And, moreover, it was predicated on a genealogical argument, on the assumption that there was an absolute link between descent and access to holiness, so that the descendant of proselytes must be excluded.60 Fourth, Thiessen has made the compelling argument that Jubilees insists that eighth-day circumcision is the only kind of circumcision with covenantal value, and so evinces a genealogical approach to Jewishness and a generally hostile attitude toward Gentiles.61 Jubilees 15:11–34 is the key passage. In 15:14, the law of circumcision from Gen 17:12, to which a kareth penalty is attached, is restated with the addition of the phrase “on the eight day,” a phrase the MT reading lacks: “And whatever male is not circumcised, the flesh of whose foreskin was not circumcised on the eight day, that soul shall be uprooted from its family because he has broken my covenant.”62 In 15:25–26, the precise timing of circumcision on the eighth day – not one day sooner and certainly not one 58 59 60 61 62

Thiessen, Contesting Conversion, 103–104. See Liddell and Scott, s.v. Schwartz, Agrippa I, 126. Thiessen, Contesting Conversion, 71–86. Trans. OTP 2:86.

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day later – becomes a point of expanded theological reflection: “And anyone who is born whose flesh is not circumcised on the eighth day is not from the sons of the covenant which the LORD made for Abraham since (he is) from the children of destruction.”63 Only Jews/Israelites, then, who circumcise their baby boys on the eighth day can claim to have the god of Israel as their father, a reality that heaven’s angels and spirits give testimony to (1:24–25), since they themselves were circumcised “from the day of their creation” (15:27). In contrast to all other nations – including descendants of Abraham’s son Ishmael and grandson Esau, over whom God allowed “spirits to rule so that they might lead them astray” – “Israel,” that is, children issuing forth from Jacob’s seed,64 receive divine protection from malevolent angels through the institution of eighth day circumcision (15:30–32). Unfaithful Israelites who reject their genealogical heritage by denying this institution are “the sons of Belial,” and they leave themselves exposed to divine wrath (15:33–34). There seems, therefore, to be enough evidence for an ideology of “Jewishness-by-genealogy” in the late Second Temple period that was especially linked to priestly-oriented types of Jewish identity.65 Indeed, in answer to 63

64

65

Trans. OTP 2:87. Thiessen, Contesting Conversion, 75 notes that, while tannaitic rabbis also rule that circumcision should not occur before the eighth day, there does seem to be some flexibility on the potential of circumcising after the eighth day: (1) if born at twilight (9th day); (2) if born at twilight on the eve of Shabbat (10th day); (3) in the case of a festival that falls after Shabbat (11th day); (4) in the case of two festival days of Rosh Hashanah (12th day) (m. Shabb. 19:5; cf. m. Arak. 2:2). The health of the child is also reason to delay circumcision. The author of Jubilees gives no indication that there is anything whatsoever for which it is worth delaying circumcision on the eighth day. Jubilee’s emphasis on the covenant people being of the seed of Jacob rather than Abraham or Isaac (noted by Thiessen, Contesting Conversion, 76) is interesting because it reflects later Jewish debates over the hermeneutical challenge Abraham posed to definitions of the Jewishness. Abraham was, after all, a Gentile for 99 years and had Gentile children (see Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael Nezikin 18). Isaac, too, although having been circumcised on the eighth day, had Gentile children (Esau). Jacob, however, who is of course renamed “Israel” in the Genesis account, and his children, were all Israelites circumcised on the eighth day (Sifre Deuteronomy §312). See D. Stern, “Jesus’ Parables from the Perspective of Rabbinic Literature: The Example of the Wicked Husbandmen,” in Parable and Story in Judaism and Christianity, ed. C. Thoma and M. Wyschogrod (New York: Paulist Press, 1989), 60–62, who puts this passage from the Sifre in polemical debate with the Pauline understanding of the role of Abraham in justification. We will return to the issue of the problematics of Abraham and the prioritization of Jacob within some Jewish discourses on identity when we consider the role of Jacob within the narrative world of John’s Gospel below. As noted earlier, Rubenstein, Babylonian Talmud, 80–101, has argued persuasively that a ‘Jewishness by genealogy’ approach to Jewish identity did not die in the Second Temple period but rather lived on well into Late Antiquity, particularly among the Babylonian

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the question of why some Dead Sea literature is at such odds with the rabbinic principle that “Scripture made the proselyte equivalent to the native regarding all the commandments of the Torah,”66 Schwartz says, “Our answer will be, quite simply, that it was a characteristically priestly view to deny the possibility of conversion to Judaism.”67 Josephus himself, a diasporized priest who demonstrates some openness to Gentile conversion, retains and stresses the genealogical element of his own Jewish identity in his autobiographical texts (War 1:3; Vita 1–2).68 As Schwartz has argued elsewhere, the emphasis on one’s pedigree in defining “priest” spilled over into the definition of “Jew” in some sectors of Judaism.69 Thus, Thiessen rightly notes that one did not need to be a priest himself or a daughter of Aaron to define one’s Jewishness this way.70 All that was needed was a vision of “peoplehood” that cohered with a priestlyoriented type of Jewish identity. By way of summary, then, while there were a variety of views in Jewish antiquity on the issue of ‘peoplehood,’ three general ones emerge from the discussion above: 1. There was, among some or perhaps even many Jews, a general openness to Gentile sympathizers. Here we can place “righteous Gentiles,” the so-called “godfearers,” admirers of Judaism  – that is, Judaizers of varying intensity, including those who simply participated in associations in which cult was offered to the Jewish god – and ‘eschatological Gentiles,’ that is, members of the nations who were envisioned in some Jewish texts as participants, with Israel, in the end-time soteriological blessings to be poured out by Israel’s god (e.g., Tob 14:6). The important part to remember about these expressions of Gentile identity, however, is that,

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rabbis. Rubenstein suggests that this was due to the importance of the concept of priestly lineage in Babylonian rabbinic thinking, a concept that was applied to and shaped the notion of rabbinic succession. Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael to Exod. 12:49 (Pisha 15). Schwartz, “Priestly View,” 165. While I am generally convinced of Schwartz’s view here, it should be noted that there are some texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls, most notably the Damascus Document, which, as Carmen Palmer has recently argued, do, indeed, reflect an openness to Gentile “conversion” to Judaism. One cannot, then, attribute a single attitude toward conversion in the Dead Sea Scrolls. See C. Palmer, Converts in the Dead Sea Scrolls: The Gēr and Mutable Ethnicity, STDJ 126 (Leiden: Brill, 2018). War 1:3: Ιώσηπος Ματθίου παῖς [γένει Ἑβραῖος] ἐξ Ἱεροσολύμων ἱερεύς. The bracketed text is, however, omitted in important textual witness: Codex Parisinus Graecus 1425 and in Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 3:9:1. Vita 2: ἐμοὶ δ᾿ οὐ μόνον ἐξ ἱερέων ἐστὶν τὸ γένος, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐκ τῆς πρώτης ἐφημερίδος τῶν εἰκοσιτεσσάρων. Schwartz, Agrippa I, 126–27. Thiessen, Contesting Conversion, 105.

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while not considered insiders to the Jewish community or shareholders in the covenant people, their identity was nevertheless established and mediated soteriologically by reference to Jewishness. Some Jews understood their Jewishness  – and the boundary between them and non-Jews – with a greater level of permeability and were willing to take a further step by allowing Gentiles to become full members of the Jewish community, reckoned as partakers of the covenant people. While proselyte adherents to the Jewish way of life would always remain a discrete group, they were still considered equal-shareholders, having the same status with reference to the laws of Torah – its promises and its curses  – as Jews by birth. The notion that this type of Gentile-turned-Jewish identity, too, was mediated by and soteriologically dependent upon Jewishness is self-evident. At the other end of the spectrum, some Jews held an exclusionary view of peoplehood, with Jewishness and membership in the ethnos defined by genealogical descent. Non-Jews had neither the same level of access to the divine presence nor a share in the covenant blessings of Abraham’s eighth-day-circumcised children. While the two other views above fall generally within diasporic expressions of identity, this third view falls within the parameters of the priestly-oriented.

This sketch of attitudes provides a framework for understanding the Fourth Gospel’s strategy with regard to Jewishness and peoplehood. The discussion so far has been meant as preparation for the coming argument that, while we must appreciate the literary character of John’s Gospel, even as it pertains to groups such as the Ioudaioi, John’s literariness took shape within ancient contexts of ethnographic discourse and debate. Thus, we must equally appreciate that John is not working with many of the categories and concepts that have become so familiar to us throughout the Gospel’s reception history, especially within Christian scholarship. This includes how we conceive of the category relations we have already discussed, such as ‘religion’ and ‘ethnicity,’ but also concepts such as ‘anti-Judaism,’ ‘ethics,’ and the ‘parting of the ways.’ Taking John’s engagement and creative manipulation of the category of genealogy, then, will be a point of departure and a way into the manner in which John participates in these larger ethnographic discourses on-going in the world outside the text.

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The Ioudaioi, Jewishness as Genealogy, and the Birth of God’s Children in John’s Gospel

In her most recent book on John’s Gospel, Adele Reinhartz has argued that John rhetorically disassociates its positive characters from Jewishness, such as the disciples, since they are never referred to directly as Ioudaioi.71 According to Reinhartz, even with regard to Jesus, who is called an Ioudaios by the Samaritan woman (4:9) and Pilate (18:35), the Gospel intends to redirect its readers away from such an association. The non-use of the term Ioudaios for believers in John is, thus, significant, because it means that they are not presented as Jews. In other words, for Reinhartz, Jews and Judaism in John are largely constrained to the use of the term Ioudaios. In my view, however, the question of the Fourth Gospel’s relationship to Jewishness and Judaism cannot be reduced to its use or non-use of Ioudaioi.72 Jörg Frey, focusing on the issue of John’s “anti-Jewish statements,” has recently pointed out that interpretation of Ioudaios needs to be considered in relation to the numerous other terms that John uses to refer to groups that are obviously Jewish in nature.73 We, therefore, might ask: would John’s readers (whether Jews or non-Jews sympathetic to Judaism) not also understand Johannine protagonists and antagonists alike who are never called Ioudaioi – such as Nathaniel (called instead a “true Israelite” or “truly an Israelite”), John the Baptist, the disciples, a blind man and his synagogue-going parents in Jerusalem, Lazarus, Mary, Martha, Caiaphas, and the chief priests  – as Jews themselves?74 Furthermore, the term’s role in what Reinhartz has identified as John’s “rhetoric of binary opposition”75 is, despite her equivocation, 71 72

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Reinhartz, Cast Out of the Covenant, 85. In stating this, I am in full agreement with R. Hakola, Identity Matters: John, the Jews, and Jewishness, NovTSup 118 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 15–16, who suggests we need to look at broader issues of identity in John rather than the specific term Ioudaios. For a recent history of scholarship on the various interpretations of John’s Ioudaioi, see T. Thatcher, “John and the Jews: Recent Research and Future Questions,” in John and Judaism: A Contest Relationship in Context, ed. R. Alan Culpepper and P.N. Anderson (Atlanta: SBL, 2017), 3–38. For example, Φαρισαῖος, ἀρχιερεύς, ἱερεύς, ὑπηρέτης, Λευίτης, Ἰεροσολυμίτης, Ἰσραήλ, Ἰσραηλίτης. See J. Frey, The Glory of the Crucified One: Theology and Christology in the Fourth Gospel, trans. W. Coppins and C. Heilig (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2018), chapter 2. While the point is a good one, Frey does not, in reality, do much with these other groups or allow their presentation to influence his interpretation of Ioudaioi. This point was raised in a recent review of Reinhartz’s book by Andrew J. Byers in RBL 06/2019. See Reinhartz, Cast Out of the Covenant, chapter 4.

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surely complicated by John’s application of the term Ioudaios to Jesus himself. Although coming on the lips of outsiders (4:9; 18:35), the term is clearly one the Johannine Jesus accepts for himself, embraces, and even mobilizes in his discussion with the Samaritan woman (4:22): “You [Samaritans] worship what you [Samaritans] do not know; we [Jews] worship what we [Jews] know, for salvation is by means of the Jews.” The christological affirmation in this passage does not, by necessity, cancel its ethnic situatedness. As Frey has observed, John’s literary crafting of the Ioudaioi as a “dramaturgical element” within its narrative world does not follow a stable or consistent line of development. Indeed, the term is not evenly distributed throughout the Gospel, and it is given a range of different nuances.76 Other scholars, such as Erich Grässer and, more recently, Udo Schnelle, have remarked that, while the Johannine Jesus unloads a barrage of fiery rhetoric upon the Ioudaioi in episodes like 8:21–59 (see below), in fact just under two-thirds of the occurrences of Ioudaios appear in non-polemical contexts.77 This observation leads Grässer 76

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Except for the term’s near absence in John 13–17, there is a steady build in its frequency throughout the John’s narrative portions, peaking in chs. 18–20. Frey notes that Ioudaios in John ranges from a term used to designate the “religious identity” of Jesus (4:9a), to Jesus’s non-polemical conversation partners or sympathizers (cf. 3:1; 8:31; 11:45; 12:11; 19:38a), to the cultural customs or festivals of the Ioudaioi (2:6, 13; 4:9b; 5:1; 6:4; 7:2; 11:55; 19:40, 42), to the opponents of Jesus in the controversy dialogues (starting in 5:10), with οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι sometimes referring to representatives and authorities and sometimes simply to members of a group for which no special authority is a defining feature (11:19, 31; 12:9). However, Frey also says that Ioudaios can be used to refer to “the crowd,” citing 7:20; 18:20, 35, 38b; 19:20 as support for this. This statement seems to suggest that John’s narrative can at times conflate ὁ ὄχλος and Ἰουδαῖοι, such as in 7:20, where both terms are used to demarcate opponents of Jesus. I am inclined to resist such conflation, since (1) on a theoretical level, language-use tends toward efficiency: when two terms are used, we should assume these terms function semantically in a way that one term could not; (2) these groups can indeed be quite distinguishable, having distinguishable responses to Jesus within a single narrative frame, for example, in the Capernaum synagogue episode (6:22–59). Moreover, Frey thinks the reference to cultural customs or festivals of the Ioudaioi “clearly betrays an outsider perspective,” but this reading neglects John’s pan-Israelite perspective: the qualifier “of the Ioudaioi” reflects the Gospel’s awareness that another Israelite group, namely the Samaritans, shared their own ethno-religious version of the same cultural customs and festivals. That Ioudaios is given a range of nuances is also one of the basic observations made in S.E. Porter John, His Gospel, and Jesus: In Pursuit of the Johannine Voice (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), 149–73, although Porter does use a more sophisticated linguistic framework to draw out his conclusions. U. Schnelle, Das Evangelium nach Johannes, 5th ed., ThHK 4 (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2016), 215; E. Grässer, “Die antijüdische Polemik im Johannesevangelium,” in Text und Situation: Gesammelte Aufsätze zum Neuen Testament, ed. E. Grässer (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1973), 50–69 (52). This is also noted in W.E.S. North, A Journey Round John: Tradition, Interpretation, and Context in the Fourth Gospel, LNTS 534 (London:

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and Schnelle to argue, rightly in my view, that, despite attempts to flatten the Ioudaioi into a schematized or stock literary entity, the label defies monolithic characterization as the enemies of Jesus or, as Rudolph Bultmann suggested long ago, a general Johannine symbol of evil and unbelief.78 There is no doubting that the Ioudaioi are the major, even if not the only, opponents of Jesus in John’s Gospel, and that understanding the values and orientations projected onto this group is an important part of any study of John’s conception of Jewishness and peoplehood. I will say more later in this chapter about how this reading of John’s Ioudaioi fits within the larger context of Johannine scholarship, but I wish to state at the outset that the reading I build below based upon John 7:1–10:21 intends, in particular, to engage two conclusions frequently drawn: (1) that John’s Ioudaioi are an “undifferentiated” group that rises to the general level of the Jewish people as a whole;79 and (2) that John’s use of Ioudaios functions with reference to ‘religious’ identity

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T&T Clark, 2015), 151. Frey, Glory and K. Wengst, Bedrängte Gemeinde und verherrlichter Christus: Ein Versuch über das Johannesevangelium, 4th ed. (Munich: Kaiser, 1992), 55 are not impressed by these statistics. They both assert that the overall picture and broader context of these passages nevertheless suggest that John’s Ioudaioi are an undifferentiated and unequivocally negative character group in the Gospel. R. Bultmann, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, trans. G.R. Beasley-Murray (Oxford: Blackwell, 1971), 86, a sentiment apparently followed, although not uncritically, by J. Frey, “Heiden – Griechen – Gotteskinder: Zu Gesalt und Funktion der Rede von den Heiden im 4. Evangelium,” in Die Heiden: Juden, Christen und das Problem des Fremden, ed. R. Feldmeier and U. Heckel, WUNT 70 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1994), 255; and F.J. Moloney, The Gospel of John, Sacra Pagina (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1998), 11. Reinhartz’s insistence that the Ioudaioi in John are an abstract theological and theoretical category likewise runs in a Bultmannian direction (Cast Out of the Covenant, 103). While I certainly agree with Frey and others, that there is a literary element to John’s presentation of the Ioudaioi, we cannot deny a priori the possibility that John attaches to this group certain patterns of thinking that Jews in the Second Temple period actually did possess, at least as reflected in the sources. There is also the critical question of why, if Ioudaioi is purely symbolic of unbelieving opposition to Jesus and has nothing to do with actual Jewish ethnic identity, does John nevertheless use the term? For example, J.L. Martyn, History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel, 3rd ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2003); R.E. Brown, An Introduction to the Gospel of John, ed. F.J. Maloney (New York: Doubleday, 2003) 68–78; A. Reinhartz, “‘Jews’ and Jews in the Fourth Gospel,” in Anti-Judaism and the Fourth Gospel, ed. R. Bieringer et al. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 213–27; Reinhartz, “John 8:31–59 from a Jewish Perspective,” in Remembering for the Future 2000: The Holocaust in an Age of Genocides, ed. J.K. Roth and E. Maxwell-Maynard (London: Palgrave, 2001), 2:787–97; Reinhartz, “Judaism in the Gospel of John,” Int 63 (2009): 382–93; Hakola, Identity Matters, 11, 215–16; Hakola, “The Johannine Community as Jewish Christians? Some Problems in Current Scholarly Consensus,” in Jewish Christianity Reconsidered: Rethinking Ancient Groups and Texts, ed. M. Jackson-McCabe (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007), 181–201; Frey, Glory, 39–72.

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in distinction from ‘ethnic’ identity.80 Together, these views represent a significant contingent in scholarship that understands John on a trajectory of identity moving away from Jewishness altogether. Jewishness as Genealogy and the Boundaries of God’s People in John 7:1–10:21 Nowhere in John does the issue of a genealogical approach to the people of Israel’s god take such a center stage as in Jesus’s conflict with Ioudaioi (and other groups) in 7:1–10:21, a stretch of narrative involving Jesus’s teaching activity during Sukkot within the public space of, or at least very nearby, the temple precincts.81 Multiple groups function as Jesus’s interlocutors in these chapters, and they range in their specificity of identity: the crowd, Ioudaioi who are hostile toward Jesus, Ioudaioi who are loyal to Jesus and then hostile again, Jerusalemites, chief priests, Pharisees, and temple assistants (ὑπηρέται). As Wendy North notes, the density of named groups, particularly in chapters 7–8, make sorting out characters and their attitudes a complicated matter.82 But the basic point I wish to develop below within this narrative frame is that debate over genealogy, ethnic boundaries, and the validity of one’s birth surfaces repeatedly, and it is the Ioudaioi specifically who most often stand on the ideologically opposite side of Jesus. 3.1

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For example, U.C. von Wahlde, “Narrative Criticism of the Religious Authorities as a Group Character in the Gospel of John: Some Problems,” NTS 63 (2017): 222–45; S.E. Porter, John, His Gospel, and Jesus: In Pursuit of the Johannine Voice (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), 150; Frey, Glory; Hakola, Identity Matters, 11. After acknowledging, based upon Cohen’s earlier work, that the categories of “religion” and ‘ethnicity’ are not easily distinguished in antiquity, Hakola makes the following puzzling statement on p. 11: “Thus the term οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι was primarily used in a religious-ethnic sense in the first century C.E. and it referred to all those who followed the religious practices that were essential to Jewish identity, no matter whether they lived in Judaea or whether they were ethnically from there” (italics mine). Thus, although giving lip service to ethnicity, Hakola clearly sees Jewishness in essentialist terms and as a matter of ‘religious’ identity and practice. That John envisions Jesus teaching in primarily public areas is seen 7:26, 28, 37, in which references are made to Jesus’s speaking “publicly” (παρρησία) and “crying out” (κράζω) in the temple. See M. Labahn, “Die παρρησία des Gottessohnes im Johannesevangelium: Theologische Hermeneutik und philosophisches Selbstverständnis,” in Kontexte des Johannesevangeliums: Das vierte Evangelium in religions- und traditionsgeschichtlicher Perspektive, ed. J. Frey and U. Schnelle, WUNT 175 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 322–23. Jesus appears to exit the temple at 8:59, so the precise location of chs. 9–10 is uncertain, but they do appear to occur at least in its general vicinity, perhaps near its southern entrances in the area of the Pool of Siloam (9:7). North, A Journey Round John, 151–52.

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John 7:14–24, 35: Eighth-Day Circumcision and a Mission to (Judaizing) Gentiles In 7:14–24, a group of Ioudaioi are taken back by Jesus’s ability to teach Torah (οἶδεν γράμματα) all the while lacking scribal training (μή μεμαθηκώς; 7:15).83 In 7:19, Jesus criticizes them for not practicing the law, as they seek to kill him. Just before Jesus addresses their concern over his approach to Shabbat halakha using their strict commitment to eighth-day genealogical circumcision as

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Scribalism was highly valued among the priestly elite in the Second Temple period, when priests were often times scribes as well. Orton notes that, while “[n]ot all priests were of course scribes, nor all scribes priests … most scribes of high standing will have been either priests or Levites.” See D.E. Orton, The Understanding Scribe: Matthew and the Apocalyptic Ideal, JSNTSup 25 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1989), 125. C. Schams, Jewish Scribes in the Second Temple Period, JSOT 291 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 28; E.P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 BCE–66 CE (London: SCM, 1992), 170–71; and Himmelfarb, Ancestry and Merit, 50–51, et passim are also quick to point out that there was certainly not a one-to-one correlation between priest and scribe in the Second Temple period: not all priests had the sort of training in letters that qualified them professionally to function as scribes, and, quite obviously, not all scribes were descendants of Levi, or more specifically, Aaron. Nevertheless, we do see this model of the priest-scribe first and most prominently in the figure of Ezra (Ezra 7:11) and perhaps, around the same time, in “Zadok the scribe” (Neh 13:13), whom Sanders thinks was also a priest by virtue of his name. Himmelfarb has argued convincingly that the figure of Enoch in the Book of Watchers (1 En. 1–36) is presented as both scribe and priest but note that the scribalism of Enoch is different than, for example, Ezra and Ben Sira, in the sense that Enoch’s revolves around his ability to write up formal petition on behalf of the Watchers, while Ezra’s and Ben Sira’s revolve specifically around training in Torah and its interpretation. Levi commands his priestly descendants in ALD 13:4 to teach their children the skills of a scribe so that “wisdom may be eternal glory for you” (‫ ;אליפו לבניכון ותהי וחוכמתא עמכון ליקר עלם ספר ומוסר וחוכמה‬see also 13:15; cf. T. Levi 13:2: διδάξατε δὲ καὶ ὑμεῖς τὰ τέκνα ὑμῶν γράμματα, ἵνα ἔχωσι σύνεσιν ἐν πάσῃ τῇ ζωῇ αὐτῶν, ἀναγινώσκοντες ἀδιαλείπτως τὸν νόμον τοῦ θεοῦ). The Yaḥad–Essene network and the literature produced by its members is likely another example in which the ideals of priesthood converged with scribal activity. See J.L. Angel, Otherworldly and Eschatological Priesthood in the Dead Sea Scrolls, STDJ 86 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 303–304. This affinity for priests to be scribes, highly skilled in reading, writing, and copying texts, was likely due to (1) their emerging responsibility in the post-exilic period to teach the people the written text of Torah and act as judges in legal matters (e.g., Deut 17:18; 31:9; 2 Chron 17:7–9; 19:8–11; Neh 8:7–12; 1 Macc 14:41–42); and (2) the scribe’s need for “the opportunity of leisure” (ἐν εὐκαιρίᾳ σχολῆς; LXX Sir 38:24). Since, according to Ben Sira, priests were to continue living off of the tithes and offerings of the people (Sir 7:31), certainly they, more than any other group, could afford such opportunity for leisure. This would have made them prime candidates for obtaining the elite level of learning Ben Sira envisions the scribe to have in 39:1–11. See Angel, Priesthood, 211, who adds that having the backing of imperial overlords would have made priests considerably wealthy, and thus would have had the sort of funding needed to receive a scribe’s training.

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a halakhic tool for argumentation,84 the crowd accuses him of having a demon (7:20), the first in a string of such accusations that appear in contexts in which Jesus challenges the role of genealogical definitions of peoplehood (8:48; 10:16; see below). Here in 7:19–24, Jesus does not malign genealogical circumcision, but he does argue that, from his halakhic perspective, too great a focus on foreskin (μὴ κρίνετε κατ’ ὄψιν) obscures the fact that there are other reasons equally righteous to override Shabbat (τὴν δικαίαν κρίσιν κρίνετε) so that the Torah is kept intact. The result is that Jesus puts his own Shabbat activity on par halakhically with genealogical circumcision. A few verses later, in 7:34, Jesus makes the claim to the Ioudaioi, “You will seek me and you will not find me; where I am you cannot come.” Their response uttered amongst themselves in v. 35, even if a misunderstanding, is important: “Where is this man going to go that we will not find him? He is not going to go to the diaspora of the Greeks and teach the Greeks, is he?” The key part of their response is 7:35b: μὴ εἰς τὴν διασπορὰν τῶν Ἑλλήνων μέλλει πορεύεσθαι καὶ διδάσκειν τοὺς Ἕλληνας; The term διασπορά is used routinely in early Jewish literature to refer to the “dispersion” of Jews/Israelites who had been scattered throughout the world among Gentile nations (e.g., LXX Deut 28:25; 30:4; Ps 146:2; Isa 49:6; Jer 41:7; 2 Macc 1:27; Pss Sol 8:28; 9:2; T. Asher 7:2). Thus, in John 7:35, the term διασπορά itself surely has in view Jewish people living outside the land of Israel.85 The ethnonymic phrase in the genitive used to qualify διασπορά, τῶν Ἑλλήνων, indicates where this Jewish dispersion is to be found: “among the Greeks.”86 While the meaning of the term Ἕλλην has a long and varied history, it appears to have always been used to indicate a person of Greek ethnic identity (usually in contrast to the category of ‘barbarian’),87 however that identity was discursively constructed.88 That is, it is unlike its lexical relative, Ἑλληνιστής, which, indeed, could denote someone behaving or, more likely, speaking ‘Greek-like’ yet not being of Greek ethnicity, such as 84 85 86

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Thiessen, Contesting Conversion, 154; J. Duncan M. Derrett, “Circumcision and Perfection: A Johannine Equation (John 7:22–23),” EvQ 63.3 (1991): 211–24. For more discussion about this passage with reference to Shabbat, see chapter 4 of this study. See BDAG, s.v., where two senses of διασπορά are given: (1) a state of being scattered; (2) the place in which the dispersed people are found. A.T. Robertson, A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in Light of Historical Research, 3rd ed. (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1919), 495, 501 and BDF p. 92 §166 classify the use of the genitive τῶν Ἑλλήνων as a “local genitive” and “genitive of direction,” respectively, both translating it as “among the Greeks.” K. Vlassopoulos, Greeks and Barbarians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 34–77. I wish to thank Dr. Sarah Griffis for discussing this point with me and suggesting the text by Vlassopoulos. Any errors in the view presented above are my own. See Hall, Hellenicity, 125–34; BDAG, s.v.; LSJ, s.v.; Keener, John, 721.

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Greek-speaking Jews.89 In other words, Ἑλλήνες in John 7:35 almost certainly means “Greeks,” i.e., non-Jews.90 This suggests, then, that the following phrase, διδάσκειν τοὺς Ἕλληνας, means “to teach Greeks,” i.e., those with a non-Jewish ethnic identity, and not Greek-speaking Jews.91 When these elements of the verse are put together, the clause εἰς τὴν διασπορὰν τῶν Ἑλλήνων μέλλει πορεύεσθαι διδάσκειν τοὺς Ἕλληνας seems to encapsulate the idea that Jesus would go into Jewish settings abroad (διασπορά), settings in which one could also expect to find Greeks (τῶν Ἑλλήνων) attracted to Jewish teaching from the Jewish Torah (διδάσκειν τοὺς Ἕλληνας).92 If this is the case, then the kind of Gentile identity that John 7:35 has in mind is that of Judaizing Gentiles. John’s Ioudaioi appear to express a level of astonished disbelief at the thought that Jesus might actually go abroad and teach Torah to non-Jews. Their second question in 7:35 is stated with the expectation of a negative answer: “He is not going to go into the diaspora among the Greeks and teach the Greeks, is he?” This question arising from their disconcertment – whether a genuine 89 90

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See T. Solomon 6:8 (A); Acts 6:1; 9:29; 11:20; BDAG, s.v.; LSJ, s.v. See the similar arguments made by E. Haenchen, Johannes Evangelium: Ein Kommentar (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1980), 357, where he refers to John’s interest in a mission to non-Jews in this verse: “Der Evangelist denkt nicht nur an eine Mission unter hellenistischen Judenchristen; das Wort Ἑλληνες und die Tatsache der Heidenmission zur Zeit des Evangelisten beweisen das”; Frey, “Heiden – Griechen – Gotteskinder,” 251–53, who also says that 7:35 would have been retroactively read as the first hint at the later spread of the gospel among Gentiles (“ein erster ausdrücklicher Hinweis auf die spätere Ausbreitung des Evangeliums unter den Heiden vor” [p. 253]); and M.L. Coloe, “Gentiles in the Gospel of John: Narrative Possibilities – John 12.12–43,” in Attitudes to Gentiles in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. D.C. Sim and J.S. McLaren, LNTS 499 (London: T&T Clark, 2013), 209–23. Haenchen, Frey, and Coloe, however, seem not to consider the idea that the Johannine Jesus is, in 7:35, envisioned as specifically teaching Torah to the Greeks in Jewish spaces, rather than spreading a Christian “gospel” for Gentiles independent from Jews and Judaism (so Frey). See Keener, John, 721. That Torah teaching is specifically envisioned in 7:35 is seen from the broader context. John 7:35 is part of a larger unit of text beginning from 7:14, where issues surrounding doing the law consistently take center stage, e.g., in vv. 17, 19–24. Jesus, according to the narrator, is teaching in a way that leads the Ioudaioi in 7:15 to conclusion that he “knows letters” (γράμματα οἶδεν), which suggests that written scripture is what Jesus is teaching. See the helpful discussion in C. Keith, The Pericope Adulterae, the Gospel of John, and the Literacy of Jesus, NTTSD 38 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 152–57, who argues persuasively that Torah is the central issue at stake regarding Jesus’s teaching activity in John 7. Further, while John 7:34–36 gives no explicit indication about the particular kind of setting in which Jesus would “teach the Greeks,” the institutional setting that comes to mind here is the association synagogues of the diaspora, which, as Acts 14:1; 17:1, 4; 18:4 suggests, were frequented by both Jews and Greeks and involved Torah reading and teaching (for more discussion, see chapter 6).

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misunderstanding or a Johannine “Ausblick auf die Verkündigung unter den Heiden”93 – represents the Ioudaioi’s understanding of Jesus’s assertion in 7:34, that “You will seek me and you will not find me; where I am you cannot come.” Thus, the Ioudaioi’s question in 7:35 betrays their view that teaching the Greeks among the diaspora is an activity in which they cannot envision themselves participating (οὐ δύνασθε ἐλθεῖν). Why? It is possible that the reasons for their conceived inability to go to the Greeks in the Jewish diaspora are mundane – such as lack of travel technology and resources – but it is equally possible, perhaps even probable in light of the polemical setting of the discussion, that they see themselves as “unable” because they are unwilling. The only conclusion they can think to draw in order to make sense of Jesus’s prior assertion, “Where I am you cannot come,” is that it must involve his bringing Torah to Gentiles, a thought that leaves them flabbergasted. But surely such an idea would not have been so striking to Jews living in other places throughout the Mediterranean world. Rather, anxiety over a Torah mission to Gentiles would have been at its highest among Jews of a priestly-oriented type of identity, which understood Torah as the sole possession of Israel and what it meant to be a Jew within the framework of genealogical exclusion. 3.1.2 John 8:30–59: Slaves, Mamzerim, and Doing as Abraham Did The debate over the role of genealogy in defining peoplehood escalates in John 8:30–59, a passage in which Jesus’s interlocutors are certain Ioudaioi who had, at least initially, expressed loyalty to him (8:30–31). The dialogue in this passage is dense and its logic difficult to follow; my aim is not to solve every issue. I wish, instead, to focus specifically on the manner in which the Johannine Jesus reorients the identity claims of the Ioudaioi away from the priestly-oriented type value of genealogical exclusion toward the diasporic value of Jewishness by practice/way of life. The dispute in this passage is largely shaped around two statements made by the Ioudaioi in response to Jesus. Both statements represent rebuttals to a perceived accusation that they, the Ioudaioi, possess the social status of groups whose Jewish ethnic identity was questionable or flat out rejected by Jews characterized by the priestly-oriented identity value of genealogical exclusion. In 8:31–32, Jesus asserts to the Ioudaioi, “if you remain in my word you are truly my disciples,” and that these disciples “will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” The reference to being “truly disciples” harks back to Jesus’s description of Nathaniel as “a true Israelite” or “truly an Israelite” (1:47), and “knowing the truth” seems to refer to accepting the divine revelation of Israel’s 93

Frey, “Heiden – Griechen – Gotteskinder,” 251.

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god as heard and taught by Jesus (8:40).94 From the Johannine Jesus’s perspective, only those who remain faithful to his teaching (“remain in my word”) are reckoned as true disciples and thus as true and free Israelites. Those who do not remain faithful to his word are left with the status of a slave. The attitude here is not unlike other Jewish thinkers, particularly Philo, who attempt to reorient the ideas of “slavery” and “freedom” as merely human social constructs to being matters of virtuous praxis, that is, related to one’s obedience to god as master (Prob. 19–21). For Philo, “true freedom” (ὁ ἀψευδῶς ἐλεύθερος) is experienced, paradoxically, only in one’s servitude to god (19–20), whereas a wicked person remains a slave to vice (21). John 8:31–32 similarly launches Jesus’s attempt to establish a virtue-oriented approach to freedom and slavery.95 The problem the Johannine Jesus faces is that the Ioudaioi in v. 33 hear his talk of freedom and slavery not on the level of virtuous practice but rather as human social construct, the level described by Philo as consisting of “those names which are quite unconnected with nature, but which owe their existence only to opinion (δόξης δ᾿ ἠρτημένα), such as ‘slaves born in the house (οἰκοτρίβων),’ ‘slaves purchased with money’ (ἀργυρωνήτων), ‘slaves taken in war’ (αἰχμαλώτων)” (Prob. 19). As Keener notes, the response of the Ioudaioi, “We are the seed of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone” (8:33), is not intended as an ironic implication of their ignorance of Israelite tradition: “A claim that the Israelites had never been subjugated politically […] would be absurd.”96 Rather, their response, even if ultimately a misunderstanding of Jesus’s moral critique of them, is a literal expression of their own personal experience of having never possessed the social status of slaves. From their perspective, they are telling the truth, which would explain why the Ioudaioi are quick to express their freedom by means of a clear statement on their genealogical “purity” as the “seed of Abraham,” a point that Jesus himself concedes a few verses later (8:37). In other words, in 8:33, the Ioudaioi, like any other socially free persons would in antiquity, counter a perceived insult of being called slaves by kindly pointing out to Jesus that their genealogy

94 95 96

Keener, John, 747. That praxis language is present in vv. 31–32 is supported by its explicit use in 8:34–38. Keener, John, 749. R. Alan Culpepper, for example, argues that the Ioudaioi understand freedom here as a political concept, and that John intends their claim to have “never been enslaved” as an ironic implication of their ignorance of Israelite tradition and their inability to apprehend that they are, in fact, spiritually enslaved. See R. Alan Culpepper, The Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel: A Study in Literary Design (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1987), 157.

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is impeccable and unquestionable.97 This response makes good sense in light of the fact that, as we saw earlier in this chapter, slaves in antiquity, including Gentile slaves owned by Jews, were considered de-ethnicized bodies, whose prior ancestries and cultures had been stripped and erased.98 In the case of Gentile slaves who were to be used in Jewish homes, they were forced to convert, or perhaps better, they were re-ethnicized by being circumcised (in the case of males) and only upon manumission were they given the opportunity to become proselytes or, as the Black Sea manumission inscriptions suggest, stay somehow attached to the Jewish community as “godfearers.”99 In rabbinic literature, freed slaves (‫ )חרורי‬are grouped closely with “converts” (‫ )גרים‬and mamzerim, that is, others lacking genealogical Jewishness (e.g., m. Qid. 4:1).100 Thus, the claim of the Ioudaioi, that as σπέρμα Ἀβραάμ they have never been slaves, coheres as a literal (not ironic) response. It amounts to an evidencebased rebuttal to Jesus’s perceived insult that they belong among those lacking a Jewish genealogy, such as Gentile slaves, even converted ones, or, as Hayes puts it, those of “profane seed.”101 After all, these are the same Ioudaioi who had put a premium on eighth-day covenantal circumcision in their halakhic dispute with Jesus a couple of narrative days earlier (John 7:19–24). The Ioudaioi have countered Jesus’s argument that a truly free person is the servant of god with an assertion of their genealogical Jewishness. At this point, the two are talking passed each other. Jesus, therefore, moves the discussion of slavery/freedom away from a genealogical purview and, in 8:34–38, brings it back again into the realm of praxis, specifically Torah praxis. Here a “slave” is reconfigured as anyone “who does sin,” that is, anyone who lives outside the parameters of the Jewish law,102 and thus can be, like Ishmael, Abraham’s half97

On the insulting nature of being labeled a ‘slave’ while actually being a free person in the ancient world, see Keener, John, 749. 98 Hezser, Jewish Slavery in Antiquity, 26, uses the terms “denationalized” and “culturally neutral.” 99 Cohen, “Crossing the Boundary,” 24–25; Hezser, Jewish Slavery in Antiquity, 26. 100 Hayes, Gentile Impurities, 167. 101 For the idea that converted slaves represented their own genealogical class distinct from priests, Levites, and lay Israelites, see Hayes, Gentile Impurities, 167, 167 nn. 10, 11. 102 For an understanding of ‘sin’ and ‘sinners’ as categories denoting those outside the Jewish ancestral law, whether Jewish or non-Jewish themselves, see E.P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), 177–79. Sanders understands the Greek terms ἁμαρτία/ἁμαρτωλός as basically denoting what the Hebrew Bible calls “the wicked.” He thus stresses the moral aspect of the categories. Without losing this moral element, I wish to emphasize the ethnic aspect of being a sinner: Gentile were “sinners” by virtue of their genealogy; Jews could be sinners by virtue of behavior that transgressed their ancestral laws.

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Israelite son by Hagar the slave woman, only a temporary resident in the house (8:34–35a).103 On the other hand, the person who is “really free” – the person who has the permanent status of son, like Isaac, Abraham’s promised seed by Sarah – attains this status not merely on genealogical grounds. Rather, in contrast to the slave who is an ethnic outsider, a “son” is one who “remains” (μένω) in Jesus’s word (8:31–32, 37) and follows through on Jesus’s command to “do the things you have heard from the father” (8:38), which is perhaps an echo of the Shema (Deut 6:4) but surely an exhortation to practice Torah faithfully.104 In other words, if rejecting Jesus results in a status outside the law – “dying in one’s sins” (8:21, 24) or being a “slave to sin” – then, according to John, fidelity to Jesus and remaining in his word effects a status for that person within the confines of the Jewish law (cf. 8:46), a status John describes here as being “set free” and a “son.” For the Johannine Jesus, then, practice, particularly Torah practice, outweighs genealogy in defining membership in the children of Abraham. The Ioudaioi, according to Jesus, have failed in such practice. This strategy continues with increasing force in John 8:39–47, with the tension between being Abraham’s practitioners versus Abraham’s descendants leading to the worst kind of name-calling. Jesus destabilizes the Ioudaioi’s genealogical link to Abraham in 8:39–40, arguing that, if they were Abraham’s children, they would “do the works of Abraham.” In Jesus’s view, they are not doing what Abraham did (8:40), ergo they are not his children; rather, they are doing the works of another father (8:41, 44). The Ioudaioi’s response to Jesus is both interesting and enigmatic, as they assert having not been born out of πορνεία, out of a forbidden sexual union. Apparently, the Ioudaioi understand Jesus’s attempt at denying them Abrahamic paternity as another threat to 103 Gen 21:8–14. 104 On the Shema in John, see L. Baron, “The Shema in John’s Gospel and Jewish Restoration Eschatology,” in John and Judaism: A Contested Relationship in Context, ed. R.A. Culpepper and P. Anderson (Atlanta: SBL, 2017), 165–73. John 8:38 has an interesting and important textual issue. A few significant witnesses lack ὑμῶν as a modifier for τοῦ πατρός here (P66, P75 B L W 070 pc), while the majority have the pronoun (ℵ C D Θ Ψ 0250 ƒ1, 13 33 565 892 𝔐 al lat sy). As the editors of the NET Bible say “If the pronoun is read, then the devil is in view and the text should be translated as ‘you are practicing the things you have heard from your father.’ If it is not read, then the same Father mentioned in the first part of the verse is in view. In this case, ποιεῖτε should be taken as an imperative: ‘you [must] practice the things you have heard from the Father.’ The omission is decidedly the harder reading, both because the contrast between God and the devil is now delayed until v. 41, and because ποιεῖτε could be read as an indicative, especially since the two clauses are joined by καί (kai, ‘and’). Thus, the pronoun looks to be a motivated reading. In light of the better external and internal evidence the omission is preferred.” This is a strong argument in favor of following the reading as printed in the NA28.

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their genealogical purity, this time perhaps along the lines of the mamzer, the child of forbidden sexual relations, who, in some Dead Sea Scrolls is denied access to the temple sanctuary (4Q174 ll. 3–4; cf. 4Q511 [Shirb] frags. 44–62 II 2–4) and whose status in rabbinic literature is a point of halakhic debate (e.g., m. Qidd. 3:12; m. Yeb. 7:5).105 The Ioudaioi take Jesus, in effect, as saying in John 8:39–40 that, “While you might have a Jewish mother, your father is not of Abraham’s line.”106 Their rebuttal to Jesus in 8:41, thus, reaffirms their status as offspring of legitimate Jewish marriages and as children of the one god of Israel, but it stops short of addressing Jesus’s main criticism in 8:39–40: doing the works of Abraham is what ultimately makes a child of Abraham; or, in colloquial terms, Jews are made, not just born.107 This is a particularly important point for the Johannine Jesus to make here in the narrative, in view of what 7:35 indicated regarding Jesus’s potential Torah teaching mission to Gentiles. It makes the claim that genealogical Jews are not the only ones entitled to call Abraham father, but so are all those engaged in doing what Abraham did, even Greeks. After all, in the view of some Jews, Abraham himself was not a genealogical Jew but rather became a Jew at 99 years old through the work of circumcision, “so as not to close the door to future proselytes” (Mekh. Nezikin 18).108 And this idea of Abraham’s long preJewish life just might stand in the background to Jesus’s divine self-declaration 105 The halakhic details concerning the mamzer in early rabbinic texts are complex, so I do not wish to make too specific claims here. The basic point I wish to make is that the mamzer’s status concerning his or her Jewishness was uncertain or at least an issue that needed to be worked out. Jesus in John 8:39–40 seems to be doing just this: casting uncertainty on the Jewishness of the Ioudaioi by questioning their patrilineal descent, whether or not the category of the mamzer stands behind these verses. For more detailed discussion on the mamzer, see Cohen, Beginnings of Jewishness, 276–85. 106 The claim of the Ioudaioi in John 8:41 – “We were not born of sexual immorality” – is commonly interpreted as an accusation brought against Jesus, as though Jesus is the one being labeled a mamzer, an illegitimate child, presupposing the infancy stories from Matthew and Luke. See, e.g., B. Chilton, Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 6; A. Le Donne, Historical Jesus: What Can We Know and How Can We Know It? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 26–27; C.A. Evans, Matthew, New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 48; C.L. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the New Testament: Countering the Challenges (Nashville: B&H, 2016), 102. The problem with this reading is that it runs over too quickly the point that Jesus is the one bringing charges against the Ioudaioi: by seeking to kill Jesus, they are behaving in a way that Abraham did not; therefore, Abraham cannot be their father. The response of the Ioudaioi in 8:41 is thus reactionary; they are defending themselves from the accusation that they have a father other than one that stands in Abraham’s line. 107 Cf. Josephus, C. Ap. 2:210. For John (3:3, 5–6), those who will enter the kingdom are, indeed, “born,” but their birth is, of course, a product of the work of the spirit. 108 Trans. Lauterbach 2:453.

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in 8:58: “Before Abraham became [Abraham], I am” (πρὶν Ἀβραὰμ γενέσθαι ἐγὼ εἰμί). In any case, at the very least, the Johannine Jesus uses the figure of Abraham to open the door to a definition of peoplehood shaped by practice/ way of life rather than only genealogy.109 Jesus’s criticism of the Ioudaioi builds in 8:42, taking aim now at their genealogically based perception of the Jewish god as their “father” and, instead, positing “the devil” as their progenitor (8:44). For blessing or for cursing, for good or for bad, the right to call YHWH “father” was Israel’s alone (e.g., Deut 32:5–6; Isa 63:16; 64:8; Jub. 1:25). Interestingly, in the Second Temple period, we see the unique idea develop in some sources that one of the privileges that the god’s children had, as his children, was to seek from him divine protection from the rule of personified demonic forces (e.g., S/satan, demons, evil spirits, Belial/r, Mastema).110 The way Israel’s god protected his people from such evil beings was through the commands of Torah, by which he also separated them from all other nations (cf. John 17:14–18). So, for example, as we saw in Section 2, in Jub. 15:30–32 the law of eighth-day circumcision not only demarcates who belongs to Israel but also acts as a protective measure against erring spirits who rule over all the other nations. In 1QS 1:16–17, the covenanters vow “to do everything God has commanded” so as not to stray “during the dominion of Belial” (‫)בממשלת בליעל‬.111 And in T. Dan 5, the patriarch exhorts his children to “guard the commandments of the Lord and keep his law” – in particular to “avoid wrath and hate lying” – in order that “the Lord might dwell among you and Beliar flee from you.” Thus, being a Torah-abiding child of Israel’s god was, in the view of some, bound up with one’s level of protection from the demonic realm that ruled the rest of the world.112 Conversely, however, Israelites who transgressed their god’s laws were associated with the malevolent forces active among outside 109 This idea does not appear to be unlike Paul’s use of Abraham in Rom 9:6–13, in which the “children of God” are not merely Abraham’s offspring, “children of the flesh,” but rather the “children of promise.” 110 L. Stuckenbruck, “‘Protect Them from the Evil One’ (John 17:15): Light from the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in John, Qumran, and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Sixty Years of Discovery and Debate, ed. M.L. Coloe and T. Thatcher, EJL 32 (Atlanta: SBL, 2011), 145. Stuckenbruck surveys prayers for deliverance from demonic forces in sources such as 1QS; 1QM; Songs of the Maskil (fragments of 4Q444, 4Q510, and 4Q511); ALD (4Q213a = 4QTLevia frag. 1 1.10); Jub. 10:3–6 and 12:19–20; and Tobit. 111 See also y. Peah 16b: “if you keep the words of the Torah, I will protect you from the demons,” quoted in Stuckenbruck, “Protect,” 144 n. 10. 112 For an excellent discussion of this, especially as it relates to ideas found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, see C. Wassen, “What Do Angels Have against the Blind and the Deaf? Rules of Exclusion in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Common Judaism: Explorations in Second-Temple

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nations and all those who opposed the god of Israel. For this reason, demon language became a convenient rhetorical device in the polemical toolbox of some Jewish authors from the Second Temple period, deployed against groups that were rhetorically constructed as law breakers and unfaithful to the Jewish god. Hence, we see occur, especially in highly polemical discursive contexts like some Dead Sea Scrolls, language such as the “sons of Beliar” mentioned in Jub 15:33–34, Israelites who do not practice eighth-day circumcision and thus act like Gentiles; the cursed-to-eternal-fire “men of the lot of Belial” who break God’s law in 1QS 2:4–5 (cf. 4QFlor frag. 1 1.21.2 ll 8–9); and “those defiled by iniquities” who are associated with “the spirits of ravaging angels and the spirits of mamzerim, demons, Lilith […],” in 4Q510 frag. 1 5–8.113 As eighth-day-circumcised children of Abraham’s god, the Ioudaioi in John 8 had every right to expect YHWH’s protection from the malevolent forces of evil. But, in Jesus’s view, their rejection of him demonstrates that they are, in fact, law-breakers like the “sons of Beliar” who blaspheme (Jub. 15:34) and love lying (T. Dan 5; cf. John 8:44, 55). Jesus claims in 8:42–43 and 8:46–47 a direct line of continuity between his own “word” (λόγος) and “the words” of the Jewish god (τὰ ῥήματα τοῦ θεοῦ); the latter phrase is almost certainly a reference to Torah, in light of Jesus’s rhetorical question in 8:46, which intends to put his teaching squarely within the purview of the law. John’s polemical logic, then, is as follows: not “hearing” Jesus’s word is tantamount to not “hearing” the words of Israel’s Torah; not “hearing” Israel’s Torah means not being “from” Israel’s god; and not being “from” Israel’s god opens one to accusations of being associated with the (demonic) gods of other nations, the chief of whom is the devil, also known in John as “the satan” (13:27) and “the ruler of this world” (12:31; 14:30; 16:11). On the other hand, fidelity to Jesus demonstrates one’s adherence to Torah, their being “of” Israel’s god, and, thus, their divine protection from the evil one (17:14–18). That John’s Ioudaioi in this passage are rhetorically constructed as law-breakers and “of their father the devil” does not, in my view, appear all that different from the polemical world of Second Temple Judaism, in which, as the author of Jubilees indicates, a group can be called “the sons of Israel” (Jub. 15:34) in the same breath that it is polemicized against as the covenant-breaking “sons of Beliar” (15:33).114 Judaism, ed. W.O. McCready and A. Reinhartz (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008), 115–29 (115–20). 113 Trans. DSSSE, 1029. 114 See also a generally similar argument made by U.C. von Wahlde, Gnosticism, Docetism, and the Judaisms of the First Century: The Search for the Wider Context of the Johannine Literature and Why It Matters, LNTS 517 (London: T&T Clark, 2015), 154–61. That John’s language here fits within the conventions of ancient polemic has been noted for some time

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That this intense polemic in John 8:39–47 stems, at least in part, from debate over genealogical exclusionary definitions of Jewishness and the people of Israel’s god is seen in the Ioudaioi’s response to Jesus in 8:48. Stewart Penwell has recently made a persuasive argument from a social-scientific perspective that the Ioudaioi’s labeling of Jesus as a “Samaritan” in 8:48, functions to stigmatize Jesus (and his followers) as deviating from the prioritizing of the importance of the Abrahamic descent of “the Jews.” Jesus’s labeling of “the Jews” functions in the same way, so that in calling them the children of the devil (8:44) he stigmatizes those who prioritize ethnic identities rather than receiving and believing in him (1:12).115

now. See L.T. Johnson, “The New Testament’s Anti-Jewish Slander and the Conventions of Ancient Polemic,” JBL 108 (1989): 419–41 (esp. at 440–41). This reading of John within the context of intra-Jewish polemic resembles what Albert Baumgarten has called ‘the Rule of the Martian.’ The rule states that “hostility is likely to be at its greatest between two groups between which a Martian would have the most difficulty distinguishing” (A.I. Baumgarten, “The Rule of the Martian as Applied to Qumran,” Israel Oriental Studies 14 [1994]: 121–42 [121]). We could add to Baumgarten’s ‘Rule’ a converse element as well: hostility will be at its lowest between groups that are highly differentiated, whether in identity or context. While it is expected for groups or individuals to characterize outsiders in some way as the ‘Other,’ open conflict and hostility is not necessarily the norm between Jewish and non-Jewish groups. Even within the Jewish world, there are several examples of groups in significantly different geographical contexts expressing great affection for their Jewish brethren in distant lands and hope of restored unity (2 Macc 1:1, 24–30; 2:17–18; Tob 14:1–5; Pss Sol 8:28). In other words, it is a lot easier for groups separated by long geographical or ideological distances to play nicely with each other. Nevertheless, as we move down the hierarchy, from genus to species to subspecies, differences between groups become smaller but more pronounced and hence more aggressively divisive. For example, the distinct priestly ideology of the Yaḥad–Essene group led it to sharp division with its priestly counterparts in Jerusalem (see, e.g., the ‘Wicked Priest’ texts of 1QpHab 1:13; 8:1–17); and the interpretive conflicts between the two Pharisaic houses of Hillel and Shammai apparently reached such feverish pitches of hostility that later rabbinic lore recounts members of one house actually killing members of the other (y. Shabb. 1:4, 3c). Read in this context, John’s depiction of Jesus’s confrontation with the Ioudaioi, especially in 8:31–58, would not be evidence of John’s wholesale anti-Jewishness or its push for a ‘parting of ways’ between ‘Jews’ and ‘Christians’ who no longer considered themselves Jewish. Rather, application of ‘the Rule of the Martian’ would have us conclude quite the opposite: the, at times, intense conflict John narrates is between Jewish groups who are remarkably similar, and thus this hostility is crucial for a description of John precisely within Judaism. 115 S. Penwell, Jesus the Samaritan: Ethnic Labelling in the Gospel of John, BibInt 170 (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 174.

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The “stigmatizing” effect of the label, Penwell says, stems from the notion that Jews constructed the identity of Samaritans not only as ‘foreigners’ and ‘strangers’ but also as foreigners who “challenged the givenness of Jewish exclusivity as Israel, heirs of Abrahamic descent, and Mosaic tradition.”116 In other words, the Ioudaioi understand Jesus in 8:39–47 to be, among other things, challenging the boundaries of who belongs to Israel, and they use the ethnonym ‘Samaritan’ as a means to push back against and marginalize his critique. The label works rhetorically with their effort to push Jesus to the periphery of his own ethnos by questioning his loyalty to the god of Israel and countering his own critique of them by asserting his ‘outsiderness’ to the Jewish law, as one “having a demon.” 3.1.3

John 9:1–41: Sinners, “Godfearers,” and Doing the Will of the Jewish God In the following episode, 9:1–41, a man’s blindness from birth (τυφλὸς ἐκ γενετῆς) raises suspicions and accusations about his “sinful” origins, both from Jesus’s disciples (9:2) and the Ioudaioi (9:34).117 For some Jews in the Second Temple period, the ritual impurity of the blind was understood to have the same practical force as the moral and genealogical impurity of Gentile “sinners,” outsiders to the law for whom there was no remedy for their defilement; both groups were, by some, thought to be denied access to the inner-courts of the temple.118 Such close linking of ritual impurity with sin/moral impurity 116 Penwell, Jesus the Samaritan, 173. 117 I understand the Pharisees and the Ioudaioi as distinct groups in this episode, although working together in debate against Jesus. The Pharisees are a much more benign group in this episode, expressing some internal divisions over Jesus (9:16). Nevertheless, they also do not escape critique from the Johannine Jesus, being called “blind” and accused of having sin in 9:41. 118 The blind are mentioned within a context clearly concerned with ritual impurity in 11Q19 45:12–13 (cf. 4QMMT; 1QSa 2:5–7), but, unlike other ritually defiled persons, they are never provided with a purification ritual to remedy their defiled situation. Rather, the text simply states: “No blind person shall enter it [the temple] all their days, and they shall not defile the city in whose midst I dwell” (trans. DSSSE; italics mine). The practical outcome, then, is that they are treated on the same level as Gentiles who, whether due to their perceived moral impurity (sin) (so J. Klawans, Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000], 134–35) or genealogical impurity (so Hayes, Gentile Impurities, 7), were also barred access to the inner-courts of the temple sanctuary (4Q174). Wassen, “Angels,” 123–25 argues persuasively that, at least in some Scrolls, exclusion from the community of people with physical defects (blind, deaf, lame, etc.) derives from the Yaḥad’s belief that such defects were caused by the influence of demonic forces. Klawans, Impurity and Sin, 138 argues that the close association of moral impurity and ritual impurity is especially characteristic of the attitude reflected in the Scrolls.

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seems to be precisely what Jesus’s disciples and the Ioudaioi assume in the case of the blind man. Both apply to the man (or his parents) the language of ethnic transgression; that is, by describing his status as ἐν ἁμαρτίαις, they assign him to a position, halakhically, outside of the Jewish community, treating him effectively the same as one would treat a Gentile.119 However, this close association of ritual with moral impurity is what the Johannine Jesus reacts against. That is, Jesus, in debate over purification with the Ioudaioi and the Pharisees,120 takes the position that being blind is a matter of ritual not moral impurity (9:41). This is why, rather than simply healing the man on the spot, Jesus sends him to the ritual bath at Siloam to “wash” first, en route to his healing.121 For John’s Jesus, the blind should not be treated as among morally impure “sinners.” Instead, and ironically, it is one’s lack of loyalty to Jesus that, indeed, results in a kind of “blindness,” which Jesus does associate with moral impurity and thus with being outside the parameters of the ancestral law. The status of the blind man is not the only one in this episode that presents a challenge to the Ioudaioi’s conceptions of Jewishness. Details within the narrative suggest that Jesus’s own status poses such a challenge. In 9:16, some among the Pharisees interpret Jesus’s activity as at odds with Shabbat halakha, while others within the group disagree, concluding that one performing such signs could never be ἁμαρτωλός, a law-breaking “sinner.” The Ioudaioi in 9:24–34 form a more united front on the matter. They are convinced that Jesus is, in fact, a sinner with unknown origins (9:24, 29), and thus that those loyal to him are, in their view, outside the boundaries established by the ancestral law.122 The blind man, however, can, at first, neither confirm nor deny this 119 Cf. Matt 18:15–20 (esp. v. 17). Treating “sin” here in John 9 as an ethnic category, i.e., a category concerning the transgression of ethnic laws, also helps explain why the Ioudaioi take such offense at the blind man in v. 34: how can one born in transgressions, outside the Jewish law, pretend to teach the law to us? Interestingly, the Ioudaioi in John seem to do precisely what the Matthean Jesus teaches concerning a Jew who is stubborn in their “sin”: put them outside the assembly, treating that person as a “Gentile and a tax collector.” 120 Cf. John 3:25. 121 For more discussion on Siloam and the blind man, see chapter 4. Such halakhic debate in John, therefore, needs to be understood, as Klawans himself notes, “not against this background, but within it” (Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism, 138; italics original). 122 In this way, I read the Ioudaioi’s assertion in 9:28–29 – “You are his disciple but we are disciples of Moses” – not as a matter of John’s “high (Mosaic) christology,” i.e., as Jesus having attained a christological status elevated and equal to that of Moses by the time of the Fourth Evangelist’s writing, but rather as a matter of one group’s attempt at reifying their conceived boundaries of Jewishness in the face of a perceived threat from Jesus’s activity. Pace Martyn, History and Theology; and J. Ashton, The Gospel of John and Christian Origins (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014). It is important to state here, as I will again in the next chapter, that, in the Johannine Jesus’s view, there is a fundamental continuity between his

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ascription of a sinner’s status to Jesus. What he does know is that now he can see, and that, while the Jewish god “does not listen to sinners [ἁμαρτωλοί],” he will indeed listen to “anyone who is godfearing [θεοσεβής] and who does his will” (9:31; cf. 7:17). The statement in 9:31 makes the assertion that, on the one hand, the Jewish god does not listen to those with a status outside the Jewish law (ἁμαρτωλοί), but that, on the other, it does not necessarily take being a genealogical Jew to occupy the god’s ear. Using language very similar to the Gentile σεβομένοι τὸν θεόν known from the book of Acts and other sources,123 the blind man’s assertion appears to widen the ethnic scope of the Jewish god’s concern to include any person (τις) who is θεοσεβής and Torah observant.124 Paula Fredriksen notes that θεοσεβής and related language can sometimes simply mean “pious,” indicating nothing with reference to ethnicity, but she also says that “especially in Jewish contexts, ‘godfearing’ indicates what we might elsewhere find designated as ‘Judaizing.’”125 That is, θεοσεβής language can be used to refer to the ethnic boundary-crossing activities of non-Jews. And this may be, at least in part, what the term intends to communicate in the context of John 9:31. In 9:30, the blind man marvels at the idea that the Ioudaioi do not know Jesus’s origins. But, to him, this should not be a criterion in judging Jesus as a man from god. The way the blind man sees it is that the measure of any person, Jew or Gentile, is θεοσεβής and Torah observance, which, in his view, Jesus publicly activity and Moses’s (5:46–47). That Jesus’s activity poses any such threat to Jewishness is restricted to the interpretation of the Ioudaioi. 123 E.g., Acts 13:43, 50; 16:14; 17:4, 17; 18:7, 13; Josephus, Ant. 14:110 (τῶν κατὰ τὴν οἰκουμένην Ἰουδαίων καὶ σεβομένων τὸν θεὸν ἔτι δὲ καὶ τῶν ἀπὸ τῆς Ἀσίας καὶ τῆς Εὐρώπης εἰς αὐτὸ συμφερόντων ἐκ πολλῶν πάνυ χρόνων); IJO 1, BS7 (1st cent. CE); Aphrodisias 188; JIWE 1.113; 2.627 i. 124 Keener, John, 793 rightly follows S. Pancaro, The Law in the Fourth Gospel: The Torah and the Gospel, Moses and Jesus, Judaism and Christianity according to John, NovTSup 42 (Leiden: Brill, 1975), 376, who argues persuasively that being a “doer of God’s will” here means being Torah observant. The concept is on par with another Johannine phrase, “the work/s of God” mentioned in 6:28, 29, which some interpreters have indeed taken as a reference to God’s commandments, i.e., Torah. See, e.g., Paul N. Anderson, “John and Qumran: Discovery and Interpretation Over Sixty Years,” in John, Qumran, and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Sixty Years of Discovery and Debate, ed. M.L. Coloe and T. Thatcher, EJL 32 (Atlanta: SBL, 2011), 15–50 (41); Keener, John, 1:678; Ryan, Role of the Synagogue, 249. Evidence of this association is found in, e.g., CD 2:14–15; Bar 2:9–10. From John’s perspective, then, doing Torah means becoming loyal to Jesus. 125 P. Fredriksen, “‘If It Looks like a Duck, and It Quacks like a Duck …’: On Not Giving Up the Godfearers,” in A Most Reliable Witness: Essays in Honor of Ross Shepard Kraemer, ed. S.A. Harvey et al., BJS 358 (Providence, RI: Brown University Press), 31–32 (quotation on p. 31).

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demonstrates by restoring his sight.126 Therefore, while θεοσεβής in 9:31 need not only denote a category of Judaizing Gentiles  – after all, pious Jews, too, could be called θεοσεβής127 – it surely intends to include such a category. In light of other Johannine texts associating Gentiles with Jewish activity, such as 7:35 and 12:20,128 the language of 9:31, too, seems to create a similar interpretive space, seeing Jesus’s activity as the impetus for establishing an attitude of inclusion toward Gentiles as such – but an inclusion fundamentally mediated by Jewishness.129 It goes without saying that, in the end, the Ioudaioi reject this view, along with the man’s testimony about Jesus, throwing him out (ἐξέβαλον αὐτὸν ἔξω) of what was probably a public gathering space in or near the temple courts (cf. 9:22; see chapter 6). 3.1.4 John 10:16: One Flock, One Shepherd, Different Sheep The last example of Jesus’s challenge to genealogical exclusivism we shall consider is John 10:16. Jesus’s reference in this verse to “sheep that are not from this fold [οὐκ ἔστιν ἐκ τῆς αὐλῆς ταύτης],” which he must also “lead” (ἀγεῖν) to form “one flock” under “one shepherd,” has been understood by scholars in at least four different ways: (1) the next generation of Christ-followers who have not personally experienced the earthly ministry of Jesus; (2) diaspora Jews;

126 How the blind man connects his miraculous healing specifically with Jesus’s Torah observance and godfearing is unclear. The basic point the man seems to be making is that what Jesus did, did not in fact break Shabbat law. 127 E.g., Abraham (T. Abr. A 4:6; 4 Macc 15:28), Joseph (Jos. Asen. 20:8, et passim), and Judith (Jud 11:17). 128 On John 7:35 as an indication that Greeks would be taught Torah, see discussion above. The Greeks that come to “see” Jesus in 12:20 had first come up to Jerusalem to worship at festival time. They are, therefore, already Judaizing Gentiles. This point appears to be missed by Coloe, “Gentiles in the Gospel of John” and Frey, “Heiden – Griechen – Gotteskinder,” 253–59 who rather sees the positive role of the “believing” Greeks as the antithesis to the unbelieving Jews: “Wenn man im Anschluß an Bultmann die Juden im Johannesevangelium cum grano salis als ‘Repräsentanten der ungläubigen Welt’ bezeichnen kann, so wird man hier umgekehrt formulieren müssen: Die Ἕλληνες sind Repräsentanten des κόσμος, soweit er zum Glauben an Jesus kommt, Vertreter der zum Glauben kommenden Heidenwelt.” And further down the page: “Der weitere Kontext [of 12:20] stützt diese Entgegensetzung von ‘Griechen’ und ‘Juden.’” Drawing such a clear and strong opposition between “Jews” and “Greeks” misses the point that, for John, these Greeks are boundary-crossers. 129 In other words, John gives no indication that Gentiles, even in their Torah observance, need to convert to the point of circumcision and become Jews. Greeks appear to remain Greeks even in their Judaizing.

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(3) Gentile Christians;130 or (4) Samaritans.131 That Jesus is said to personally lead these sheep undermines option 1.132 And, since these sheep are “not from this fold,” a reference to Jews abroad (option 2) would seem strained.133 Jews abroad were still considered members of the Jewish ethnos, even though their engagement with elements of Jewish ethnicity could differ widely from their compatriots in the land. Keener rightly notes that the metaphors of “sheep,” “shepherd,” and “scattering” (10:12) that permeate 10:1–18 are steeped in Israelite tradition,134 which might make reference to a non-Israelite group in 10:16 (option 3) difficult to see. But the difficulty is lessened if specifically Judaizing Gentiles – those non-Jews who have been primed for Jesus’s “voice” with Israel’s traditions – are in view.135 There are also good reasons to think, as some scholars did especially 130 Keener notes that this is the most commonly held view (John, 818). 131 For a helpful survey of the various arguments for and against each position, see Keener, John, 818–20. 132 This does not mean that John is uninterested in future generations of Christ-followers. See, e.g., 17:20, in which Jesus explicitly prays for them. But note that these future Christ-followers become such through the missionary activity of the disciples, not Jesus himself. 133 This reading is not impossible; see especially J.A.T. Robinson, “The Destination and Purpose of St. John’s Gospel,” NTS 6 (1959–1960): 117–31, who rejected the idea that John has any interest in a Gentile mission whatsoever and that diaspora Jews are in view at 10:16 (and 11:52). 134 Keener, John, 818. See, e.g., Jer 23:1–8; 31:1–10; Ezek 34:5–6; 37:21–28. 135 This seems to be the case in John 7:35; 12:20 (see above). Frey, “Heiden – Griechen – Gotteskinder,” 245–49 argues, rightly in my view, that “the sheep not of this fold” run parallel to “the children of God” in 11:52. For Frey, however, these other sheep and the children of God refer to John’s Gentile Christian addressees (“die heidenchristlichen Adressaten”), who, through faith in Jesus enter the one flock with believing Jews. In other words, their Gentile Christian identity is independent of Jewishness. In this, Frey follows his doktorvater, M. Hengel, The Johannine Question, trans. J. Bowden (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1989), 119–24, who also rightly sees a mission to Gentiles in John, but sees John’s task as establishing a “Gentile Christian” identity independent of Jewishness, indeed a mission that “will burst the bounds of Judaism” (p. 122). See also Haenchen, Johannes Evangelium, 390; Coloe, “Gentiles in the Gospel of John,” who argues successfully that John 12:20 indeed envisions a Gentile mission, involving their inclusion “within Israel’s worshiping community” (p. 223), yet, like Frey, she appears to sever the identity of these Gentiles from Jewishness: “The final citations from Isaiah [in John 12:38–41] comment on why Jesus (and the gospel) was not received within Judaism and yet was received in the post-Easter mission to the Gentiles” (p. 223). These scholars, therefore, overlook that John’s Greeks are understood from the start to be crossing ethnic boundaries. A. Reinhartz, Cast Out of the Covenant: Jews and Anti-Judaism in the Gospel of John (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2018) suggests throughout even more strongly that John not only envisions a mission to Gentiles but envisions Gentiles as the main audience of the Gospel, with John attempting to convince this audience that God’s favor had turned from

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in the mid-20th century, that the “sheep not of this fold” includes Samaritan Israelites. John has already demonstrated the success of Jesus’s mission among Samaritans (4:1–42). Beyond the fact that sheep metaphors in the Hebrew Bible are characteristic of Israel – an identity shared by Samaritans – there is a strong possibility that Ezek 37:20–24 and the unification of the northern and southern kingdoms under “one shepherd” stands in the background of Jesus’s words in John 10:16.136 Further, many (not all) of the Ioudaioi respond to Jesus’s words in 10:19–20 with accusations that he “has a demon” (δαιμόνιον ἔχει), the same accusation leveled against him earlier in 8:48, where he is also called a Samaritan in response to his challenging their genealogical approach to the children of Abraham. This does not mean, of course, that the “other sheep” in 10:16 must be Samaritans. But it does suggest that, like 7:20 and 8:48, the accusation of having a demon in 10:20 occurs at another key juncture where Jesus challenges genealogical exclusivism, and this would include his pro-Samaritan attitude. In my view, there is no reason to choose between options 3 and 4 above. That is, I take the “sheep not of this fold” as a reference to both Judaizing Gentiles and Samaritans – two groups that John puts in the purview of Jesus’s mission,137 which, while closely acquainted with Jewish ethnic traditions, were not genealogically Jewish. Interestingly, these groups do not seem to lose their distinct ethnic identities – there is no indication of ethnic conversion or erasure – but they are, indeed, defined “Jewishly” and their status as “children of god” is soteriologically mediated by Jewishness: Samaritans must recognize the Jews to the Gentiles. In my view, Reinhartz, like those scholars mentioned above, is right to see a Gentile mission in John, but she might be overstating its significance as a controlling category of interpretation. In the entirety of John’s Gospel, Gentiles appear twice in short narrative frames, with the first (7:35) coming within the context of a misunderstanding of the Ioudaioi. Thus, while the concept is there, (1) we, again, cannot forget that John’s Gentiles are Judaizers; and (2) it does not seem to be a major focus of John. It could be argued that Samaritans have a more important role: should we assume that the Gospel has a Samaritan audience instead, has a Samaritan mission as its main purpose, and attempts to convince Samaritans that God’s favor has turned from the Jews to them? 136 J. Bowman, “Samaritan Studies,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 40 (1957–1958): 298–327; E. Freed, “Samaritan Influence in the Gospel of John,” CBQ 30 (1968): 580–87; C.H.H. Scobie, “The Origins and Development of Samaritan Christianity,” NTS 19 (1972– 1973): 390–414 (407). 137 Admittedly, in terms of narrative space devoted to these groups, John clearly emphasizes the Samaritans. They are the ones actively engaged by Jesus, whereas Gentiles appear only implicitly in 7:35 and are the ones who actively seeks out Jesus in 12:20. The difference in narrative space, however, does not negate the fact that Jesus is clearly portrayed as “leader” to both groups: for one (Samaritans) he is “savior of the world,” while the other group (Gentiles) narratively ushers in Jesus’s eschatological “hour” (12:23–26).

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that “salvation is by means of the Jews” (4:22), and Greeks need to be taught the Jewish law (7:35; 12:20). As Frey notes, these “other sheep” in 10:16, together with genealogical Jews loyal to Jesus, form “one flock” (μία ποίμνη) universal in its breadth and established by the death of Jesus (10:17–18; cf. 11:51–52).138 However, the compositional identity of this “flock” remains multi-ethnic – not ‘non-ethnic’ as Esler has suggested139  – yet dependent on Jewishness.140 As I will suggest below in 3.2., John’s creation of a multi-ethnic “one flock” that rests, nevertheless, on the bedrock of a cultural approach to Jewishness runs parallel to its strategy with regard to the “children of god.” 3.1.5 Conclusions on John’s Use of Ioudaioi The general conclusion that we may draw from this survey of John 7:2–10:21 is that, when it comes to the category of ‘peoplehood,’ the ideology of John’s Ioudaioi are decidedly on the priestly-oriented side of the spectrum, as they put a premium on genealogical exclusion in their understanding of Jewishness. The remaining chapters of this book will provide a sustained argument for this assertion, so I give just a few examples here that support understanding the identity values of the Ioudaioi as priestly-oriented. 1. In 1:19 the Ioudaioi send “priests and Levites” out from Jerusalem to examine the identity of John the Baptist,141 which indicates a close relationship between the Ioudaioi and the priestly class.142 138 Frey, “Heiden – Griechen – Gotteskinder,” 249. 139 P. Esler, “From Ioudaioi to Children of God: The Development of a Non-Ethnic Group Identity in the Gospel of John,” in In Other Words: Essays on Social Science Methods and the New Testament in Honor of Jerome H. Neyrey, ed. A.C. Hagedorn, Z.A. Crook, and E. Stewart (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2007), 106–37. 140 Keener, John, 819; and argued astutely by Penwell, “Jesus the Samaritan,” et passim. 141 John 1:19 is the only New Testament text to mention the pair “priests and Levites.” To my knowledge, the only other early Christian text that mentions the pair “priests and Levites” is Acts of Pilate 4:2; 5:1; 14:2 (4×); 16:1. 142 I read 1:19 differently than Bennema, “Identity” (and others), who says 1:24 goes on to state that this delegation of priests and Levites was sent by the Pharisees and thus that the Pharisees were part of the larger group of the Ioudaioi (p. 247). Instead, I see a distinction between the Pharisees and the Ioudaioi here in 1:19–25, where, first, the Ioudaioi send “priests and Levites” to examine John the Baptist, and then, in vv. 24–25, the text switches over to a separate but accompanying group of people sent by the Pharisees to question John also. Thus, I would re-punctuate this section by disregarding the full stop after v. 24 (so NA28) and translating vv. 24–25, not as a parenthesis referring back to v. 19 (so, e.g., the NET), but as introducing a new group: “And those who had been sent by the Pharisees [in distinction from those who had been sent by the Ioudaioi] also asked and said to him …” If this is tenable, it would indicate a closer relationship than is typically imagined between the Ioudaioi specifically and the priests and Levites. A similar division of the Ioudaioi and the Pharisees happens in John 9. In 9:13–17, it is the Pharisees who examine the man

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The Ioudaioi, whatever their level of actual public authority, frequently play the role of guardians of Jewish public institutions, the temple and synagogues (2:18; 9:22; see chapter 6). The Ioudaioi frequently collaborate with the Pharisees but especially the chief priests on what to do with the problem of Jesus in order to defend the people and the ethnos from the political and military threat of the Romans (11:45–54). Similarly, while the Pharisees drop out of the picture at Jesus’s trial (chs. 18–19), it is the Ioudaioi who work with the chief priests toward Jesus’s execution on the charge of blasphemy (19:7).

Scholars such as North, Cornelis Bennema, and Stephen Motyer are right to suggest that, while the term Ioudaios is itself broad and undifferentiated – it has no particular religio-political group or “sect” in view – the type of Ioudaioi whom John is, as North has put it, “gunning for,” is, indeed, rather specified and differentiated. John’s Ioudaioi are the type of Ioudaioi who have the Jerusalem chief priests as their political leaders and shapers of their ideology and the public institutions of the land of Israel as their spaces of operation.143 Even the born blind; from there the text switches to the Ioudaioi, precisely at the moment that the investigation is expanded to include the man’s parents. It is the Ioudaioi that the parents fear will make them aposynagōgos (9:22), not the Pharisees. Pace G. Wheaton, The Role of the Jewish Feasts in John’s Gospel, SNTSMS 162 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 39; Reinhartz, “Judaism in the Gospel of John,” 384. 143 North, Journey Round John, 162–63; C. Bennema, “The Identity and Composition of ΟΙ ΙΟΥΔΑΙΟΙ in the Gospel of John,” TynBul 60.2 (2009): 239–63; S. Motyer, Your Father the Devil? A New Approach to John and the Jews (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1997), 99, although I disagree with Motyer that we can pin down John’s Ioudaioi specifically to those Jews who were zealously committed to Levitical purity. See, however, chapter 4 of the current study, where I address the topic of John and purity, the results of which might suggest that Motyer is not entirely off the mark. Whereas Motyer and Bennema characterize the Ioudaioi as ultra-zealous Jews, I think that, from the perspective of the Johannine Jesus, it is better to characterize them as Jews who were not zealous enough. Recall that, in Jesus’s view, the Ioudaioi are law-breakers, an interpretation similarly held by J.A. Dennis, Jesus’ Death and the Gathering of True Israel, WUNT 2.217 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 351. See also Hengel, Johannine Question, 118, where he says: “Whereas the stress on ‘scribes (and Pharisees)’ in Matthew is presumably connected with the fact that, like Paul, the author had had a Pharisaic, scribal education, in John the formula ‘high priests and Pharisees’ may refer to a priestly view of the leading forces in Judaism.” Although the approach is different, my conclusion is also not altogether different from the general idea presented by D. Boyarin, “The IOUDAIOI in John and the Prehistory of ‘Judaism,’” in Pauline Conversations in Context: Essays in Honor of Calvin J. Roetzel, ed. J.C. Anderson, P. Sellew, and C. Setzer, JSNTSup 221 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), 216–39, who associates John’s Ioudaioi with the roshe avot ha-Yehudah who returned from Babylon

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Ioudaioi in the Galilee (6:41, 52) seem to have connections to Judea: after the Ioudaioi dispute Jesus’s teaching in the Capernaum synagogue, Jesus decides to stay in the Galilee because the Ioudaioi in Judea had begun seeking to kill him (7:1). This seems to suggest that, within John’s narrative world, the Ioudaioi in Capernaum had relayed to their Judean counterparts what Jesus had been saying and doing (see chapter 6 for further discussion of this issue). Therefore, in my view, the position held by some scholars, that John’s use of Ioudaioi is undifferentiated, timeless, and “has the broadest possible referent, that is, the Jews as a nation defined by a set of religious beliefs, cultic and liturgical practices, and a sense of peoplehood,”144 seems to run against the grain of the local-specific nature of John’s narrative and the point that John seems to have mapped a particular type of ideology onto the Ioudaioi as a character group.145 Within John’s story world, Jesus never pronounces judgment on all during the time of Ezra. Interestingly, these “heads of the fathers’ houses of Yehudah” are, in Ezra, constantly working in concert with the “priests and Levites” (e.g., Ezra 1:5; 3:12; cf. John 1:19). The idea derived from this “prehistory of ‘Judaism’” is that John’s Ioudaioi are neither the official “religious authorities” (as if there was such a purely “religious” group during this time) nor simply groups of common Jews in general. They were leaders of family households within the (primarily Judean) community that had significant influence and could work closely with religio-political groups like the Pharisees or with the official political leadership of the chief priests. Cf. a similar linkage in 1 Macc 14:41: “… the Jews and the priests [οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι καὶ οἱ ἱερεῖς] were well pleased that Simon should be their governor and high priest forever until the arising of a faithful prophet” (ET mine). My approach to the issue generally coheres with those approaches that seek to limit the scope and scale of John’s Ioudaioi, but not to the same extent and not in the same way as the approaches discussed by Frey, Glory, 41–44. Here Frey outlines at least five approaches that, in some way, aim to “semantically limit the statements about the Ἰουδαῖοι and in this way to remove their generalizing, polemical-anti-Jewish accent” (p. 41): (1) Limit Ioudaios to ‘the religious authorities’; (2) Those especially strict or rigorous with respect to the law; (3) Those especially interested in Levitical purity; (4) Jewish-Christians who appeal to a second source of salvation, i.e., their decent from Abraham; (5) Judeans as an ethnic group rather than a religious one. 144 A. Reinhartz, “‘Jews’ and Jews in the Fourth Gospel,” 220; Culpepper, Anatomy, 126; Frey, Glory; Hakola, Identity Matters, 225–31; R. Sheridan, “Issues in the Translation of οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι in the Fourth Gospel,” JBL 132.3 (2013): 671–95. Sheridan has a particularly broad approach: “I suggest that οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι has a broader referent point than a subset of Jews and that, as such, the text allows for an interpretation of οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι as the Jews of all times and places, then as now, in an ethnic, geographical, political, and ‘religious’ sense (4:9; 5:1; 7:1–2; 11:54; 18:20)” (italics original). 145 See the similar observation made by J. Lieu, “Anti-Judaism in the Fourth Gospel: Explanation and Hermeneutics,” in Anti-Judaism and the Fourth Gospel, 110, where she says with reference to John’s Ioudaioi: “[T]he Gospel is not a discursive treatise but a narrative; to ignore its narrative character in favor of a thematic, conceptual, or ‘theological’ reading is to do violence to the specificity of the text, with its self-conscious, history-like quality.”

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Jews of all time everywhere;146 the Ioudaioi are always spatially and temporally conditioned, and Jesus’s discursive engagements are always occasion-based or topic-specific within the narrative. Even statements referring to a particular practice or ritual with the qualifying phrase “of the Ioudaioi” (2:6, 13; 5:1; 6:4; 7:2; 11:55; 19:40, 42) are land-of-Israel-based phenomena in John – the practice of which could look very differently or were not practiced at all by Jews abroad – and stood in distinction from, for example, Samaritan customs. Neither does the Johannine narrator offer any timeless value judgment of the Jewish ethnos in all times and all places.147 Further, to my mind, the “undifferentiated” view of Ioudaioi in John, overly preoccupied on the broad character of the term itself, misses the textured patterns of belief and practice that John maps onto them as a group. When we compare these patterns with those mapped onto Jesus and his followers and then set both within the broader context of Jewish identity formation in antiquity, it is possible to see John’s construction of the Ioudaioi not simply as an abstract “theoretical and theological category”148 but as representative of ideological perspectives held by some but not all Ioudaioi. Thus, I argue that what John intends to stand against – its anti-ness – is not Jews or Judaism in toto but rather an expression of Jewish identity bound up with the priestly politics of the late Second Temple period, a mode of Jewishness that, according to John, was hostile to Jesus and that Jesus heavily criticized.149

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Thus, I follow the sentiment expressed by T. Engberg-Pedersen, John and Philosophy: A New Reading of the Fourth Gospel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 329, that, particularly Sheridan’s overly broad approach, is unpersuasive. Even the comment in John 18:20, in which Jesus says “I have always taught in a synagogue and in the temple, where all the Jews gather together,” is not a timeless valuation of all Jews. Here Jesus is simply indicating that his teaching strategy has involved key places of Jewish gathering, in particular the temple, which, during festival times, would have indeed been the supra-local gathering place of all Jews (as well as non-Jewish ‘godfearers’) both from locales throughout the land of Israel and from abroad. See the similar comment made by Engberg-Pedersen, John and Philosophy, 329. Reinhartz, Cast Out of the Covenant, 103. Frey, Glory, rightly emphasizes christology as the main point of the conflict between Jesus and the Ioudaioi. However, if I understand Frey correctly, he emphasizes christology to the exclusion of ethnicity – it is a battle of fundamentally religious identities. In this sense, he seems to treat Johannine christology as a Christian dogmatics category, dislodged from its ethnic embeddedness. The same can be said of his understanding of devil language in John and ‘salvation’ (4:22). In other words, I want to stress here that ‘christology’ as well as categories such as ‘salvation,’ ‘sin,’ and ‘devil,’ which are so often conceived as ‘theological’ categories – particularly Protestant Christian ones – are ancient ethnic categories that John manipulates and transforms through its discursive practice.

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3.2 The Birth of God’s Children and Their Relationship to the “World” If John’s Ioudaioi take a genealogical exclusionist perspective on Jewishness, what is the Johannine Jesus’s view and what are the discursive strategies involved? We have already seen how, in some places, John indicates an openness to the inclusion of non-Jews into the people of the Jewish god, but it is important to discuss here what the underlying strategies might be that John implements to express this openness. The language of genealogy permeates John’s Gospel,150 especially in its first twelve chapters.151 The Prologue offers its programmatic statement in 1:12–13, in which “the children of god” are those not born of blood and male semen but rather those who have “received” and “become loyal” to the divine Logos and, thus, have experienced a birth “from god.”152 This idea is recapitulated with force in 3:3–8, Jesus’s conversation with Nicodemus, a Pharisee who works closely with the chief priests (7:45–52) and to whom Jesus asserts the importance of a birth not from a woman’s uterus (κοιλία) but “from the Spirit” (3:5–6).153 The emphasis in John on divine genealogy – birth from a god, or in John’s case, the 150 Largely because of this language, two recent books, published after the majority of the current study was written, have focused on the concept of “race” in John: A. Benko, Race in John: Toward an Ethnos-Conscious Approach (Lanham: Lexington/Fortress Academic, 2019); and R.G. Estrada III, A Pneumatology of Race in the Gospel of John: An Ethnocritical Study (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2019). 151 Although the concept of genealogy is not limited to the term γεννάω, the verb itself is used 18× in John (1:13; 3:3, 4 [2], 5, 6 [2], 7, 8; 8:41; 9:1, 2, 19, 20, 32; 16:21 [2]; 18:37), which would seem to indicate its importance as a theme. John’s almost obsessive use of paternal language to refer to figures such as the “fathers” of Israel’s past (as well as their “seed” and their “children”), Jesus’s own earthly father, and the fatherhood of the Jewish god derives as well from the Gospel’s interest in the concept of genealogy. John uses πατήρ 136×, nearly as much as the Synoptics do combined (137×). Comparatively, John refers to “mothers” (μήτηρ) only 11×. This would seem to suggest that John knows nothing of the principle of matrilineal descent developed in later rabbinic halakha (cf. Acts 16:1–3, where Timothy’s ethnicity is determined by his father’s Greekness despite his having a Jewish mother). The principle asserted that the offspring of a Gentile mother and a Jewish father is a Gentile, while the offspring of a Jewish mother and a Gentile father is a Jew. See Cohen, Beginnings of Jewishness, 263–307, where he outlines the principle and explores possible reasons for the development, none of which, Cohen admits, is very satisfying. 152 P.M. Phillips, The Prologue of the Fourth Gospel: A Sequential Reading, LNTS 294 (London: T&T Clark, 2006), 190–91 has argued persuasively from the perspective of a sequential reading strategy that the αὐτόν/αὐτοῦ in 1:12 is not a reference to the earthly Jesus but rather a continuation of the activity of the Logos. D. Boyarin makes a similar suggestion in his Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 100–104. See chapter 4. 153 Although I prefer not to use the term “race” and do not see John’s use of the concept of divine genealogy in John 3:1–10 as a “subversion” of genealogical relations, see Estrada III, A Pneumatology of Race, 130–51.

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Jewish god – is not unique. Like many people living in Greco-Roman antiquity, John shares the view that “gods run in the blood,” forming families and ethnic groups, “from the individual domestic unit to the wider γένος or ἔθνος.”154 John’s Ioudaioi, too, recognize this (John 8:41). However, as Estrada III’s work highlights, the problem in John is that there seem to be groups of people not of Jewish genealogy (Samaritans and Greeks) that, nevertheless, Jesus invites to participate in the life of the Jewish god.155 Whereas Paul might deploy the metaphor of υἱοθεσία, “adoption,” to solve the problem,156 John manipulates the concept of divine genealogy into a category called “the children of god,” which one is not born into but rather joins through loyalty, first, to God’s Logos (1:12) and then to Jesus as Logos Ensarkos (11:52).157 This Johannine strategy works hand-in-hand with its vision of Jewishness as one’s way of life rather than one’s birth. We are still left with the question: Who, specifically, is implied in the enigmatic category “the children of god”? The key passage is John 11:47–53. John Dennis has written a 400-page monograph on this portion of text, so I refer the reader there for a thorough discussion.158 I wish only to make a few points here, some of which will be revisited in chapter 5 on the topic of John and land. First, as Dennis’s excellent discussion highlights, λαός and ἔθνος in 11:47–53 are neither synonymous nor unrelated.159 Many scholars have rightly noted that λαός on the lips of Caiaphas is a reference to “das jüdische Gottesvolk.”160 As discussed in chapter 2, in John and in other ancient sources, however, ἔθνος is a broader term and implies more than just “people”; it encompasses other 154 Fredriksen, “On Not Giving Up the Godfearers,” 26; see also her recent article, “How Jewish is God? Divine Ethnicity in Paul’s Theology,” JBL 137.1 (2018): 193–212. 155 See Estrada III, A Pneumatology of Race, 169–90. However, while Estrada III interprets John as, in the end, arguing against the value of “ethnic kinship” in order to establish the Spirit’s life-giving function for all ethnic identities, I see ethnic kinship, particularly Jewish ethnic kinship, as the fundamental premise upon which John builds its concept of divine genealogy. In other words, I see in John non-Jewish identities, such as Samaritans and Greeks, being invited into Jewishness through “adoption” into the Jewish god’s family, rather than Jewishness being set aside out of a universalistic ideal of Jesus’s redemption of all ethnic identities. I am also in basic disagreement with Benko’s study (Race in John), which argues that John’s construction of a “heavenly level of racial identity” intends to make “earthly race” irrelevant. 156 Fredriksen, “How Jewish is God?” 206. 157 Paul, too, uses in four places a category called “the children of god”; interestingly, three of them are in Romans (8:16, 21; 9:8) within discursive proximity to his use of υἱοθεσία (8:15, 23; 9:4). The fourth is in Phil 2:15. 158 Dennis, Jesus’ Death. 159 Dennis, Jesus’ Death, 247–57. 160 Frey, “Heiden – Griechen – Gotteskinder,” 243; Dennis, Jesus’ Death, 249.

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markers of ethnic belonging, such as a people’s politically demarcated territory, its ancestral laws, and its gods and national cult. The wording of Caiaphas’s accidental prophesy actually bears out this observation: “it is beneficial for you that one person should die in behalf of the people [λαός] and not the entire nation perish [μὴ ὅλον τὸ ἔθνος ἀπόληται].” In other words, he is concerned not only about the fate of the people as such, but also other aspects that make the Jewish ethnos an ethnos, in particular the temple cult (11:48). Second, the above has implications, then, for how we understand the relationship between ἔθνος and τὰ τέκνα τοῦ θεοῦ τὰ διεσκορπισμένα in 11:51–52. On the one hand, it implies that Jesus’s death “in behalf of the ἔθνος” involves his dying for more than just the Jewish people (λαός); indeed, as I will discuss further in chapter 5, the concept of atonement for the land very well might be particularly in view here. Regardless of that now, John’s use of ἔθνος in 11:47–53 does appear to be limited to the Jewish ‘nation’ in the land of Israel, perhaps even more specifically to the region of Judea (see 11:48). On the other hand, τὰ τέκνα τοῦ θεοῦ τὰ διεσκορπισμένα are distinguishable on the basis of how they are affected by Jesus’s death, place, and ethnic scope. The language and syntax of 11:52, I think, supports this assertion. 1. Jesus’s death is given two distinct functions in this verse: (a) it is ὑπὲρ τοῦ ἔθνους, a “stellvertretendes Sterben”161 for the Jewish ethnos; and (b) it is ἵνα καὶ τὰ τέκνα τοῦ θεοῦ τὰ διεσκορπισμένα συναγάγῃ εἰς ἕν. In other words, while Jesus’s death has a vicariously atoning function for the Jewish ethnos, it has the additional yet discrete function of “gathering” the children of god “into one.” 2. While there is no reason to doubt that, for John, there were children of god inside the Jewish homeland, 11:52 denotes children of god scattered abroad (τὰ διεσκορπισμένα) that need to be gathered together (συνάγω). As we saw with the “sheep” in 10:16, a verse which has many parallels with 11:52,162 the language of “scattering/gathering” embeds the children of god within Jewish tradition, and assumes that Jewish believers in Jesus are included.163 But because 1:12 outlines so clearly that becoming the Jewish god’s child is dependent on loyalty to the Logos and its embodiment in Jesus, and because we see members of other ethnē doing just 161 Frey, “Heiden – Griechen – Gotteskinder,” 245. 162 Frey, “Heiden – Griechen – Gotteskinder,” 245. 163 Dennis, Jesus’ Death, 311–18; Frey, “Heiden – Griechen – Gotteskinder,” 244: “Die rätselhafte Bezeichnung τὰ τέκνα τοῦ θεοῦ τὰ διεσκορπισμένα in 11,52 spielt auf die spät alttestamentliche Hoffnung an, daß die in der Diaspora befindlichen Teile des Gottesvolkes in der messianischen Zeit wieder im Lande Israel gesammelt werden sollen.”

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this (Samaritans, godfearing Greeks), we can conclude similarly that the “children of god” includes Jews, Samaritans, and Judaizing Gentiles. Just as the establishment of “one flock” in 10:16 does not imply an erasure or, as Frey puts it, “einer ‘Zusammenführung’”164 of once distinct ethnic identities (the text does not say “one sheep,” emphasizing the identity of the sheep as such, but rather “one flock,” emphasizing the gatheredness of the two folds),165 so also the notion of “gathering into one” in 11:52 does not imply ethnic erasure or merging with reference to the children of god. While εἰς ἕν in 11:52 is, indeed, left rather ambiguous, it appears to me to be the outworking of a particular theological bias to conclude that it must refer to the constitution, through Jesus’s death, of a ‘new,’ singular λαός in which ethnic identities are erased.166 To be sure, the language of scattering/gathering is reminiscent of Jewish restoration eschatology and might suggest that one gathering place, i.e., the land, is in view, not the formation of one non-ethnic or new ethnic people group. However, Penwell argues compellingly that, for John, “the children of god” and the “one flock” are “trans-ethnic” categories established by means of a “cosmic broadening” of Jewish ethnic identity.167 The notion of a “cosmic broadening” of Jewish ethnicity does not mean that ethnic boundaries evaporate, with all those who receive Jesus as god’s enfleshed Logos becoming Jews. Rather, it means that John envisions people of discrete ethnic identities as capable of participating in Jewishness if they are adopted by the Jewish god and thus become his child. This strategy of “cosmic broadening” is another way for John to articulate the concept of divine genealogy, the idea that Jewishness is not only a matter of blood birth but rather birth “from above.” It is achieved, as Penwell says, “by shifting the unifying factor from the narrower limits of ancestral descent to the much broader boundary of sharing a disposition from a common culture.”168 Thus, while the group defined by the labels “children of god” and “one flock” includes discrete ethnic identities, its construction is not

164 Frey, “Heiden – Griechen – Gotteskinder,” 245. 165 Penwell, Jesus the Samaritan, 132. 166 S. Pancaro, “‘People of God’ in St. John’s Gospel,” NTS 16 (1970): 114–29 (127–28); B. Olsson Structure and Meaning in the Fourth Gospel: A Text-Linguistic Analysis of John 2:1– 11 and 4:1–42, CBNT 6 (Lund: C.W.K. Gleerup, 1974), 245–46; H. Klein, “Die Gemeinschaft der Gotteskinder: Zur Ekklesiologie der johanneisehen Schriften,” in Kirchengemeinschaft – Anspruch und Wirklichkeit: Festschrift für Georg Kretzschmar, ed. W.-D. Hauschild et al. (Stuttgart: Calwer Verlag, 1986), 59–68; Frey, “Heiden – Griechen – Gotteskinder,” 245. 167 Penwell, Jesus the Samaritan, 99 (see also pp. 100–103). “Trans-ethnic” here refers to the idea that the ethnicity of the adoptive parent differs from that of the adopted child. 168 Penwell, Jesus the Samaritan, 100.

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independent from Jewishness but rather based upon sharing a disposition of loyalty to Jesus that emerges from a common Jewish culture.169 Third, the “world” is another complicated and unstable term in John, so, while we cannot solve all of its problems here, we can say a few things with reference to its relationship to the “children of god.”170 Scholars such as Penwell, Lars Kierspel, Johannes Beutler, and Francis Moloney are right to highlight the broadening, universalizing movement of the Johannine Jesus’s mission,171 or, in Reinhartz’s phraseology, the presence of a “cosmological tale.”172 That is, to use Kierspel’s terminology, John starts with localized “particulars” – e.g., a Pharisee named Nicodemus, “Jews,” “Samaritans,” “Greeks” – and then “translates” them into “universal” categories – e.g., a human (ἄνθρωπος), “the world,” “children of god.”173 However, for Kierspel, this movement means that John is rather unconcerned about the particulars and is only interested in pointing readers beyond the temporal limits of the narrative. Particular groups shed their ethnic skin, so to say, en route to their symbolic translation into cosmological realities.174 Certainly, some groups of people in Greco-Roman antiquity, especially the philosophers, could think about themselves, others, and the gods in ‘universal’ ways that emphasized perceived cosmological realities or “cosmopolitanism” 169 If we were to put John’s compositional strategy here in social-historical terms, “the children of god” could be described as a voluntary association, in which Christ-followers are unified not by a membership criterion of ethnicity but rather the shared disposition of Christ-adherence. Note also the prevalence of familial language among associations in the Greco-Roman world; see P. Harland, “Familial Dimensions of Group Identity: ‘Brothers’ (ἀδελφοί) in Associations of the Greek East,” JBL 124.3 (2005): 491–513. 170 For a thorough treatment, see L. Kierspel, The Jews and the World in the Fourth Gospel: Parallelism, Function, and Context, WUNT 2.220 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006). 171 Penwell, “Jesus the Samaritan,” 131–32; Kierspel, The Jews and the World, 148–53, et passim; J. Beutler, Judaism and the Jews in the Gospel of John (Roma: Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 2006), 143; F.J. Moloney, “Israel, the People and the Jews in the Fourth Gospel,” in Israel und seine Heilstraditionen im Johannesevangelium: Festgabe für Johannes Beutler SJ zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. M. Labahn et al. (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2004), 356. 172 A. Reinhartz, The Word in the World: The Cosmological Tale in the Fourth Gospel, SBLMS 45 (Atlanta: SBL, 1992). 173 Kierspel, The Jews and the World, 148. 174 Kierspel’s reading thus has much in common with Bultmann’s interpretation of the Ioudaioi as a cypher for “the world,” and thus as symbolic of unbelief. See this view as presented by Lieu, “Anti-Judaism in the Fourth Gospel,” 112, where she notes that Bultmann’s reading emphasized the “timeless significance of the rejection of God’s revelation.” In the Preface to the third edition of Martyn’s History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel, the editors of the New Testament Library series also note this about Bultmann’s interpretation, calling it “oddly timeless.” I would add that his interpretation is (oddly) Protestant Christian.

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rather than one’s belonging to a particular ethnic group.175 While such an emphasis made ethnicity intellectually subservient to one’s “world citizenship,” it does not, at least for the Stoics, seem to have precluded taking ethnic belonging seriously and as a fundamental marker of social identity.176 Responsibility to one’s earthly ethnos remained a concern. The world inside John’s text, similarly, moves beyond Jewish ethnicity, but it does not move on without it. Indeed, it could not do so without undermining the very significance of Jesus’s death, which, as the Johannine Caiaphas prophesied, was to be “in behalf of the ethnos” (11:51; cf. 18:35). In other words, while John aims to create a trans-ethnic identity by way of the concept of the “children of god,” John’s Jesus retains his membership in and responsibility toward his own ethnos until the end. Thus, I prefer, like Penwell, Beutler, and Moloney, to view John’s so-called “universalizing” and use of the term “the world,” especially when it clearly has human activity in view, on the same trans- or multi-ethnic level as the “children of god,” but simply on the other end of the Christ-following spectrum. In other words, κόσμος, like “children of god,” is not a non-ethnic category. Whereas the “children of god” constitute a trans-ethnic group that has a decidedly positive relationship to Jesus and the Jewish god, “the world” is a trans-ethnic group that is much more touch-and-go within John’s narrative. That is, it represents an indeterminate narrative category with reference to its response to Jesus and his followers. For example, while God loves “the world,” having sent his son to give it eternal life (3:16) and save it (4:42; 12:47), “the world” can also hate Jesus and his followers (7:7; 15:18–19; 17:14); and, while “the world” can “go after Jesus” (in a positive sense; 12:19), being the object of Jesus’s and his disciples’ mission (6:14; 11:27; 12:46; 17:18; 18:20), the devil is its ruler (12:31; 14:30; 16:11). “The world,” similar to the Ioudaioi, vacillates between positive and negative responses to Jesus. But just because it lacks ethnic specificity does not make it a non-ethnic category. Just as Jews, Samaritans, and Greeks who become loyal to Jesus become, as such, “children of god,” we can presume John’s narrative 175 Epictetus and the Stoics are a good example. In his Discourses 1:9, Epictetus says: “If what is said by the philosophers regarding the kinship of God and men be true, what other course remains for men but that which Socrates took when asked to what country he belonged, never to say ‘I am an Athenian’ or ‘I am a Corinthian,’ but ‘I am a citizen of the universe’?” (trans. Oldfather, LCL 65). 176 Epictetus is again instructive on this point: “For what is a man? A part of a state; first of that state which is made up of gods and men, and then of that which is said to be very close to the other, the state that is a small copy of the universal state” (Discourses 2.5; trans. Oldfather, LCL 247). In other words, for Epictetus, while the “universal state” should be the primary (philosophical) focus of identity, one’s membership in a particular “state” (πόλις) is still a necessary part of human experience.

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logic is that Jews, Samaritans, and Greeks who reject Jesus form a trans-ethnic “world” that exercises hostility toward him. 4

Conclusion

This chapter has built a reading of John’s Ioudaioi that suggests they are Jews who take the genealogical exclusionary approach to defining Jewishness and, by implication, membership in the covenant people of the Jewish god. By looking in particular at John 7:2–10:21, which includes the most heated of all of the conflicts between Jesus and the Ioudaioi, I suggested that John does not attack Jewishness in general but specifically priestly-oriented approaches predicated upon genealogical definitions. John instead takes a ‘cultural’ approach to peoplehood, that is, a diasporic approach shaped around beliefs and practices that can be adopted rather than one’s blood birth. We saw that, while John includes within its broader vision of peoplehood non-Jewish groups, as non-Jews – that is, Samaritans and Judaizing Greeks who become faithful to Jesus do not need to ‘convert’ and become Jews – these identities nevertheless seem to presuppose a soteriological dependence upon one’s living and believing Jewishly. Exclusive loyalty to Jesus as Messiah and son of god still implies, for example, that one will worship the Jewish god (4:9–10) and be taught and practice the Jewish law (7:35; 8:38, 47; 9:31), including observing the holy days (12:20). While John rejects the Ioudaioi’s restrictive genealogical definition of covenant membership, the Gospel also makes the nature of non-Jewish identity dependent upon Jewishness and uses the ethno-religious mechanism of “divine genealogy,” quite common in Roman antiquity, to broaden the ethnic and genealogical scope of the “children” who have the Jewish god as their father (τὰ τέκνα τοῦ θεοῦ), in contrast to the ambivalence of the equally ethnically broad category of “the world.” While John’s perspective on the Jewish law has already arisen in this chapter in the context of debates about Jewishness, in the next chapter it becomes the center of our discussion. If Jewishness, according to John, is ultimately a matter of behavior, then a law is needed to shape that behavior; and if a law is needed to shape that behavior, then an authoritative interpreter of that law is also needed. Enter the Johannine Jesus.

chapter 4

“We Have a Law …” (John 19:7) The Ancestral Law and Its Laws in John 1

Introduction: Ethnos and Law in Greco-Roman and Jewish Antiquity

In antiquity, the glue that held any socio-politically defined people group together, any ethnos, was its governing body of laws, its legal constitution that regulated the practice of its ancestral traditions, often under the ultimate authority of an imperial state. In the 5th century BCE, Thucydides described the Spartan Pausanias’s adoption of Persian norms, such as dress and diet, as a “transgression of law and imitation of the barbarians” (τῇ τε παρανομίᾳ καὶ ζηλώσει τῶν βαρβάρων) and as a damnable departure from the well-established laws of Sparta (ἐξεδεδιῄτητο τῶν καθεστώτων νομίμων; Hist. 1:130–132). In 5th century Yehud, the priest-scribe Ezra is commissioned by the Persian king Artaxerxes to reconnect the Yehudim to the ancestral laws of their god and land and to separate the community from surrounding nations by discouraging exogamy (Ezra 7:25; 9–10; Neh 8:1–2; 9:1–2).1 Later Roman authors, such as Juvenal (Satires 14:96–106) and Tacitus (Hist. 5:5) in the first century and Cassius Dio (Hist. rom. 67:14:1–2) in the second and third centuries CE, construct a similar idea: Romans who adopt the ancestral laws of another ethnos, specifically those of the Jewish people are essentially guilty of ethnic treachery. Jewish authors, too, express this deep connection between the people of an ethnos and their native laws. Josephus combats Apion’s criticism of Jewish laws – specifically animal sacrifices, food restrictions, and circumcision – by drawing parallels to other ethnē: Greeks and Macedonians sacrifice animals profusely in their hecatombs, and the Egyptians practice circumcision, with their priests even abstaining from pork (C. Ap. 2:137–144). Apion, Josephus says, thus condemned himself unwittingly, since he blasphemed the laws of his own country (εἰς τοὺς πατρίους αὐτοῦ νόμους βλασφημίας δοῦναι) by criticizing the laws of the Jews. After all, Apion himself was a circumcised Egyptian.2 The 1 On this, see J.L. Berquist, Judaism in Persia’s Shadow: A Social and Historical Approach (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995). 2 Admittedly, Josephus says that Apion’s circumcision was out of necessity and the result of a medical procedure to cure an ulcer on his penis (C. Ap. 2:143). The procedure apparently failed.

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moral of Josephus’s story: Mindful people should mind their own laws and not malign the laws of others (C. Ap. 2:144). First Maccabees 1:11–15 discusses certain Jews who had supposedly made themselves foreskinned again (ἐποίησαν ἑαυτοῖς ἀκροβυστίας) and thus departed from the “holy covenant” (διαθήκης ἁγίας). Jonathan Z. Smith has argued that there is no indication that these individuals no longer considered themselves Jewish.3 But, as pointed out by Magnus Zetterholm, it is not only the undoing of circumcision in v. 15 that suggests they are indeed envisaged by the author as having abandoned their membership in the Jewish ethnos; it is this undoing, coupled with active adherence to the ancestral laws of nonJewish nations (τὰ νόμιμα τῶν ἐθνῶν), that indicates the author considers their actions to be commensurate with ethnic “apostasy,” that is, “a complete break with Judaism” (cf. the “missionary” activity of the Greeks in 2 Macc 6:1–6).4 Similarly, the author of 4 Maccabees (ca. 1st century CE) retells the story of Antiochus Epiphanes’s agenda of ethnic oppression using language similar to Thucydides: “He [Antiochus] both forced the ethnos to change its manner of living and distorted its form of government into every transgression” (ὃς καὶ ἐξεδιῄτησεν τὸ ἔθνος καὶ ἐξεπολίτευσεν ἐπὶ πᾶσαν παρανομίαν; 4:19 [ET mine]). The result was the building of gymnasiums and a concomitant neglect of the Jewish national cult.

3 J.Z. Smith, “Fences and Neighbors: Some Contours of Early Judaism,” in Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 13. 4 M. Zetterholm, The Formation of Christianity in Antioch: A Social-Scientific Approach to the Separation between Judaism and Christianity (London: Routledge, 2003), 72–73 (quote on p. 73). Zetterholm rightly highlights the combination here of making oneself foreskinned and the building of a gymnasium, an important socio-religious institution of the Greeks, which not only involved physical exercise but also Greek education and worship of the gods. Participating in the Greek gymnasium with a circumcised phallus would have been, and apparently was, met with disgust, even laughter, and proved a severe hindrance for Jews wishing to assimilate fully into the dominant cultural context (see A. Kerkeslager, “Maintaining Jewish Identity in the Greek Gymnasium: A ‘Jewish Load’ in CPJ 3.519 [= P. Schub. 37 = P. Berol. 13406],” JSJ 27.1 [1997]: 12–33). Hence, as discussed by Zetterholm, we see the rise of ‘epispasm,’ a medical operation that Jewish males evidently had to restore their foreskin “both to act and to look like Gentiles” (72). The fact that, for at least some Jews, especially priestlyoriented ones, circumcision played the central role of marking one’s Jewish identity, or lack thereof, with reference to appearance is also suggested in ALD 1:2–3: “[I]f < ⟨ ⟩ you> desire our daughter so that we all become broth[ers] | and friends, [1:3] circumcise your fleshly foreskin [| and look like us, and (then) you will be sealed | like us with the circumcision [of tru]th and we will be br[others] | for y[ou] . .” (text is from J.C. Greenfield, M.E. Stone, and E. Eshel, The Aramaic Levi Document: Edition, Translation, Commentary, SVTP 19 [Leiden: Brill, 2004], 57).

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The examples above (and others like them)5 come from texts that are, no doubt, rhetorically and ideologically charged, as they intend to construct and reify Jewish ethnic boundaries on the perceived premise that it was natural for every ethnos to adhere to its own ancestral laws and customs.6 On the ground, however, these boundaries were probably much more fluid, particularly the further outside the land of Israel one went.7 Inscriptional and papyrological sources from around the 1st century suggest, as Paula Fredriksen notes, that “the pagan–Jewish foot traffic went in both directions …[with] pagans (and, eventually, gentile Christians) in Jewish places and Jews in pagan (and, eventually, gentile Christian) places.”8 This tension between the literary and documentary sources probably reflects a historical situation in which real debates took place within Jewish communities over the extent to which their ancestral laws were open to the adherence of their non-Jewish neighbors and the extent to which Jews should interact with the laws and customs of others. Jubilees (2nd cent. BCE), much like the author of 1 Maccabees, projects a clear dividing line: Jews who live like members of other nations and worship their gods have departed from the constitutional laws of the god of Israel (the feasts, the Shabbat, sacrifices of the temple cult) and will thus perish under God’s judgment (1:8–15; 22:20–22). Put differently, the authors of Jubilees would probably have reacted unkindly to the 1st century synagogue community in Bosporus that had erected a manumission inscription, in which, following the social conventions peculiar to the region, the god of Israel is acknowledged right alongside the Greek gods Zeus, Gaia, and Helios (CIJ 1.690).9

5 See S. Mason, “Jews, Judaeans, Judaizing, Judaism: Problems of Categorization in Ancient History,” JSJ 38 (2007): 457–512 (480–84). 6 The ideology of ethnic separation and boundary marking, shaped around a community’s adherence to its own native laws, is fundamentally linked to the aims of colonial powers in the administration of their conquered provinces. This would be the case in both Jewish and non-Jewish political-historical contexts. On this, see A. Runesson, “Persian Imperial Politics, the Beginnings of Public Torah Readings, and the Origins of the Synagogue,” in The Ancient Synagogue from Its Origins to 200 CE, ed. B. Olsson and M. Zetterholm, CB NTS 39 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 2003), 70–80. 7 P. Fredriksen, “If It Looks Like a Duck, and It Quacks Like a Duck  … On Not Giving Up the Godfearers,” in A Most Reliable Witness: Essays in Honor of Ross Shepard Kraemer, ed. S.A. Harvey et al., Brown Judaic Studies (Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 2015), 29. 8 Fredriksen, “On Not Giving Up the Godfearers,” 30. 9 See ASSB no. 121. See also the discussion in D. Binder, “The Synagogue and the Gentiles,” in Attitudes to Gentiles in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. D.C. Sim and J.S. McLaren, LNTS 499 (London: T&T Clark, 2013), 109–25 (119–21).

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On the other hand, the strategy of Letter of Aristeas is to open the door widely so that non-Jews can interact with Jewish laws by means of the philosophical pursuit of virtue, piety, and “righteousness according to the soul” (128–69; esp. 147: ὅτι δέον ἐστι κατὰ ψυχήν, οἷς ἡ νομοθεσία διατέτακται, δικαιοσύνῃ συγχρῆσθαι). Philo is a bit more conflicted on the matter. There is no doubt he views the Mosaic law as the civic constitution of a particular ethnos (e.g., Flacc 50). But at the same time, he can interpret the law allegorically, and he can envision the law as open to non-Jews, both through a process of ‘conversion’ (Virt. 102–103, 179) and, like Aristeas, through the philosophical pursuit of wisdom and virtue;10 Jewish law and philosophy share the same ultimate goal of the knowledge of the only true God (Virt. 65).11 The Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael Baḥodesh 1 and 5, perhaps in direct debate with the Sifre to Deuteronomy, presents Torah not as the exclusive inheritance of the people of Israel but rather as a gift that, at least originally, was open to any nation that wished to receive it. The Torah, this midrash says, was not actually given in the land of Israel; it was given in the public and politically-neutral space of the Sinai desert, in broad daylight, and with all kinds of loud noises sounding off to attract the attention of the surrounding nations. Israel was simply the only one to respond. Its ancestral law, then, was open, at least theoretically, to any nation who desired it.12 The two sides of the debate sketched above from their sources can be classified and described using the spectrum of Jewish identity I have developed so far. First Maccabees, Jubilees, and Josephus’s discourse in Contra Apionem13 reflect 10

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Cf. the story in Josephus, Ant. 20:38–48, where the views of Ananias and Eleazar differ regarding whether King Izates should be circumcised: the former encourages the king not to circumcise but only adhere to a Jewish way of life; the latter encourages full “conversion” via circumcision. T.L. Donaldson, Judaism and the Gentiles: Jewish Patterns of Universalism (to 135 CE) (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2007), 220. M. Hirshman, “Rabbinic Universalism in the Second and Third Centuries,” HTR 93.2 (2000): 101–15 (103). See the entire article for other tannaitic midrashim, i.e., the midrashim of R. Ishmael (the Mekhilta and Sifre to Numbers) that indicate some early rabbis taught that Torah was open to non-Jews. Contrast these, however, with a passage in Sifre to Deuteronomy §345 (also a tannaitic midrash redacted in the early to mid-3rd century CE). Commenting on the opening of Deut 33:4 (“Moses commanded us a law …”), the midrash offers four interrelated interpretations that all, in one way or another, argue that the Torah is the special inheritance of Israel, betrothed to Israel alone, likened to a married woman with reference to the nations; the nations can look but they cannot touch, lest they endure the wrath of a jealous husband. The comments above on Josephus’s counter to Apion’s criticisms of Jews laws fits within a larger discourse that includes a defense of the priestly leadership of Jewish society at large via its authority in teaching the nation’s laws. See especially C. Ap. 2:184–88: “For us,

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the separatist ideology of a priestly-oriented type of Jewishness: strong borders are constructed under the politics of priestly authority, separating Jews and their constitutional laws from those of other nations, with adherence to Torah being ultimately dependent upon one’s membership in the Jewish ethnos.14 Aristeas, Philo, the Mekhilta, and synagogue inscriptions like CIJ 1.690 reflect diasporic type qualities:15 each source resonates with the need to maintain

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who are convinced that the law was originally laid down in accordance with God’s will, it would not be pious to fail to maintain it. What part of it would one change? What finer law could one invent? What could one bring from elsewhere as an improvement? What about the whole structure of the constitution? What could be finer or more just than [a structure] that has made God governor of the universe, that commits to the priests in concert the management of the most important matters, and, in turn, has entrusted to the high priest of all the governance of the other priests? These the legislator initially appointed to their office not for their wealth nor because they were superior by any other fortuitous advantage; but whoever of his generation surpassed others in persuasiveness and moderation, these were the people to whom he entrusted, in particular, the worship of God. That involved close supervision of the law and of the other life-habits; for the priests have been appointed as general over seers, as judges in disputes, and with responsibility for punishing those condemned. So, what regime could be more holy than this? What honor could be more fitting to God, where the whole mass [of people] is equipped for piety, the priests are entrusted with special supervision, and the whole constitution is organized like some rite of consecration?” (trans. Barclay). See D. Goodblatt, Elements of Ancient Jewish Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 29–30, where he notes the role of the Bible, in particular the laws, in shaping the “distinctive cultural markers of Jewish identity” (circumcision, kashrut, Shabbat, and endogamy) characteristic of priestly-led Jewish nationalism. An excellent example of the association of the ideology of ethnic separation with priestly politics is CIJ 2.1400, one of the Temple Balustrade Inscriptions from pre-70 Jerusalem, which reads: “No foreigner may enter within the balustrade around the sanctuary and the enclosure. Whoever is caught, on himself shall he put blame for the death which will ensue” (Μηθένα ἀλλογενῆ εἰσπορεύεσθαι ἐντὸς τοῦ περὶ τὸ ἱερὸν τρυφάκτου καὶ περιβόλου. Ὃς δ’ἂν ληφθῇ, ἑαυτῶι αἴτιος ἔσται διὰ τὸ ἐξακολουθεῖν θάνατον; Greek text and modified translation from E.J. Bickerman, “The Warning Inscriptions of Herod’s Temple,” JQR 37.4 [1947]: 387–405). Associating the passage from the Mekhilta with a diasporic type of Jewishness needs clarification here. Hirshman and, more recently, Azzan Yadin have claimed that the midrashim connected to R. Ishmael (Mekhilta and Sifre to Numbers), himself a priest, emerged from a group heir to ‘priestly’ practices (Hirshman, “Rabbinic Universalism,” 111–112; A. Yadin, Scripture as Logos: Rabbi Ishmael and the Origins of Midrash [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004], 165–68). While, especially in Sifre to Numbers §119, the priest is used as a model and metaphor to implement a ‘universalist’ strategy of Torah’s openness to non-Jews, this does not, in my view, qualify it as priestly-oriented Judaism, at least not in the same sense as those Jews bound up with the Bar Kokhba rebellion (see chapter 2). Just as Philo can speak of the priesthood and the temple metaphorically, for example to speak of God’s Logos-Sophia as the cosmic high priest who acts as God’s instrument in creation, these midrashim use the priest as a metaphor for all Israelites and even for the Gentile “who does Torah” (Hirshman, “Rabbinic Universalism,” 107–108).

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a fundamental ethnic connection to the ancestral laws while at the same time constructing broader roads – through, e.g., metaphorical or philosophical interpretation – for the sort of two-way foot traffic noted by Fredriksen, in order to remain socially and politically viable within contexts of greater cultural exchange. Where, then, does the Gospel of John fit within this context of ethnic debate? What sorts of strategies does it implement as it presents Jesus’s relationship to the ancestral law and the specific laws that appear within its narrative world? Does John demonstrate or advocate for a break with Jewish laws and thus, concomitantly, with membership in the Jewish ethnos?16 This chapter will address these questions and argue for a reading of John that understands its account of the law as reflecting debates within Judaism and, more specifically, as critically engaging the legal ideals of priestly-oriented modes of identity. John promotes a vision of Torah as, on the one hand, the ethnic possession of the Jewish people, but, on the other, with laws open to non-Jews and to metaphorical reconfigurations through the teaching of Jesus as the enfleshed Logos. For John, fidelity to the ethnos’s lawgiver should lead to fidelity to Jesus: Moses and Jesus speak the same language, with Jesus presented as the authoritative interpreter of Moses’s laws. 2

The Ancestral Law in John

In this section, we will look at references to the ancestral law as a whole in John (not specific laws). The goal here is two-fold: (1) to consider John’s presentation of the law as the ethnic possession of the Jewish people; and (2) to explain the Johannine Jesus’s relationship to this ethnic law, using Daniel Boyarin’s reading of John 1:16–17 as inroads into the discussion. 2.1 Moses as Lawgiver If a common feature of ethnē in antiquity was their own body of laws, then most ethnē also had their own lawgivers, their νομοθέται, who were credited with framing and shaping their constitution. The Athenians had their lawgivers working in the public assemblies, Solon chief among them (Thucydides, Hist. 8:92:2; Plutarch, Sol. 16:3; Philo, Opif. 104). The Cretans had Minos the 16

I use the term ‘break’ here inclusive of a range of associated ideas, such as replacement, expropriation, supersession (as a non-Jewish perspective; see chapter 1), and any other terms reflecting discontinuity between John and Judaism. Importantly, substitution does not imply discontinuity but rather quite the opposite.

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“excellent legislator” (νομοθέτης γενέσθαι σπουδαῖος), who was the first to establish “cities and forms of government” on the island (πόλεων καὶ πολίτειαις) (Strabo, Geog. 10:4). And the Jews had Moses, founder of the ethnos and its government, and giver of its laws (e.g., Strabo. Geog. 16:34–38; Diodorus Siculus, Hist. bib. 40:3; Tacitus, Hist. 5:4 [novos ritus … indidit]; Josephus, Ant. 1:18; Philo, Opif. 1–2; m. Avot 1:1).17 The characterization of Moses as lawgiver of the Jewish ethnos is clearly reflected in John’s Gospel. Unlike the Synoptics, in which Moses “speaks” (e.g., Matt 22:4; Mark 7:10) and “commands” (e.g., Matt 8:4; 19:7; Mark 1:44; 10:3; Luke 5:14), John explicitly describes Moses as the lawgiver, although not employing the specific language of νομοθέτης. Particularly important in this respect is John 1:17.18 This has traditionally been a very difficult passage to deal with exegetically. Since Severino Pancaro’s massive 1975 study, there has not been much forward movement in understanding how this verse relates not only to John’s view of the law but also to larger questions about John and Judaism.19 However, Daniel Boyarin has offered a reading of these verses (and 17 18

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On the concept of Moses as lawgiver in a range of ancient sources, see J. Lierman, The New Testament Moses: Christian Perceptions of Moses and Israel in the Setting of Jewish Religion, WUNT 2.173 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004). John 1:17: “the law was given through Moses” (ὁ νόμος διὰ Μωϋσέως ἐδόθη). See also 7:19, in which Jesus poses a question to the Ioudaioi that expects an obviously positive answer: “Has not Moses given you the law?” (οὐ Μωϋσῆς δέδωκεν ὑμῖν τὸν νόμον;); and 7:22, in which Moses is said to haven “given you circumcision.” S. Pancaro, The Law in the Fourth Gospel: The Torah and the Gospel, Moses and Jesus, Judaism and Christianity according to John, NovTSup 42 (Leiden: Brill, 1975). Already in 1975, Pancaro opined that the scholarly literature on the Prologue was immense and thus he needed to be highly selective in his treatment of John 1:17. I refer the reader to his work, which, although dated, is still the most comprehensive study of the topic, for a presentation of various positions and exegetical analysis. Post-Pancaro, the common, perhaps standard, trope in Johannine scholarship of the last twenty or so years has been to suggest, while John does not disparage or speak against the law, the Johannine Jesus clearly supersedes and stands above the law and displaces Moses for ultimate authority within the new community of believers. For some more recent scholarship on John 1:16–17, see R. Edwards, “ΧΑΡΙΝ ΑΝΤΙ ΧΑΡΙΤΟΣ (John 1.16): Grace and the Law in the Johannine Prologue,” JSNT 32 (1988): 3–15; A. Kerr, The Temple of Jesus’ Body, JSNTSup 220 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), 114–16; C. Keener, The Gospel of John (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2003), 1:405–26; and J.F. McHugh, John 1–4, ICC (London: T&T Clark, 2009), 49–77 G. Wheaton, The Role of Jewish Feasts in John’s Gospel, SNTSMS 162 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 19–24. The three major issues commentators have focused on are: (1) the meaning of the phrase χάριν ἀντὶ χάριτος in 1:16; (2) the relationship between ὁ νόμος διὰ Μωϋσέως ἐδόθη and ἡ χάρις καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ ἐγένετο in 1:17 and its relationship to 1:16; and (3) the meaning of ἡ χάρις καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια in 1:17. How one interprets these verses has often determined one’s overarching understanding of the relationship between the law and the Johannine Jesus. My goal here is not to offer

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the entire Prologue) that, to my mind, resolves some of the perennial conundrums.20 Four major points in his argument are worth stating here briefly, since they help advance the current argument for continuity between Jesus and the ancestral law. In Boyarin’s reading: 1. The Johannine Prologue gives the cosmological history, based upon an interpretative retelling (midrash) of Gen 1:1–5, of the three attempts of the god’s Word-Wisdom, his Logos-Sophia, to enter the world and find a home among the people.21 2. There is no incarnation before 1:14.22 Therefore, references to the world “not knowing him” (1:10) and his own people “not receiving him” (1:11) are not references to the rejection of the human Jesus by the Ioudaioi, but rather to the general (but not total) failure of the people of Israel to understand and accept the god’s Logos-Sophia.23 3. 1:14 introduces the incarnation for the first time and marks the third and final attempt of the Logos-Sophia to find a home among the people, this time in human flesh. 4. “The law was given through Moses” in 1:17 represents the earlier attempt of the Logos-Sophia to enter the world embodied in the Torah. While the Torah was the god’s gift to Israel, the people failed to understand it. But instead of returning permanently to its heavenly abode, the god’s Logos-Sophia became enfleshed in Jesus to do fully (πλήρης [v. 14], πλήρωμα [v. 16]) what Moses was only able to do partially: bring the gift of divine revelation (ἡ χάρις καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ ἐγένετο).24

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a comprehensive treatment of 1:16–17 but rather highlight that here, too, John envisions a fundamental ethnic continuity between the ancestral law and Jesus. The following comes from D. Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 89–111 (esp. 100–104). Many Johannine scholars have identified the divine speech activity in Genesis 1 and Wisdom’s role in creation in Proverbs 8 as part of the conceptual and scriptural background for John’s Prologue. See especially S. Ringe, Wisdom’s Friends: Community and Christology in the Fourth Gospel (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1999); Keener, John, 1:350–63. This idea is pursued in even greater exegetical detail in the sequential reading of the Prologue offered by P.M. Phillips, The Prologue of the Fourth Gospel: A Sequential Reading, LNTS 294 (London: T&T Clark, 2006). Here Boyarin cites Ringe’s work to suggest that these verses in the Prologue constitute “a retort to the interpretation of the Wisdom myth as found in Ben Sira 24, whereby Wisdom finally finds a home in Israel in the form of the Torah” (Border Lines, 102). Other examples of such “retorts” are 2 Esdras and 1 Enoch 42:1–2, texts that present the unrighteousness of Israel forcing Wisdom back to her heavenly abode. See Ringe, Wisdom’s Friends, 42–43. In light of the language of ‘giving’ and ‘receiving’ in 1:14–18, I take χάρις in 1:14, 16, and 17 to mean something like “gracious gift” (see Louw–Nida 57.103). Further, I take καί to function epexegetically in the phrases πλήρης χάριτος καὶ ἀληθείας (v. 14) and ἡ χάρις καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια

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In Boyarin’s reading, there is continuity between Jesus and Moses: The Torah’s status as the laws of the ethnos and Moses’s status as its lawgiver are unchallenged. What Israel lacked was an interpreter able to maximize (‘fulfill’) the revelatory potential of the Torah.25 No matter the precise nuance of the problematic preposition ἀντί in 1:16,26 vv. 17–18 thus present a progressive

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(v. 17), as it clarifies and restates precisely what the “gracious gift” is: ἀλήθεια. This might help explain why the term χάρις is not used elsewhere in John’s narrative, while ἀλήθεια occurs in eighteen other places. John’s focus is on the ἀλήθεια. On the use of ἀλήθεια in John to refer to divine revelation, see Pancaro, The Law in the Fourth Gospel, 537, et passim; E.W. Mburu, Qumran and the Origins of Johannine Language and Symbolism, Jewish and Christian Texts Series 8 (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 177–79. Whether ἡ χάρις καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια specifically alludes to the ‫ חסד ואמת‬of YHWH’s declaration in Exod 34:6 or to the broader context of 34:6–7, at the very least it seems we can say that the Greek phrase is meant somehow to allude to the proclamation of the divine identity to Moses at Sinai. There, at Moses’ request (Exod 33:17–23), YHWH agrees to reveal his glory, but only partially, with Moses only able to see his back. This background suggests that, in saying “grace and truth came through Jesus Christ,” John is presenting Jesus as the vehicle through which God has fully proclaimed his divine identity. See A. Hanson, “John 1.14–18 and Exodus XXXIV,” NTS 23 (1976–77): 90–101 (93). R. Bultmann, The Gospel of John, trans. G.R. Beasley-Murray (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971), 66, argues that there is no connection between John’s ἡ χάρις καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια and the ‫ חסד ואמת‬of Exodus. He observes that John does not use the term “truth” in the sense of “faithfulness,” and that the LXX translates ‫ חסד‬with ἔλος, not χάρις in nearly every instance (including Exod 34:6). Hanson, on the other hand, provides strong counterevidence saying, “When we turn to the remains of the other Greek translations, we find much less restraint in using χάρις for ‫“( ”חסד‬John 1.14–18,” 93). He then cites several ancient versions of the LXX in which χάρις is used to translate ‫חסד‬: Symmachus’s in 2 Sam 2:6; 10:2; Theodotion’s rendering of Prov 31:26; Quinta’s of Ps 33:5; and Sexta’s of Pss 30:17; 33:18. Z.C. Hodges, “Grace after Grace – John 1:16,” Bib Sac 135 (1978): 34–45 likewise argues against Hanson’s reading, largely on the same lexicographical grounds as Bultmann did before. It is interesting to note, however, that while Hodges believes that John never uses “truth” in sense of “faithfulness,” it can hardly be said that, as Hodges suggests, John uses “truth” in the sense of “punishment of the guilty.” Rather, the ἀληθ- word group seems to operate around the notion of divine revelation in John, something that is also taking place in the Sinai narrative. Hence the rise, particularly in the Second Temple period, of various ideal ‘teacher’ figures, such as those found in the Qumran scrolls (‘Teacher of Righteousness’; ‘Expert Interpreter’) and even in the Samaritan Messiah, the Taheb (cf. John 4:25, where the woman expects a messiah who will “proclaim all things to us”). Although there are good reasons for taking ἀντί in 1:16 as ‘instead of,’ implying some sort of supersession of Moses by Jesus, there seem to be just as many good reasons to understand it as signaling accumulation (‘gift upon gift’), especially in light of the mention of “receiving out of the fullness” of the enfleshed Logos. For discussion of the various approaches to ἀντί in 1:16, see C.K. Barrett, The Gospel According to St. John: An Introduction with Commentary and Notes on the Greek Text, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978), 168– 69; Edwards, “ΧΑΡΙΝ ΑΝΤΙ ΧΑΡΙΤΟΣ”; and Hodges, “Grace after Grace,” although each of these scholars draws a different conclusion.

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synthetic parallelism.27 The verses start by stating the ethnic event of the giving of the law in v. 17a; the gift of the law’s full divine revelation (ἡ χάρις καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια) through Jesus Messiah is stated in v. 17b. Verse 18a’s assertion, that “No one has ever seen God,” almost certainly evokes YHWH’s self-proclamation and his giving of the second set of laws to Moses in Exod 33:12–34:9, especially 33:20– 23, where Moses is given only a partial vision of YHWH, “for a person shall not see me and live.”28 John 1:18a is thus a declaration that “the law given through Moses” (v. 17a) was based only on partial revelation, that is, it was bestowed on the premise that no one, not even the lawgiver himself, had fully seen Israel’s god. John 1:18b proceeds to draw the bold – but certainly not ‘un-Jewish’ – conclusion in parallel with v. 17b, that the divine origins of the enfleshed Logos gives him the right to perform an act of (to use a slight anachronism) “exegesis” (ἐξηγήσατο). However, a problem in v. 18b is that there is no stated object for the verb ἐξηγήσατο: what, or whom, is the incarnate Logos, the μονογενὴς θεὸς, interpreting? One option is to go with most modern English translations and supply “him” as the object, meaning that the Logos “interprets god,” resulting in a sort of exegesis of the divine.29 In favor of this reading is that, at the start of v. 18, the object of the first finite verb (ἑώρακεν) is, indeed, θεόν. It might follow, then, that we should supply θεόν as the object for the second finite verb also (ἐξηγήσατο). Another option, however, is to supply “it” (αὐτόν) as the object of ἐξηγήσατο, taking “it” to refer to “the law” mentioned in v. 17.30 This reading stresses the chrono-sequential (rather than antithetical) and parallel nature of vv. 17–18, and thus clearly distinguishes between the two different but 27

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The term “progressive parallelism” is inspired by Edwards (“ΧΑΡΙΝ ΑΝΤΙ ΧΑΡΙΤΟΣ”), but it is used differently here. Pancaro, The Law in the Fourth Gospel, 537 uses the term “synthetical parallelism” to describe the idea that the ἡ χάρις καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια mentioned in v. 17, “already to be found in the Law, are found in their plentitude in Jesus.” It is nearly a given in current scholarship to identify Exodus 32–34 as the scriptural background of John 1:14–18. See, e.g., H. Mowvley, “John 1:14–18 in the Light of Exodus 33:7– 34:35,” ExpTim 95 (1984): 135–37; Keener, John, 1:405–26; McHugh, John 1–4, 49–77. Most English translations supply ‘him,’ referring to God, or ‘God,’ as the object (NRSV, NET, NASB, KJV, ESV, CEB, NIV, et al.). As far as I can tell, only Lutherbibel (1545, 1912, 2017) uses es (‘it’) in its translation of the last part of v. 18 (“der Eingeborene, der Gott ist und in des Vaters Schoß ist, der hat es verkündigt”), in comparison to other major German translations, such as Einheitsübersetzung 2016, Zürcher Bibel, and Gute Nachricht Bibel, which render the clause without a direct object (Einheitsübersetzung 2016 and Zürcher Bibel: “er hat Kunde gebracht”; Gute Nachricht Bibel: “der Eine, der selbst Gott ist und mit dem Vater in engster Gemeinschaft steht, hat uns gesagt und gezeigt, wer Gott ist”).

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complementary missions of Moses and Jesus: Moses is the agent through whom the law was given (ἐδόθη); Jesus is the agent through whom the gift of full divine revelation came (ἐγένετο). Importantly, in this reading, the revelation is not detached from the giving of the law but rather derives from it. Put simply, Moses gave it, but Jesus revealed it. There is no antagonism presented here between Moses and Jesus or between the law and Jesus’s ἡ χάρις καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια.31 Jesus might be considered “greater” than Moses, but only in the sense that, for John, he is the only one who can fulfill the task of revealing what Moses had first been given at Sinai. In my view, this line of revelatory succession is not so different than the (though much longer) line of Torah transmission presented in m. Avot 1: the process starts with Moses’s reception of the law at Sinai, which is then passed down to the men of the great assembly and, eventually, to the tannaitic rabbis who claimed to teach it authoritatively. Boyarin states it nicely: “Jesus comes to fulfill the mission of Moses, not to displace it. The Torah simply needed a better exegete, the Logos Ensarkos, a fitting teacher for flesh and blood.”32 In the end, however, these two readings of 1:18 are not mutually exclusive and both are probably right. Jesus, as Logos and only-begotten god, has seen what others have not, at least not fully, and so possesses the ability to divinely interpret the god of Israel. But his “interpretation” is not detached or independent from Torah; rather, it proceeds from it on the basic premise of the ethnic event of the giving of the law to Israel, coupled with the Logos’s privileged position “in the bosom of the father” (εἰς τὸν κόλπον τοῦ πατρὸς). This idea is developed throughout John’s narrative, in which the theme of Jesus as “rabbi/teacher” cannot involve anything other than his teaching of Torah or Jewish scripture more generally.33

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Pace Pancaro, The Law in the Fourth Gospel, 539–40. The antithesis Pancaro reads into John 1:17 derives from (1) his unwillingness to see ἡ χάρις καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια as something also possessed by or contained in the law, since it is something brought by Jesus, not Moses – the two are mutually exclusive; and (2) his overarching historical paradigm, within which there are a number of other antitheses: Christ versus Moses, the Law versus the Gospel, and Judaism versus Christianity (see p. 367). Pancaro’s interpretation wrongly assumes that ὁ νόμος and ἡ χάρις καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια are two distinct yet equal categories that are ultimately incommensurate. I argue above that they form one category (‘the law and full revelation’) of unequal parts (partial revelation by Moses; full revelation by Jesus), which are fundamentally dependent upon each other. Boyarin, Border Lines, 104, and earlier on the same page: “When the incarnate Logos speaks, he speaks Torah.” On Jesus as teacher of the law, especially in John 7, see C. Keith, The Pericope Adulterae, the Gospel of John, and the Literacy of Jesus, NTTSD 38 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 141–60.

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Approaches to the Law in John: Statutory vs. Messianic Legal Hermeneutics What hermeneutical approaches to the law are presented in the world inside John’s text? Several passages indicate that John envisions the ancestral law as having a constitutional and statutory function for a particular group; that is, the Jewish law is seen, by some in the narrative, as a civic/political instrument from which flow legally enforceable regulations. For example, in 7:51, Nicodemus questions the legal strategy of the chief priests and Pharisees used against Jesus by asking: “Does our law [ὁ νόμος ἡμῶν] judge a person unless hearing first from him and knowing what he does?” Jesus himself draws upon the statutory framework of Deut 17:6, that the testimony of two people validates one’s claim (8:17). And, at the start of Jesus’s trial, Pilate urges the Ioudaioi – who are closely linked in this episode with the chief priests and temple assistants (see 19:6–7) – to “judge him according to your law [κατὰ τὸν νόμον ὑμῶν]” (18:31). Here in 18:31, these Judean Jews apparently deem it inappropriate (οὐκ ἔξεστιν) to carry out an actual execution. In 19:7, they clearly understand Jesus’s earlier claim to be “a son of god” as a blasphemous violation of their ethnic law (Lev 24:16), which they in turn present to Pilate in 19:12 as a threat to Caesar’s kingship: “We have a law [ἡμεῖς νόμον ἔχομεν], and according to the law he must die because he made himself a son of god … Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar” (cf. 5:18; 10:33). For John, then, there seems to be a particular group of Jews in Judea, working closely with the Judean priesthood, that understands the ancestral laws as the political constitution of the Jewish ethnos and interprets Jesus’s claims as a threatening violation of this constitution. On the other hand, John is also rather clear on the idea that Jesus’s identityclaims function in concert with Moses’s laws and with other Jewish ancestral writings as well.34 While there is no indication that John thinks the ancestral law lacks statutory authority, the law certainly takes on a messianic orientation, as both Moses and Israel’s prophets are said to have forewritten about Jesus’s messianic identity (1:41, 45). In 5:18–47, contrary to the interpretation of the Ioudaioi, the law in fact validates (μαρτυρέω) Jesus’s claim to honors equal to Israel’s god, not in the idolatrous sense of Rome’s divine ruler cult, but in the sense of Israel’s royal “son of god” and Danielic “son of man” (5:23, 25–27, 39).35 Loyalty to Moses as the lawgiver of the ethnos should lead the Ioudaioi to 2.2

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The division between ‘law’ and other Jewish ancestral writings in John appears to be porous at times. The term νόμος used in 10:34 and 15:25 with reference to ‘non-Mosaic’ writings. The term γραφή, however, is used consistently with reference to the Psalms and Prophets (2:22; 5:39; 7:38, 42; 10:35; 13:18; 17:12; 19:24, 28, 36, 37; 20:9). On divine honors (ἰσόθεοι τίμαι) in the Greco-Roman ruler cult, and the possibility that John’s Ioudaioi mistake Jesus’s claims in 5:17 as claims to be a divine pagan ruler,

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become loyal to Jesus (vv. 45–47). John assumes that “everyone who has heard and learned from the Father,” that is, everyone who keeps the law, will likewise come to Jesus (6:45). There is an essential continuity between Jesus and Moses. The problem from John’s perspective is that the Ioudaioi are not loyal to their own lawgiver in the first place (5:47). Ironically, the ancestral law acts as their accuser (5:45), charging them with disloyalty to the ethnos and its “only god” (5:44). In 10:34–36, Jesus invokes the “law” (although the citation is from Ps 82:6) in defense from a similar accusation of blasphemy. Here he reasons that, since the law itself calls “gods” those to whom the word of Israel’s god (ὁ λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ) came, and since “the scripture cannot be loosened,” it is logical to conclude that, far from blasphemy, the one whom god has sent into the world as his Logos should also be called “a son of god.” Jesus’s claim of continuity with Moses does not mean that he interprets scripture in the same way everyone else in John does  – far from it. A good example of this is 6:31–32, in which Jesus engages in midrashic (or midrashlike) debate with the crowd in Capernaum’s synagogue. The crowd, looking for a sign to justify joining Jesus’s movement, quotes Ps 78:24 to him: “He gave them bread from heaven to eat.” The crowd apparently interprets the pronoun “he” as referring to Moses; thus, they want Jesus to do something akin to Moses, who, they think scripture says, miraculously gave their fathers manna in the desert. As Peder Borgen notes, Jesus, as a good dialectical exegete, corrects their interpretation: in fact, “he” refers to Israel’s god, not Moses, a point that Moses himself acknowledges (e.g., Exod 16:1–8, 15).36 Keener rightly concludes from this that, “[M]ost early Jewish interpreters, even those who claimed that Moses’ virtue merited the gift, would have sided with Jesus in declaring God the giver of manna.”37 Jesus, therefore, is not breaking with or downgrading Moses here; he is simply clarifying what scripture actually says. He does not, as the “bread of god” and the “bread of life” (6:33, 35), replace the Torah, but

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see C. Fletcher-Louis, “Jesus is ‘Equal with God’ because the Son of God is the Son of Man (John 5)” (paper presented at the 6th Nangeroni Meeting of the Enoch Seminar, Camaldoli, Italy, 19–24 June 2016). A revision of his thesis will be published in a forthcoming book: C. Fletcher-Louis, Equal with God: Jesus’ Divine Identity, Apocalyptic, the High Priesthood, and the Greco-Roman Ruler Cult in John 5 (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock). P. Borgen, Bread from Heaven: An Exegetical Study of the Concept of Manna in the Gospel of John and the Writings of Philo, NovTSup 10 (Leiden: Brill, 1965), 61–67, where he notes the similarity with the rabbinic al-tiqri exegetical method: “Do not read [Moses] but [God]”; do not read ‫“( נתן‬has given”) but ‫“( נותן‬is giving”). A similar kind of corrective/clarifying exegesis is found in John 7:22, in which Jesus says about the law of circumcision: “Moses gave you circumcision – not that it was from Moses but from the fathers – and you circumcise a male on the Sabbath.” Keener, John, 680.

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rather, as Borgen argues, his words are the Torah’s truest expression as the embodiment of god’s wisdom: In John the bread from heaven has been given the life-giving functions of Torah and wisdom. The presence of the bread is pictured with features from the theophany at Sinai and the invitation to eat and drink extended by wisdom. He who shares in the (preparatory) revelation at Sinai accepts the invitation and “comes to” wisdom/Jesus (John 6,45). The midrashic formula of “I am” receives in this context the force of the self predication of wisdom with overtones from God’s theophanic presentation of Himself. By combining ideas about the Torah, the theophany at Sinai and the wisdom, John 6,31–58 follows the lines suggested by the prologue (1,1–18) where the same combination has been made.38 In 13:34, the Johannine ‘love command’ (ὑμεῖς ἀγαπᾶτε ἀλλήλους; also 15:12) is introduced by Jesus as a “new commandment” (ἐντολή καινή). While, as John Kloppenborg notes, the Gospel’s inward-focused formulation (ἀγαπᾶτε ἀλλήλους) contrasts with the outward-focused formulations found in the Synoptic Gospels (e.g., ἀγαπᾶτε τὸν πλησίον or τοὺς ἐχθρούς ὑμῶν),39 the Johannine ‘love command’ is still clearly and recognizably an interpretation of the Torah’s command to “love your neighbor as yourself” (LXX Lev. 19:18: ἀγαπήσεις τὸν πλησίον σου ὡς σεαυτόν). Beth Stovell has convincingly argued that here in the Fourth Gospel, as well as in the Johannine Epistles (1 John 2:7, 8; 3:11; 2 John 5), the concepts of ‘love’ and ‘law’ are linked in such a way that evinces John’s continuity with the command in Lev. 19:18 and its interpretation in other Jewish literature from the Second Temple period;40 there is nothing that suggests the Johannine Jesus “supplants the regulations of the former covenant governing the life of the community.”41 Jesus’s command to “love one another” would hardly have been “new” for Jewish listeners.42 38 39 40 41 42

Borgen, Bread from Heaven, 157. Noted by J.S. Kloppenborg, “Disaffiliation in Associations and the ἀποσυναγωγός of John,” HvTSt 67 (2011): 159–74 (171); cf. Matt 5:43–44; 19:19; 22:39; Mark 12:31; Luke 6:27; 6:35. B.M. Stovell, “Love One Another and Love the World: The Love Command and Jewish Ethics in the Johannine Community,” in Christian Origins and the Establishment of the Early Jesus Movement, ed. S.E. Porter and A.W. Pitts, TENT 12 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 426–58. As suggested by A. Lacomara, “Deuteronomy and the Farewell Discourse (Jn 13:31–16:33),” CBQ 36.1 (1974): 65–84 (75). It is possible the Johannine Epistles themselves acknowledge this, especially in 1 John 2:7– 8; 2 John 5, where the Elder explicitly states that he is writing “no new commandment” but rather something that his listeners have heard “from the beginning.” However, “from

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However, as Keener notes, what is “new” in the Johannine ‘love command’ is the high standard for this love: Jesus calls the disciples to love one another “just as I have loved you,” which Jesus describes later in 15:12–13 as a sacrificial laying down of one’s life for others.43 By introducing a “new commandment,” Jesus raises the standard of conduct by which one’s fulfillment of Lev. 19:18 is to be judged. That is, he is establishing a stricter interpretation of “love” in Lev 19:18, in which it is not enough simply not to hate or take physical vengeance upon others within the community;44 it is not enough to love another as much as one loves themself. Rather, the new halakhic principle – not “new law” – is to love another more than one loves themself. For John, this strict “love halakha” is the means by which all others would be able to identify specifically Jesus’s disciples as compared to the disciples garnered by other Jewish teachers (13:35). The strategy here is not unlike the Mishnah’s exhortation to the good interpreter to “raise up many disciples” and “make a fence for the Torah” (m. Avot 1:1). Such “fences” were hermeneutical systems of halakhic principles that were seen to protect a rabbi’s disciples from even coming close to transgressing the Torah itself.45 They were perceived as mechanisms that raised the bar for Torah observance. The Johannine Jesus raises the standard for fulfilling the Torah’s “love command,” and his emphasis throughout the Farewell Discourse on both love for other and love for the god of Israel (13:34–35; 14:15–16, 21; 15:12–15) simultaneously reflects his willingness, as in the Synoptic Gospels, to boil down the Torah to the two fundamental commandments upon which “depend all the Law and the prophets.”46 Thus, in John, the “new com-

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the beginning” could also very well refer to the apostolic tradition encapsulated in the Gospel. Keener, John, 924. LXX Lev. 19:18: οὐκ ἐκδικᾶταί σου ἡ χείρ, καὶ οὐ μηνιεῖς τοῖς υἱοῖς τοῦ λαοῦ σου. Some scholars have argued that Jesus is portrayed in other Gospels as similarly building a fence around the Torah or something akin to this rabbinic principle. For example, Przybylski suggests that the Matthean Jesus uses the formula in the Sermon on the Mount, “You have heard it that it was said … but I say to you …,” to introduce halakhot that, from Matthew’s perspective, raise the standard of Torah observance, not overturn it. See B. Przybylski, Righteousness in Matthew and his World of Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 83, followed recently by A. Runesson, Divine Wrath and Salvation in Matthew: The Narrative World of the First Gospel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016), 66. Markus Bockmuehl suggests that, in his dispute with the Pharisees over handwashing in Mark 7:1–13 (and parallels), Jesus engages in “the erection of an interpretive fence.” See M. Bockmuehl, Jewish Law in Gentile Churches: Halakhah and the Beginning of Christian Public Ethics (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), 4. Matt 22:36–39; Mark 12:29–34; Luke 10:25–28. Cf. the story preserved in the Bavli in Shabb. 31a about a Gentile who wants to be converted but on the condition that he be taught the entire Torah while he stands on one foot. Shammai refuses to do it; Hillel agrees, saying

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mandment,” the “new halakha,” is a strategy that allows Jesus to erect a fence around what he deems to be the essence of the Torah. What should we make of the apparent distance that John at times places between Jesus and the law by having him refer to it as “your law” (8:17; 10:34) or “their law” (15:25) in his debates with the Ioudaioi? Scholars have often taken these references as evidence of the Johannine Jesus’s critical position outside the Jewish law, as if it is not his own or has no obligation to it.47 After all, Pilate, a Roman official who is obviously not subject to Jewish law, uses the same phrase in a statement made to the Ioudaioi and their chief priests (18:31). It is difficult, however, to see how this interpretation coheres with other passages that reflect Jesus’s continuity with the law and his clear view that “scripture cannot be loosened” (10:35). Indeed, in 8:17; 10:34; and 15:25, references to the law end up supporting Jesus’s mission and claims. In other places, Jesus also seems quite interested in making sure the halakhic elements of the law are kept intact (7:19–24), and, as argued earlier, it is hard to imagine that the prominent Johannine theme of Jesus as teacher does not involve his teaching the law (6:59; 7:14, 28, 35; 8:20; 18:19). I suggest, then, that three other options might make better sense of the “your law/their law” passages, none of which are mutually exclusive. First, all three passages occur within John’s narrative after the Samaritan woman episode, which was a hugely successful event in the non-Jewish ministry of Jesus (4:1–42, esp. vv. 39–42). The “your law/their law” passages, which are directed at Judean Jews, could reflect John’s Samaritan sensitivities, since the Samaritans had their own ethnic law of Moses.48 The same can be said with reference to passages such as John 2:6 (“according to the purification

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“that which is hateful to you do not do to another; that is the entire Torah, and the rest is its interpretation. Go study” (Davidson edition). For example, Dodd suggested that, while the evangelist certainly demonstrates a knowledge of the Mosaic Law, “he clearly feels himself to be outside the Jewish system” (Interpretation, 82). See also, e.g., Pancaro, The Law in the Fourth Gospel, 517–19; R. Hakola, Identity Matters: John, the Jews and Jewishness, NovTSup 118 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 138–39; P. Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ: The Origins of New Testament Images of Jesus, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 25–26; J. Frey, “Temple and Identity in Early Christianity and in the Johannine Community: Reflections on the ‘Parting of the Ways’,” in Was 70 CE a Watershed in Jewish History? On Jews and Judaism before and after the Destruction of the Second Temple, AJEC 78, ed. D.R. Schwartz and Z. Weiss (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 489–90; S. Westerholm, Law and Ethics in Early Judaism and the New Testament, WUNT 383 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 119. For a recent survey and treatment of the Samaritan Torah, see R. Pummer, The Samaritans: A Profile (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), 195–218.

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of the Jews”) and 5:1 (“a feast of the Jews”), since Samaritan Israelites also had their own purification laws and ancestral feasts.49 John’s Jesus, in other words, directs his focus toward the ethnic laws of the Jews, which allows him, at the same time, to acknowledge that their Israelite sibling, the Samaritans, have a rightful claim to Moses as well. This might explain how Jesus can observe and know the Jewish law so well and still at times use language that seems to put him ‘outside’ it. While “salvation is by means of the Jews” (4:22), and while the Johannine Jesus, as a Jew, is primarily engaged in issues related to the Judean law, the implications of the “your law/their law” passages is not that Jesus stands outside the law as a whole, but rather that he understands that more than one Israelite group has an ethnic claim to Moses as their lawgiver. Second, the use of the second- and third-person plurals could function linguistically to generate a certain pragmatic effect. Steven Runge, a linguist specializing in Greek discourse grammar, discusses this precise phenomenon with a helpful example, so it is worth quoting him fully here: It is very important to distinguish between the inherent meaning of something (its semantic meaning) and the effect achieved by using it in a particular context (its pragmatic effect). For instance, the phrase “your children” is straightforward in its inherent meaning and typically is used to refer to kids that are not mine, but yours. If used in the right context however, a very different pragmatic effect can be achieved, one that is not part of its inherent meaning … Imagine that my wife asked me how our kids behaved while she was out. If I began my answer with “Your children …,” it would have a specific pragmatic effect, based on the context. This effect is not some hidden semantic meaning underlying the phrase, just an effect of using it in the right way in the right context. The pragmatic effect is achieved by using a more distant relational expression (your) in a context where a less distant one holds true (my). The expected norm is that I would use the closest relational expression possible. After all, they are my kids too! Calling them my kids or the kids is the expected norm. When I depart from this norm, a specific pragmatic effect of “distancing” is achieved, even though what I said was completely truthful.50 49 50

See Pummer, The Samaritans, 115–18 (purity laws, esp. regarding ritual baths), 260–67 (feasts). S.E. Runge, Discourse Grammar of the Greek New Testament: A Practical Introduction for Teaching and Exegesis (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2010), 7–8.

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In John, Jesus’s opponents have placed their supreme hope in Moses, but little do they know that Moses actually stands as their accuser (5:45). Thus, quite ironically, it is their own law that substantiates Jesus’s words and actions. But rather than indicating Jesus’s position outside Jewish law, as if this law is not his own, the pragmatic effect of using the second- and third-person plurals is a heightened severity in Jesus’s critique of his own Jewish compatriots. Third and closely related to the second, the rhetoric of “your law/their law” seems to form part of a larger critique not of the ancestral law but of the statutory interpretation of it by Jews of a priestly-oriented type of identity. In 8:17–18, Jesus counters the Pharisees’ legal objection (based on Deut 17:6; Num 35:30), that he has only one witness to validate his activity, by invoking two: himself and the father. While this argument would hardly have stood up in an actual court case, it reflects the Johannine Jesus’s reinterpretation of this law based upon his unique and privileged relation to the father (8:19–29). In 10:34–38, Jesus critically responds to an accusation from Jerusalem Jews of violating the blasphemy law of Lev 24:16 by rooting his claim to divine sonship within another authoritative but non-legal writing (Ps 82:6). Therefore, while Jesus’s claims run against the grain of a priestly-oriented type of interpretation of the law, they do not run against the grain of ‘scripture.’51 Further, in 15:25, the third person plural subjects in “the word written in their law must be fulfilled” and the ambiguous scriptural citation “they hated me without reason” are connected with priestly-oriented type Ioudaioi in 16:2, who will not only have Christ-followers put out of the public assemblies but will also kill them as part of their “offering of cultic worship” to the god of Israel (λατρείαν προσφέρειν τῷ θεῷ).52 The use of “their law” in 15:25 seems again to function not as a dividing wall between Jesus and the law but as a critique of specifically Judean Jews who ironically self-fulfill the prophecy of their own ethnic writings.

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Perhaps a helpful analogy here might be the apparent debate between rabbinic Jews and non-rabbinic Jews over the existence of “two powers in heaven.” Mekh. Exod 20:2 (Baḥodesh 5) interprets the phrase “I am the Lord your God” as a direct refutation of those who suggest other passages in scripture, e.g., Daniel 7, support the existence of a second deity. In other words, different Jewish groups could place interpretive emphasis on different portions of the ancestral writings (e.g., Torah vs. prophets) to arrive at their conclusions. For further discussion, see chapter 6.

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Ancestral Laws in John

Unlike, for example, Matthew’s Gospel, John’s narrative includes little extended discourse on individual laws of the Torah. The closest John comes to this is in 5:1–47, which is a monologue on Jesus’s identity in relation to the father, contextualized by a debate over interpretation of Shabbat law (on which, see 3.2 below). Nevertheless, while John does not cite specific legal texts, a significant portion of the Gospel is shaped around two categories of law found in the Torah, which were widely engaged among Jews of the Second Temple and early rabbinic periods: purity and the festivals. 3.1 Purity John’s perspective on Jewish purity practices has often been interpreted through the lens of Christian replacement theology.53 Andreas Köstenberger’s interpretation of John 2:6 is a particularly extreme example: “[T]he reference to the Jewish purification ritual in 2:6 in conjunction with the mention of the wedding party’s running out of wine conveys the notion of the barrenness of first-century Judaism.”54 There is no doubt that John wishes to present Jesus within a framework of eschatological and messianic glory (2:11) marked by an abundance of “good wine” and joyful intoxication (2:10; cf. Joel 3:18). But does John envision Jewish purity rituals, and by extension Judaism as whole, to be “barren”? While most Johannine scholars would, I think, be hesitant about Köstenberger’s extreme formulation, the idea that John views Jewish purity rituals as in some way “replaced” by Jesus is pervasive in scholarship.55 John does not give any explicit value judgment on the observance of Jewish purity rituals.56 Stone vessels “valid according to the purification of the Jews” (κατὰ τὸν καθαρισμὸν τῶν Ἰουδαίων κείμεναι)57 feature in 2:6 as a narrative detail, 53 54 55 56 57

E.g., C.H. Dodd, Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953), 319–20; R.E. Brown, An Introduction to the Gospel of John, ed. F.J. Maloney (New York: Doubleday, 2003), 37; and even in the careful exegesis of Keener, John, 1:509. A. Köstenberger, “John,” in Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, ed. G.K. Beale and D.A. Carson (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 431. Keener, John, 1:638; G. Burge, “Siloam, Bethesda, and the Johannine Water Motif,” in John, Jesus, and History. Vol 3: Glimpses of Jesus through the Johannine Lens, ed. P.N. Anderson, F. Just, and T. Thatcher (Atlanta: SBL, 2016), 265; Westerholm, Law and Ethics, 119. This is noted by H.K. Harrington, “Purification in the Fourth Gospel in Light of Qumran,” in John, Qumran, and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Sixty Years of Discovery and Debate, ed. M.L. Coloe and T. Thatcher, EJL 32 (Atlanta: SBL, 2011), 118. ET mine. On κεῖμαι as a legal term, see BDAG s.v. 3b.

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but their hermeneutical significance is left unexplained.58 The disciples of John the Baptist have an argument with another Jew about purification in 3:25, but what that argument was and how it relates to Jesus’s immersing activity in the next verse (or his own immersion in 1:31–33) are also not explained.59 On two occasions, Jesus offers his listeners “living water” (4:10–14; 7:38), a metaphor used in other Jewish texts that draws upon the domain of purity rituals.60 In these Johannine passages, no “replacement” language is used and no evaluation is given of purity rituals themselves. The miraculous healings of the sick man in 5:1–15 and the blind man in 9:1–7 are, from a social-historical perspective, probably set within the context of Jewish ritual bath complexes,61 but, from a literary perspective, John gives no clear indication concerning Jesus’s attitude toward these facilities and whether issues of ritual purity are even at stake. And, on the one hand, Jesus certainly plays an authoritative role in pronouncing who is “clean” and “unclean” among his disciples within the context of the Farewell Discourse (13:10–11; 15:3), but, on the other hand, there does not appear to be anything in John’s use of these categories that directly indicates replacement or a break from Jewish laws about ritual and, not to forget, moral purity as well.62 The interpretation that John views Jesus as replacing or expropriating the law on the point of purity depends largely upon one’s presuppositions regarding Johannine christology, not upon anything John says specifically or directly about such laws. Despite John’s lack of evaluative clarity, Jewish purity practices are, nevertheless, present in the world inside John’s text and form part of its discursive strategy and negotiation of identity. The goal in this section, then, is to discern the nature of this strategy. My focus here will not be on the meaning of purity 58

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R. Bauckham, The Testimony of the Beloved Disciple: Narrative, History, and Theology in the Gospel of John (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 256, includes the reference in 2:6 among those that are “simply matters of historical explanation.” Thus, for him, the mention of the stone vessels is unconnected to the meaning of the miracle. However, John 3:26 does seem to link this dispute to the immersing activity of Jesus and his disciples, suggesting Jesus himself participated in and practiced Jewish purity rituals (see below). See Jos. Asen. 14:12; Greek ALD 2:5; CD 19:34; 1QSb 1:6; 1QHa 16:8, 17; 11Q19 45:16; 11Q20 12:9. On the identification of the Pool of Bethesda and the 2004 find site of the Pool of Siloam as Jewish ritual baths, see U.C. von Wahlde, “The Pool of Siloam: The Importance of the New Discoveries for Our Understanding of Ritual Immersion in Late Second Temple Judaism and the Gospel of John,” in John, Jesus, and History. Vol 2: Aspects of Historicity in the Fourth Gospel, ed. P.N. Anderson, F. Just, and T. Thatcher (Atlanta: SBL, 2009), 155–74; and the essays by J.H. Charlesworth in Archaeology and the Fourth Gospel, ed. P.N. Anderson, Studying the Historical Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2020), forthcoming. Bauckham, Beloved Disciple, 256.

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and the various purity/impurity systems operative in early Judaism and thus in John.63 Rather, I wish to focus on distinct mechanisms and performances of purification and their connection to particular expressions of Jewishness. Specifically, I want to concentrate on the broad social significance of Jewish stone vessels and ritual immersion baths in the world outside John’s text. I will then suggest that the world inside John’s text knows of this social significance, and that John does not abolish or replace these media of purification but instead negotiates them and retains them as a marker of a Jesus-oriented Jewish identity that coheres with what this study has described as a diasporic type of Jewishness. First, some methodological comments. Stuart Miller and Yonatan Adler rightly suggest that, rather than derived from the laws of a supposed rabbinocentric 1st century Judaism, the prevalence of stone vessels and ritual baths in the archaeological record owes itself to the wide-spread and varied reception of Pentateuchal purity laws in Jewish society in the land of Israel, especially those found in Leviticus 11–15 and Numbers 19.64 In so doing, Miller and Adler join a growing chorus of scholarship that views the tannaitic rabbis and their literature as only one voice – a rather variegated and perhaps even marginal voice at that – within an arena of competition for public authority in the post-70 Jewish world. This scholarly conversation suggests immediate caution regarding any theory that attempts to measure John’s attitude toward purity rituals against later rabbinic halakhic discussions. Such discussions are certainly important for understanding how John fits within a broader context of Jewish debate over purification. After all, John itself seems aware that such debates indeed occurred (3:25). But using later rabbinic rulings as a criterion to judge whether John either coheres or departs from a supposed ‘standard 63

64

This has already been done quite thoroughly, e.g., by H. Harrington, The Impurity Systems of Qumran and the Rabbis (Atlanta: SBL, 1993); J. Klawans, Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); T. Kazen, Jesus and Purity Halakha: Was Jesus Indifferent to Impurity?, ConBNT 38 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2002); I.C. Werrett, Ritual Purity and the Dead Sea Scrolls, STDJ 72 (Leiden: Brill, 2007); S. Haber, “They Shall Purify Themselves”: Essays on Purity in Early Judaism, ed. A. Reinhartz (Atlanta: SBL, 2008); C. Wassén, “The (Im)purity Levels of Communal Meals within the Qumran Movement,” JAJ 7 (2016): 102–22; Wassén, “Jesus’ Table Fellowship with ‘Toll Collectors and Sinners’: Questioning the Alleged Purity Implications,” JSHJ 14 (2016): 137–57. S. Miller, At the Intersection of Texts and Material Finds: Stepped Pools, Stone Vessels, and Ritual Purity among the Jews of Roman Galilee, JAJSup 16 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015), 101; Y. Adler, “Between Priestly Cult and Common Culture: The Material Evidence of Ritual Purity Observance in Early Roman Jerusalem Reassessed,” JAJ 7 (2016): 228–48 (245–48). See also E.P. Sanders, Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah: Five Studies (London: SCM, 1990), 29–42.

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Jewish view’ is problematic.65 Rabbinic texts, therefore, are consulted here with alertness to this issue. The archaeological record of stone vessels and ritual baths from the Second Temple period documents a clear divide between their distribution in the land of Israel versus their distribution outside it. As of 2017, over 850 stepped pools throughout Israel have been identified as ancient Jewish ritual bathing facilities (the majority are near Jerusalem), and hundreds of sites across the country have rendered whole or fragmented remains of chalkstone or limestone vessels.66 Strikingly, neither stepped ritual baths nor stone vessels have been found at any sites outside Israel.67 This does not mean that Jews throughout the Mediterranean diaspora did not practice some kinds of ritual ablutions; other material evidence, such as cisterns and washbasins adjacent to or within synagogues (e.g., at Ostia) and textual sources seem to indicate that at least some Jews abroad indeed did.68 But both the material and the textual evidence 65 66

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See Sanders, Jewish Law, 30–31, 214–27. See Adler, “Between Priestly Cult and Common Culture,” 234, 241. The standard work on stone vessels from the land of Israel remains Y. Magen, The Stone Vessel Industry in the Second Temple Period: Excavations at Ḥizma and the Jerusalem Temple Mount, JSP 1 (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2002). The standard work on ritual baths R. Reich, Miqwa’ot ( Jewish Ritual Baths) in the Second Temple, Mishnaic and Talmudic Periods (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2013) (Hebrew). J.D. Lawrence, Washing in Water: Trajectories of Ritual Bathing in the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Literature (Atlanta: SBL, 2006), 168; J. Magness, “Sectarianism before and after 70 CE,” in Was 70 CE a Watershed in Jewish History? On Jews and Judaism before and after the Destruction of the Second Temple, ed. D.R. Schwartz and Z. Weiss, AJEC 78 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 87; Magness, “Purity Observance among Diaspora Jews in the Roman World,” Archaeology and Text 1 (2017): 39–65 (40–42). Miller, Texts and Material Finds, 177– 78, suggests that a lone gypsum stone cup found at Dura Europos is evidence for the use of stone vessels outside Israel. The cup, however, appears to be of fundamentally different material and form than the limestone and chalkstone vessels found in the land of Israel. The singularity of the find also makes it less significant than Miller seems to indicate. I thank Yonatan Adler for discussing this with me during my stay in Jerusalem in the summer of 2017. For texts, see, e.g., Sib. Or. 3:591–93; Let. Aris. 305–306; Philo, Virt. 57; Josephus, War 5:380; Ant. 12:106. Some scholars have identified the cistern inside the synagogue at ancient Delos as a ritual bathing installation, since it apparently allowed human access (on the identification of the Delos building as a synagogue, see chapter 6). If so, it would constitute the only ancient Jewish ritual bath discovered outside the land of Israel. However, as pointed out by Susan Haber, the architecture of this water reservoir is entirely different from contemporaneous ritual baths in the land of Israel, the most discernible difference being the absence of steps; some sort of ladder would have had to be used to enter the cistern for ritual ablutions. Haber concludes, similarly to Donald Binder, that, while this cistern should not be identified as a ritual bath (“In all likelihood, the water from the cistern

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from outside the land of Israel suggest that purity practices took a fundamentally different mode of expression than those practiced within the land. Jews abroad seem to have generally preferred, like their non-Jewish neighbors, washing or sprinkling only parts of their bodies, especially the hands and perhaps also the feet.69 While Jews clearly practiced handwashing in the homeland as well, it seems to have been largely confined to Pharisaic circles and done only in connection with food.70 Textual sources indicate that handwashing in the geographical diaspora actually originated earlier than the Pharisaic practice and was linked to other ritual activities, such as prayer, the handling of sacred scriptures, and communal meals. In contrast, immersion of the entire body in stepped pools seems to have been the broadly preferred, though perhaps not

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was used for daily activities such as drinking, cooking, washing, and cleaning”), two other marble basins found within the Delos building were probably used for ritual ablutions (Haber, “They Shall Purify Themselves”, 173 [quote on p. 173]; D. Binder, Into the Temple Courts: The Place of the Synagogues in the Second Temple Period, SBLDS 169 [Atlanta: SBL, 1999], 306). See also A. Runesson, “Water and Worship: Ostia and the Ritual Bath in the Diaspora Synagogue,” in The Synagogue of Ancient Ostia and the Jews of Rome, ed. B. Olsson, D. Mitternacht, and O. Brandt (Paul Åströms Förlag: Stockholm, 2001), 115–29 (esp. pp. 127–28), who discusses on the basis of material and textual evidence the importance of water facilities and ritual ablutions to the location of and activities in diaspora synagogues. Runesson argues that, while one does not find ritual immersion baths like those found in the land of Israel in or adjacent to diaspora synagogues, the latter institutions do seem to have had water facilities attached that match other methods of washing, such as hand washing (p. 124). On the textual sources, see Sanders, Jewish Law, 258–71. If the book of Judith originated in the land of Israel, as recently argued by D. Gera, Judith, CEJL (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2014), 94–96, then the mention in 12:7 that Judith “immersed herself [ἐβαπτίζετο] in the spring of water by the encampment” does not contradict my argument above. On the influence of handwashing and water-sprinkling in Greco-Roman religious practice upon Jewish practices abroad, see Sanders, Jewish Law, 228, 262–63; Runesson, “Water and Worship,” 117, 124. Note that the text from Sib. Or. 3:591– 593 cited above reads: “For on the contrary, at dawn they [the Jews] lift up holy arms toward heaven, from their beds, always sanctifying their flesh with water,” but as the translator, J.J. Collins, notes, some MSS read “hands” instead of “flesh.” See OTP 1:375. The shallowness of the basin in B1 of the Ostia synagogue might have been an installation used for ritual purification of hands and feet. See A. Runesson, “The Synagogue at Ancient Ostia: The Building and Its History from the First to Fifth Century,” in The Synagogue of Ancient Ostia and the Jews of Rome, ed. B. Olsson, D. Mitternacht, and O. Brandt (Paul Åströms Förlag: Stockholm, 2001), 29–99 (69–71); and Haber, “They Shall Purify Themselves,” 173. See Sanders, Jewish Law, 228–29 and his Judaism, 437–38, where he argues that the Pharisees and the early rabbis applied handwashing only to terumah and not to ordinary meals. Cf. H.K. Harrington, “Did the Pharisees Eat Ordinary Food in a State of Ritual Purity?” JJS 26 (1995): 42–54, who disagrees with Sanders. See also now the more recent treatment in relation to Mark 7:1–23 in J. van Maaren, “Does Mark’s Jesus Abrogate Torah? Jesus’ Purity Logion and its Illustration in Mark 7:15–23,” JJMJS 4 (2017): 21–41.

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exclusive, method of purification among Jews in the land of Israel, regardless of socio-economic class or religio-political affiliation.71 What gave rise to this general distinction between purity practices in the Jewish homeland and those in the geographical diaspora, particularly the preference for immersion versus partial washing? As Sanders has pointed out, neither immersion in designated pools nor handwashing is found, at least not explicitly, in the biblical laws of purity.72 The emergence of a distinct material culture in the land, and along with it a distinguishable practice of immersion in stepped pools, seems to have derived from a widespread engagement with the ancestral laws of Leviticus 11–16 and a certain definition of what it meant to “bathe oneself” (‫ )רחץ‬if one contracted impurity (a phrase repeated twelve times in Leviticus 15 alone). Sanders is probably right, then, to suggest that the definition given of “bathe oneself” as immersion of the whole body by Jews in the land probably derived from specific attention to Lev 15:16: “If a man has an emission of semen, he shall bathe in water his whole body [‫ורחץ במים את כל‬ ‫ ]בשרו‬and be unclean until the evening.”73 Many scholars have drawn the conclusion that ritual purity (especially immersion), although widely practiced throughout Jewish society in the land, was ultimately connected to the world and influence of the Jerusalem temple cult.74 There are at least three reasons for this: (1) the biblical laws requiring 71

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Further discussion below. The pervasiveness of ritual baths throughout Israel suggests that full immersion was the broadly preferred modus operandi among ‘common’ Jews in the land, but texts from Qumran (e.g., 4QTohorota; CD 10:10–11; 11Q19 45:15–16) and Josephus on the Essenes (War 2:129–132) provide evidence that it was preferred among specific groups as well (see Sanders, Jewish Law, 223). The architectural design of Jewish ritual baths may have derived from the influence of Greek baths introduced into the land of Israel sometime in the 4th or 3rd century BCE (Adler’s theory). But our earliest examples of ritual baths come from the late 2nd – early 1st century BCE and suggests that the Hasmoneans were the ones really responsible for their popularization and function within specifically Jewish rituals (see M. Aviam’s essay in Jesus and Temple). Sanders, Jewish Law, 223–24, 228. Sanders, Jewish Law, 215. L.I. Levine, Jerusalem: Portrait of the City in the Second Temple Period (538 B.C.E.–70 C.E.) (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2002), 390–92; J. Magness, The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 142–43 (see also her Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit: Jewish Daily Life in the Time of Jesus [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011], 16–17, 185); E. Regev, “Non-Priestly Purity and its Religious Aspects according to Historical Sources and Archaeological Findings,” in Purity and Holiness: The Heritage of Leviticus, ed. M.J.H.M. Poorthuis and J. Schwartz, Jewish and Christian Perspectives Series 2 (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 223–44, 230; Reich, Miqwa’ot, 239; Aviam, “Reverence for the Jerusalem Temple,” 125–26; Deines, Jüdische Steingefässe, 244, although Deines wishes to connect stone vessels specifically to Pharisaic halakha, which supposedly sought to apply the ideals of priestly purity on a wide scale.

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ritual purity to enter the temple precincts (Lev 12:4; 14:13; 15:31); (2) the association in some texts of priests or priestly groups with immersion practices;75 and (3) the sheer density of ritual bath and stone vessel finds from the Second Temple period unearthed near Jerusalem and around the Temple Mount. However, the ‘maximalist’ view, taken by Adler and Miller, has offered a significant criticism of this position: it attributes the widespread use of stone vessels and ritual baths, even in Jerusalem, simply to a prevalent ‘common culture’ derived from the Pentateuchal purity regulations, not to the influence of the priesthood, the temple cult, or any other specific Jewish group.76 Adler and Miller, building on the work of Sanders before them, are certainly right to emphasize the point that the widespread material culture of purity practices in the land of Israel point to the existence of a common culture, a common but “complex” Judaism, as Miller has put it.77 However, in my view, the models of Adler and Miller do not quite appreciate enough, and perhaps even eschew, one of the fundamental characteristics of Sanders’s own portrait of pre-70 Judaism in the land of Israel: that common Judaism was “what the priests and people agreed on.”78 In other words, the portrait of a “biblically derived” common Jewish culture that both Adler and Miller paint on the basis of the profuseness of ritual baths and stone vessels cannot avoid our other evidence that suggests that purity was somehow connected to the temple,79 and that priests were the ones in charge of shaping 75 76 77

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E.g., Greek ALD 2:5; CD 10:10–11; 11Q19 45:15–16; m. Yom. 3:2; Tam. 1:1; Mid. 1:6, 9; 5:3; Para 3:7). These rabbinic texts refer not to a ‫ מקוה‬but a ‫( בת טבילה‬lit. ‘house of immersion’). See also Zangenberg, “Pure Stone.” On Miller’s notion of a biblical derived “complex common Judaism,” see S. Miller, “Stepped Pools, Stone Vessels, and other Identity Markers of ‘Complex Common Judaism’,” JSJ 41 (2010): 214–43 (218–19). The idea is Miller’s way of solving the Neusner versus Sanders debate over diversity versus unity. I should note, however, that Miller uses the idea particularly as a way of speaking about post-70 Judaism. Our discussion above has centered on pre-70 Judaism. See Sanders, Judaism, 47. See, e.g., Josephus, Ant. 11:109; 12:145; C. Ap. 2:102–104, where purifying oneself is a necessary requirement for entering various courts of the temple precincts in general and on feast days specifically (cf. m. Kelim 1:8). There is also an undeniable connection between the many ritual baths unearthed in excavations around the south and southwestern walls of the temple mount and concern for the purity of the temple. Adler seems to affirm this in his “The Ritual Baths Near the Temple Mount and Extra-Purification Before Entering the Temple Courts: A Reply to Eyal Regev,” IEJ 56.2 (2006): 209–15. I agree with Adler that such a connection between ritual purity (specifically immersion) and the temple cult does not mean that every time one immersed in a ritual bath, particularly in locales far away from Jerusalem, that one imagined they were participating directly in the purity of the temple cult. However, the evidence surveyed above along with Adler’s argument from rabbinic literature does suggest that purity practices in the land were indeed connected

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this common culture during the Second Temple period: they were the ones that taught Torah, judged the people, and administered the on-goings of the national cult.80 ‘Common Judaism,’ therefore, can be aptly described as a priestly-oriented type of Jewish identity (see chapter 2). The fact that immersion in stepped pools became the preferred mode of ritual purification in the land – among the priests and the people alike – was the result of a priestlyoriented type of interpretation of the ancestral laws, specifically those in Leviticus 15.81 This connection between ritual immersion and priestly-oriented Jewish identity explains why we do not see the emergence of ritual baths in the material record until sometime late in the 2nd century BCE, that is, around the time of the Hasmonean expansion. Note Mordechai Aviam’s statement: [A]lthough there were religious, social, and cultural components in the creation of mikvaot, the most important factor was the establishment of a powerful, aggressive, and expanding Jewish kingdom, creating an enlarged territory that should be populated in a short period of time with new Jewish villages and towns. The success of the Maccabean-Hasmonean revolt, the freeing of Jerusalem, and the purification of the Temple increased the inner religious feelings toward the Holy City and its Temple.82 Purification by means of immersion in stepped pools emerges in this period throughout the land of Israel as an important element of the Hasmonean priestly religio-political agenda. These stepped pools functioned as visual and material markers of a temple-centered Jewish politic, as part of an ideology of “purifying the land,” which perhaps constituted a Hasmonean response to the perceived “pollution of the land” by the Greeks.83 But these stepped pools also

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to a general and common orientation toward the priestly cult and its interpretation of the biblical laws of purity. This view of priests is reflected even well after 70 CE, in the 3rd century Sifre to Numbers §119: “Beloved are [the priests] Israel for when God gives them a nickname, God names them none other than ministering angels, as it says ‘For the lips of the priest keep knowledge and they seek teaching at his mouth for he is the angel of the Lord’ (Mai 2 7). At the time that Torah comes from his mouth he is like an angel, when [it does] not, he is like a beast and an animal that knows not its creator.” Translation is from Hirshman, “Rabbinic Universalism,” 105. I should note here that, with reference to immersion practices, the Qumran ‘community’ reflects the priestly-oriented thread of its ideology, as defined in this study. Aviam, “Reverence for Jerusalem,” 125. Runesson, “Water and Worship,” 124 n. 81. See also Josephus, Ant. 12:286, where he notes the fundamental element in Hasmonean ideology of “purifying the land of all the

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played an important role within the Hasmonean imperial program, as landposts of the kingdom as it extended north toward Ituraea and south toward Idumea. From this perspective, one can read the remains of pre-70 ritual baths, which dot the Galilean landscape and inundate Judea, alongside the widespread numismatic evidence from the Hasmonean-era: just as Hasmonean coins not only functioned practically as state currency but also carried political and ideological weight, so ritual baths functioned not only to deal with the daily impurity of Jews but also to promote Hasmonean boundary-making ideology by visibly marking villages and towns as part of an expanding Jewish kingdom.84 As Jodi Magness notes, also with reference to the post-Hasmonean era: “[T]he distribution of miqwa’ot and stone vessels points to the observance of purity laws – mostly connected with the Temple cult (including sacrifices and agricultural offerings) – in Jewish or mostly Jewish settlements that were understood before 70 as being within the boundaries of the Land of Israel.”85 The method of partial washing favored outside of the land and metaphorically imagined in connection with various socio-religious activities (prayer, handling of scripture, ‘conversion’/initiation, communal meals) seems to have originated earlier than and independently of the customs in the land of Israel. The ritual of handwashing specifically may have developed out of a different definition of what it meant to “bathe oneself” according to the Levitical laws, and was perhaps justified by fixating on the mention of the zav’s need to “rinse his hands” in Lev 15:11 and other scriptural texts that speak of washed or symbolically clean hands (e.g., Deut 21:6–7; Ps 24:4).86 Greater openness and acculturation with non-Jewish surroundings also helps to explain the preference for the practice, since handwashing seems to have been especially preferred in Greco-Roman purification traditions as well (e.g., Homer, Iliad 24:302–306; Lucian, On Sacrifices 13).87

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pollutions that were in it” (cf. 1 Macc 1:51–58; 2:1–14). The emergence and spread of ritual baths throughout the country might, then, be seen to coincide with the religio-political idea that the Greeks had polluted the land, and thus the way the land was to be purified was not simply by having its people practice ritual washings but also by physically digging into the earth, constructing such baths, and filling them with pure water in which people could then immerse. Aviam, “Reverence for Jerusalem,” 125–26. Magness, “Purity Observance,” 54. Sanders, Jewish Law, 228. The practice of immersion rituals for purification is, indeed, attested in Greek sources, as noted by R. Parker, Miasma: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 226–27. However, as Parker notes: (1) such immersion practices were only performed when someone had been seriously polluted by evil; otherwise, even the smallest amounts of “religious water” could be effective. And (2) the

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Some textual sources from diasporic contexts (NB: not only geographical diaspora) indicate that ritual ablutions carried metaphorical meaning. Aristeas (304–306) associates the custom of handwashing in the sea while praying and before reading scripture with one’s innocence from evil, that is, one’s moral purity (cf. Josephus, Ant. 12:106). Aseneth, after renouncing her Egyptian ethnicity and performing her eight-day self-debasement, is commanded by an angel to shake the ashes from her head and “wash the face with living water” (νίψαι τὸ πρόσωπόν σου ὕδατι ζῶντι; Jos. Asen. 14:12). She thereby becomes an Israelite suitable as a wife for the patriarch Joseph. Philo uses the language of purity with reference to washing the mind or soul (Mut. 49, 124; Fug. 80–81, 112) and to washing off the things that defile one’s life and hinder the pursuit of virtue (Cher. 95; Fug. 40–43). And, while texts and archaeological remains from Qumran and passages from the Mishnah typically reflect a priestly-oriented type preference for immersion in ritual baths found in the homeland, they, too, can metaphorize ritual purity, reflecting diasporic situations in which their respective communities lacked access to the national cult. For example, 1QS 3:4–9 and m. Yom 8:9 both metaphorically link the waters of the immersion pool to atonement for sin and moral purity. In a similar ideological vein as the text from Jos. Asen. above, 1QS 5:12–14 and Mekh. Pisḥa 15 seem to suggest that immersion in a ritual bath could reflect one’s entrance into and demarcation within a particular Jewish community or one’s coming over to Judaism in general.88

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ideal method of immersion in these cases was in the salt-water sea, not an artificial installation. Further, the Greeks and Romans, of course, also had a rich bathing culture, in which public bathhouses and private hip-baths were most frequently used. But these every-day bathing practices seem to have been kept quite distinct from the practice of ‘religious’ purification. The material culture of these Hellenistic practices also appears different from that of the Jewish ritual baths we find in the land of Israel, even though, as Adler has argued, Hellenistic bathing practices probably had an impact on the origins of Jewish practices. On this last point, see Y. Adler, “The Hellenistic Origins of Jewish Ritual Immersion,” JJS 69 (2018): 1–21. Cf. m. Pes. 8:8, which reflects rabbinic debates over whether a proselyte who converts on the day before Passover is allowed to eat the Passover meal after having immersed. The Shammaites said yes; the Hillelites ruled that the proselyte should be treated like a Jew who was corpse-impure and needed to go through a weeklong purification process. Immersion is thus understood in this passage as both a rite of initiation (Shammaites) and as an impurity rite (Hillelites). Cf. Harrington, “Purification in the Fourth Gospel,” 122–23, esp. note 14.

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Let us now turn to the world inside John’s text. While John’s Gospel evinces no engagement with the laws of Leviticus, at least not explicitly,89 it knows the ritual of immersion well but does not place a high priority on it.90 John the Baptist’s immersion activity occupies 1:25–34, but unlike the Synoptic accounts, the Fourth Gospel does not narrate John’s immersion of Jesus at the start of Jesus’s public work (Matt 3:13//Mark 1:9//Luke 3:21). While John 3:22–26 indicates that Jesus had his own water-immersion ministry connected to purification (vv. 25–26), which was seen by some as being in competition with the Baptist’s, 4:1–2 distances Jesus from the practice by asserting it was not he but his disciples who did the immersing. Rather, the Fourth Gospel’s emphasis, this time like the Synoptics, is to assert that Jesus’s activity centered around not immersion in a pool or river but a metaphorical kind of immersion, that is, immersion in the Holy Spirit (1:33; 7:37–39; cf. 1QS 3:7; 1QHa 8:20). The presentation of a sort of ritual purity activity associated with a priestlyoriented type of Jewish identity might be reflected in John’s mention of the six stone water vessels at the Cana wedding in 2:6. While it is possible that the stone vessels are mentioned simply as a detail in the story, ultimately unattached to the significance of the miracle,91 I think this is unlikely.92 John has a generally acknowledged propensity toward symbolism in its narrative asides, even if the precise meaning of that symbolism is sometimes allusive to modern readers (e.g., ‘night’ in 3:2; 13:30; the 153 fish in 21:11).93 Many scholars have rightly seen messianic symbolism at work in 2:1–11, particularly involving the abundance of “good wine” as the mode of manifesting Jesus’s “glory” (John 2:11;

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See, however, E. Mouton, “Torah Re(imagined) between σάρξ and δόξα? Implied Household Ethos in the Fourth Gospel,” Neot 50.3 (2016): 93–112, who suggests John’s emphasis on the concepts of holiness and love in chs. 13–17 draws upon Leviticus 19. Immersion language, specifically the use of βαπτίζω and λούω, appears at least 12× in John, including as an epithet for John “the Baptizer” (or “the Immerser”). Bauckham, Beloved Disciple, 256. Especially in light of the work done by our colleagues in sociology, particularly in the methodological trajectory of Actor Network Theory, which encourages us to appreciate the agency of material objects even as presented in literature. That is, non-human objects always ‘mean,’ ‘do,’ and shape contexts of knowing and acting. See, e.g., B. Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 70–72. From this perspective, a critical question for us might be, how would the Cana wedding narrative in John read differently if the six stone vessels were absent? On symbolism in John, see C. Koester Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel: Meaning, Mystery, Community (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003).

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cf. 1QSa 2:11–22).94 However, the revelation of Jesus’s glory here is never presented as instituting a ‘new’ kind of ritual purity that somehow replaces an ‘old’ kind;95 the language of replacement or antagonism toward ritual purity is entirely absent. To the contrary, the mention of stone vessels in 2:6 would seem to function as an indicator to the reader that the wine Jesus has miraculously produced has been kept in accordance with certain standards of Jewish purity.96 In other words, to use a rabbinic anachronism, Jesus here produces kosher wine. There is, thus, a bi-directionality inherent to John’s strategy of identity negotiation: John ritualizes the revelation of Jesus’s messianic identity by placing the new wine in stone vessels that accorded with the standard of at least some Jewish groups’ idea of purity; and, at the same time, it messianizes ritual purity by using the material stuff of the six stone vessels as the matrix of messianic meaning.97 While John’s stone vessels participate in a broader social meaning-making process centered on the interpretation of Pentateuchal purity laws, John’s Jesus imbues these laws with messianic significance as he makes the stone vessels the media of the miracle of turning ritually pure water into ritually pure wine. The healings of the lame man at the Pool of Bethesda (5:1–9) and the blind man at the Pool of Siloam (9:1–7) are uniquely Johannine. On a social-historical level, only recently have researchers suggested that both of these pools were not simply water reservoirs but were connected to the broader purity system of the Jerusalem temple complex and thus functioned as public ritual immersion baths in the late Second Temple period.98 However, on a literary level, 94

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On this, see, e.g., W.V. Cirafesi, “The Priestly Portrait of Jesus in the Gospel of John in the Light of 1QS, 1QSa and 1QSb,” JGRChJ 8 (2011–2012): 83–105; R. Zimmermann, “Jesus the Divine Bridegroom? John 2–4 and Its Christological Implications,” in Reading the Gospel of John’s Christology as Jewish Messianism: Royal, Prophetic, and Divine Messiahs, ed. B. Reynolds and G. Boccaccini, AJEC 106 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 358–86. Pace, e.g., Burge, “Siloam, Bethesda, and the Johannine Water Motif,” 266–67. See the discussion on the importance of the purity of wine (as well as oil and other food) among Second Temple Jews in Sanders, Jewish Law, 273–83. Richard Turley has recently developed the idea of “ritualized revelation” with reference to Paul’s use of the “baptism into Christ” metaphor. His work has inspired my thinking and language here. See R. Turley, The Ritualized Revelation of the Messianic Age: Washings and Meals in Galatians and 1 Corinthians, LNTS 544 (London: T&T Clark, 2015). I use the term here only as a heuristic device. See, e.g., U.C. von Wahlde, “The Pool(s) of Bethesda and the Healing in John 5: A Reappraisal of Research and of the Johannine Text,” RB 116.1 (2009): 111–36; von Wahlde, “Pool of Siloam”; forthcoming contributions from Charlesworth; S. Gibson, “The Excavations at the Bethesda Pool in Jerusalem: Preliminary Report on a Project of Stratigraphic and Structural Analysis”, in Sainte-Anne de Jérusalem. La Piscine Probatiquen de Jésus à

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from the view of the world inside John’s text, only the Siloam episode is possibly connected to matters of purity. While the Bethesda pool may have been a ritual bath, and while the lame man should likely be understood within the narrative as in some way “morally defiled” in light of Jesus’s exhortation to him in 5:14 to “sin no longer,”99 there is nothing in John that suggests this pool was used for the purpose of ritual washings. Even though it is presented by John as a pool that apparently had garnered sick and disabled people in search of healing through miraculous waters,100 water itself plays no role in the man’s restoration. Therefore, the following discussion will focus its attention on the significance of the Pool of Siloam in the world outside John’s text and then turn to its identity-building function inside John’s text. The Pool of Siloam had traditionally been identified with a small pool immediately adjacent to the exit of Hezekiah’s Tunnel in the City of David (Birkat Silwan).101 However, in excavations from 2004–2006 at the eastern ridge of the Ophel, archaeologists Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron uncovered, just to the south of the traditional site, the steps of what was eventually identified as a much larger public ritual bath from the late Second Temple period, Saladin. Proche-Orient Chrétien Numéro Spécial, ed. F. Bouwen (Saint Anne: Jerusalem, 2011), 17–44; Burge, “Siloam, Bethesda, and the Johannine Water Motif.” 99 The blind, deaf, and those with disabled bodies were viewed by some ancient Jews as both ritually and morally defiled, associated with demonic activity and thus understood to be outside the bounds of the law. On this, see C. Wassen, “What Do Angels Have against the Blind and the Deaf? Rules of Exclusion in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Common Judaism: Explorations in Second-Temple Judaism, ed. W.O. McCready and A. Reinhartz (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008), 115–29, where she discusses the association of physical disability with demonic activity in the view of some Dead Sea Scrolls. 100 In light of the text’s undeniable association in 5:7 of healing with the “troubling” of the pool’s waters, even excluding the variant reading of vv. 3b–4 (C3 Θ Ψ 078 ƒ1, 13 𝔐), the Bethesda episode has often been interpreted within the framework of popular healing cults from Greco-Roman antiquity, particularly the cult of Asclepius. See Keener, John, 1:637–38; Charlesworth, “The Fourth Evangelist and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Assessing Trends over Nearly Sixty Years,” in John, Qumran, and the Dead Sea Scrolls, 179. Von Wahlde suggests that there is “considerable evidence of popular Jewish belief in the curative powers of water associated with specific locations.” The only closely related sources he cites is Josephus, War 2:21:6 and Pliny, Nat. hist. 5:15, both of which mention the use of hot springs at Tiberias to cure illness. All the rest of the evidence he cites is significantly later than the first century and most of them are not Jewish sources. See von Wahlde, “The Pool(s) of Bethesda,” 131. 101 For a description of the find, see R. Reich and E. Shukron, “The Siloah Pool during the Late Second Temple Period,” Qadmoniot 130 (2005): 91–96 (Hebrew); Reich and Shukron, “Recent Discoveries in the City of David, Jerusalem,” IEJ (2007): 153–69; and von Wahlde, “Pool of Siloam.”

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indeed the largest of its kind in first-century Jerusalem.102 A channel connects the waters of the northern pool  – which were fed by the freshwater of the Gihon spring (Jerusalem’s only freshwater supply) – to the southern pool, the ritual bath, making this ritual bath not only the largest but the one with the highest quality of water in the area. Reich and Shukron have suggested that the northern pool functioned only as a conduit to the southern ritual bath.103 Von Wahlde has argued, however, that the northern pool functioned as a sort of ozsar that could intermittently feed ritually pure water to the ritual bath at the lower elevation whenever “living water” gushed from the Gihon, flowed through Hezekiah’s Tunnel, and emptied out into the northern pool.104 Both pools, then, should be considered part of a larger, architecturally sophisticated Siloam complex that played a particularly important role during Sukkot celebrations (m. Sukk. 4:9–10), which is precisely the narrative setting for the healing in John 9. But regardless of the specific relationship of the northern and southern pools, it is clear that the southern stepped pool was the major attraction for Jerusalemites and pilgrims alike who sought ritual purification in Jerusalem’s immersion pool par excellence before ascending the complex’s nearby staircase to the Temple Mount. Scholars have long noted the theological significance of the healing of the blind man for John’s narrative. The themes of light and darkness (vv. 4–5), the symbolic connection of Siloam’s name (“Sent”) with Jesus as the sent one (vv. 4, 7), spiritual sight versus spiritual blindness (vv. 39–41), and the fitness (or lack thereof) of Jerusalem’s leaders to shepherd the nation run throughout the narrative until 10:21. I wish here only to make two points relevant to our discussion of the world inside John’s text. First, as noted in chapter 3, some Jewish sources, particularly from the Dead Sea Scrolls, seem to have associated blindness with sin and the influence of demonic activity.105 Even though mentioned in the texts alongside the ritually impure, who had mechanisms in place for their ritual purification, the impurity 102 Von Wahlde, “Pool of Siloam,” 158. 103 Reich and Shukron, “Siloah,” 96. 104 Adler, however, has argued convincingly that the concept of the formal ozsar is a phenomenon of modern Judaism that has been anachronistically applied to ritual baths of the Second Temple period. Thus, while we can probably still speak of Siloam as a pool complex consisting of a reservoir basin and a ritual bath basin (cf. m. Miq. 6:8), we should probably stop speaking of the reservoir structures as formal ozsar. See Y. Adler, “The Myth of the ’ôṣār in Second Temple-Period Ritual Baths: An Anachronistic Interpretation of a Modern-Era Innovation,” JJS 65.2 (2014): 263–83. 105 Wassen, “Angels,” 123–25.

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of the blind is indefinite and associated with moral defilement; thus they were assumed to be permanently excluded from access to the temple.106 John’s narrative seems to attest to a similar viewpoint, in which for some, including Jesus’s disciples, there was a natural association between one’s being born blind, that person’s status as a “sinner” (9:2–3, 34), and that person’s exclusion from the temple (8:59–9:1). Jesus, however, rejects the idea that moral impurity is the cause of this particular man’s blindness (9:3),107 but he does not overlook the fact that his status was linked to ritual impurity as well. In my view, the man’s perceived ritual impurity is the reason that the Johannine Jesus does not merely apply mud made with spit to the man’s eyes but also gives him the further command to go wash (νίπτω) in Siloam’s ritual bath. John could have had Jesus not use water at all in this episode, as in the healing at the Bethesda pool, in which Jesus simply speaks a word to the lame man. The blind man, in contrast, must wash to gain his sight. The washing, I suggest, intends to function as the man’s performance of ritual purification and, simultaneously, as the medium through which his moral purity – his status as “not-sinner” – is confirmed to others present in the narrative (i.e., his neighbors, parents, Pharisees, Ioudaioi). While, in this episode, Jesus is mostly concerned with the issues of “sin,” law-keeping and law-breaking (i.e., “seeing” and “blindness”), and moral purity, he does not do away with Jewish ritual obligations. Gary Burge has understood John’s interest in Siloam to mean, theologically, that the Siloam episode is “implicitly telling us that Jesus is the true mikveh in whom genuine purity can be found” and that it represents “the Johannine replacement motif expressed in its clearest form.”108 While, as Burge mentions, the note in 9:7 that Siloam means “sent” in Hebrew is surely meant to connect the ritual bath to Jesus’s mission as the sent one of Israel’s god, it is difficult, in my view, to see this as an indication that John believes Jesus has replaced the use of ritual baths for purification. The Johannine Jesus believes this certainly no more than R. Aqiva believed that, since God is the ultimate “miqveh of Israel” (cf. Jer 17:13), Jews should no longer regularly practice purification in miqva’ot (m. Yom. 8:9). The waters of the ritual bath might have a symbolic referent – in R. Aqiva’s case it is the cleansing work of Israel’s god on Yom Kippur – but this does not mean 106 See 11Q19 45:12–13; 4QMMT; and 1QSa 2:3–10, which exclude blind people from the temple sanctuary. See Klawans, Impurity and Sin, 138; and Wassen, “Angels,” for more examples. 107 Although recall that, for Jesus, moral impurity, indeed, seems to be the cause of the lame man’s illness in John 5:14. 108 Burge, “Siloam, Bethesda, and the Johannine Water Motif,” 268.

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that the ritual had been replaced or made obsolete. Similarly, the blind man’s physical washing and regained sight clearly have a symbolic referent, namely moral “sight” (John 9:39–41), but it does not follow that John expects followers of Jesus to stop practicing ritual purification. Embodied ritual and symbolic meaning co-exist and are mutually formative. Like John’s use of the six stone vessels in 2:6, washing in Siloam’s immersion pool ritualizes the miracle in a way that makes sense for Jews of a priestly-oriented type of identity; and the miracle – performed by god’s “sent one” at a ritual pool whose name means “sent” – suffuses the ritual with messianic meaning. Second, while the Johannine Jesus sends the blind man to a ritual immersion pool to wash, John does not use the language of immersion (e.g., βαπτίζω or λούω, words John clearly knows: 1:31–34; 3:22–26; 13:10) to describe the man’s washing. Rather, five times John uses forms of νίπτω, a term that Sanders has shown typically refers to washing only part of a person (see 9:7, 11, 15).109 I suggested earlier in this section that Jewish texts reflecting situations abroad tend to connect partial washing with worship/ritual activity (such as prayer and reading scripture), and that in diasporic texts, regardless of geography, such washings frequently carry metaphorical associations.110 John’s presentation of the blind man’s partial washing (eyes/face) and the washing’s metaphorical association with moral sight/law observance (9:35–41) seems to shape and cohere with a similar type of diasporic meaning-making.111 The washing of the disciples’ feet in John 13 strengthens this assertion.112 In 13:3–11, νίπτω is John’s preferred term to refer to Jesus’s washing activity (13:5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14), but in vv. 9–10 John seems to contrast this partial washing with the practice of full immersion. After Peter finally accepts the idea that Jesus must wash his feet if he wishes to be among Jesus’s followers, he tells 109 Sanders, Jewish Law, 261. See, e.g., LXX Exod 30:19–21; Lev 15:11–12 (used only in these verses in Leviticus; the far more common term in LXX Leviticus is λούω); Deut 21:6; Judg 19:21; 1 Sam 25:41; 2 Sam 11:8; Ps 25:6; 72:13; Song 5:2; T. Abraham (A) 3:7, 9; 6:6; Jos. Asen. 7:1; 13:12; 14:12, 17; 20:2, 3; Greek ALD 7:1–2; 8:2; 10:6, 7. Greek ALD 2:5 read along with 7:2 demonstrates nicely that λούω is an immersion term, while νίπτω was a term for partial washing: in speaking of “bathing my whole self,” 2:5 uses λούω; 7:2 uses νίπτω when speaking of “washing the hands and feet.” 110 Philo especially uses the cognate form ἐκνίψασθαι when metaphorically speaking of purifying the mind or soul, and Aristeas uses ἀπονίπτω when associating washed hands with prayer and reading scripture (see above). 111 See Miller, Texts and Material Finds, 122–45, where he provides a fine survey of metaphorical or “spiritual” understandings of ritual purity and water in general from the Hebrew Bible all the way up to the Gospel of John (see esp. 139–45 on John). 112 See Bauckham, Beloved Disciple, chapter 9.

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Jesus to wash not only his feet but also his hands and his head, too, apparently indicating that full immersion was the more expected method of purification. In his response in v. 10, Jesus does not reject the idea of full immersion but rather negotiates away from it as the regular practice: the one who has already fully immersed is entirely clean and only needs to have the feet washed.113 As Richard Bauckham has noted, here in vv. 10–11 both kinds of purification  – immersion and feet washing – are symbolic of moral purity.114 This does not mean, however, that concrete rituals are not in view as well. Jesus’s conferring the status of “fully pure” (καθαρὸς ὅλος) to “the one who has immersed” (ὁ λελουμένος) is not entirely dissimilar to the community entry rituals seen in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the rabbis. It is John’s way of describing those who have become faithful to Jesus and entered the Christ-confessing community of disciples. These disciples stand in contrast to the “uncleanness” of Judas (v. 11), but, unlike the Scrolls and the rabbis, they now need only to “wash the feet,” rather than immerse repeatedly, which functions as a sign of love and humility within the community. Set within our larger discussion, then, the Siloam and foot-washing episodes seem to demonstrate an awareness of purification by immersion. However, in these episodes, I suggest that John reflects a preference for interpreting the concept of “bathing oneself” from the Levitical purity laws that moves away from the priestly-oriented value of immersion and toward the diasporic identity value of partial washings that have metaphorical associations. In an article on P.Oxy. 840,115 Alistair Stewart-Sykes, who is followed by Miller, has argued that John’s use of the metaphorically layered and redirected 113 John 13:10: ὁ λελουμένος οὐκ ἔχει χρείαν εἰ μὴ τοὺς πόδας νίψασθαι, ἀλλ᾿ ἔστιν καθαρὸς ὅλος. 114 Bauckham, Beloved Disciple, 256. 115 John’s use of “living water” is a far cry from that of the author of the 4th century Christian text P.Oxy. 840, the so-called Gospel of the Savior, even if this text in some way represents a later reception of Johannine tradition. For an exhaustive treatment of this manuscript and its text, see M.J. Kruger, The Gospel of the Savior: An Analysis of P.Oxy. 840 and its Place in the Gospel Traditions of the Early Christianity, TENT 11 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), and especially chapter 5, where he argues the text is a refutation of the ongoing validity of Jewish ritual purity practices. On P.Oxy 840 as Johannine reception, see P. Shellberg, “A Johannine Reading of Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 840,” in Jewish and Christian Scripture as Artifact and Canon, ed. C.A. Evans and H.D. Zacharias, LSTS 70 (London: T&T Clark, 2009), 176–91. This text deploys “living water” as a metaphor in its polemics against Jews, who are collectively caricatured by the text as a Pharisaic high priest named Levi. Unlike Jews, who wash “in these running waters where dogs and pigs have wallowed night and day” (σὺ ἐλούσω τούτοις τοῖς χεομένοις ὕ[δ]ασιν ἐν οἷς κύνες καὶ χοῖροι βέβλην[ται] νυκτὸς καὶ ἡμέρας; 2:7), the ‘Savior’ and his disciples “have bathed in living waters which come down from [the God of Heaven]” (βεβά]μμεθα ἐν ὕδασι ζω[σιν ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανο]ῦ ἐλθοῦσιν ἀπὸ

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term “living water” (ὕδωρ ζῶν) in 4:10–11 and 7:37–39, in fact, has no bearing on the Gospel’s attitude toward ritual immersion specifically.116 “Living water” is figuratively attached to the life-giving work of the Spirit, which, according to Miller, the Johannine Jesus gives believers to drink, not immerse in.117 John’s use of the term, then, might not tell us much, if anything, about how it negotiates ritual purity per se, although it nevertheless factors significantly into the Gospel’s overarching motif of water symbolism and the anticipation of eschatological renewal.118 However, I wish to make two points here in response. First: it is true that “living water” is something Johannine believers are, metaphorically, to “drink.” But, as Miller himself notes, “living water” is, for John, a metaphor for the eschatological gift of the Spirit. What neither Miller nor Stewart-Sykes addresses, however, is that John 1:33 explicitly ties the giving of the Spirit to the concept of ritual immersion, albeit, and again, within a metaphorical reimagining of it. In 1:33, John the Baptist is presented as the one who was to “immerse in water” (βαπτίζειν ἐν ὕδατι) in contrast to the coming Jesus who “immerses in the Holy Spirit” (βαπτίζων ἐν πνεύματι ἁγίῳ). The Johannine idea of ‘drinking living water’ is thus closely connected – or better, notionally

[…]; 2:9). In contrast to John, P.Oxy. 840 evinces a clearly negative view toward Jewish ritual immersion. As Stewart-Sykes and Miller have argued convincingly, the text is likely attempting to supplant the Jewish practice in favor of the rite of Christian baptism. See A. Stewart-Sykes, “Bathed in Living Waters: Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 840 and Christian Baptism Reconsidered,” ZNW 100 (2009): 284; Miller, Texts and Material Finds, 121. Contrast John also with the even earlier portrayal by Justin Martyr of ‘Christian’ immersion as τὸ ὕδωρ τῆς ζωῆς and Jewish immersion in “cisterns” as “broken” and “useful for nothing” (Οὓς δὲ ὑμεῖς ὠρύξατε λάκκους ἑαυτοῖς, συντετριμμένοι εἰσὶ καὶ οὐδὲν ὑμῖν χρήσιμοι; Dial. 14). Thus, while such Christian polemicizing against Jews and their ethnic attachments in P.Oxy. 840 fits very well within the competitive and clearly de-Judaizing environment of 4th and 5th century non-Jewish Christianity, it does not find a conceptual home within the narrative world of John’s Gospel. 116 Stewart-Sykes, “Bathed in Living Waters,” 284; Miller, Texts and Material Finds, 120–21; see pp. 122–52 for an extensive treatment of “spiritual perceptions of water” in antiquity, including the Gospel of John. The descriptor “metaphorically layered and redirected” is mine. By it I mean (1) that the term “living water” is a reverse metaphor, i.e., rather than a concrete concept deployed to reconceptualize an abstract concept, “living water” is an abstract concept that reconceptualizes the concrete reality of continuously flowing water from a natural source; and (2) that the metaphor “living water” has two target referents in John: (a) actual flowing natural water, and (b) the life-giving work of the Spirit. 117 Miller, Texts and Material Finds, 121. 118 Harrington, “Purification in the Fourth Gospel,” largely building on the prior insights of W.-Y. Ng, Water Symbolism in John: An Eschatological Interpretation, StBibL 5 (New York: Peter Lang, 2001).

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identical – to one’s being “immersed in the Spirit,” which is itself a metaphorical reconstrual of ritual immersion. Second: while the phrase “living water” in both Greek and Hebrew literature (ὕδωρ ζῶν; ‫)מים חיים‬, particularly in some prophetic and Qumran texts (Jer 2:13; 17:13; Zech 14:8; 1QHa 16:7, 16), can be used as a metaphor to speak generally about the role of Israel’s god as life-giver, the phrase is more often found within discourses on ritual purity (Lev 14:6, 50, 51, 52; 15:13; Num 19:17; CD 19:33–35; Greek ALD 2:5 [= 4QLevib ar i 1 7]; 1QM 45:16; m. Miqw. 1:8; m. Yom 8:9, which interprets Jer 17:13 along ritual lines). I suggest that in John, too, the language of “living water” occurs in narrative settings in which ritual purity is indeed a concern. John 4:28 indicates that the Samaritan woman had been holding a ὑδρία, a vessel used to hold water. The woman’s hesitation at Jesus’s request for a drink stems from her keen awareness of the poor state of Jewish–Samaritan relations, and, as David Daube argued long ago concerning the meaning of συγχράομαι in 4:9, from the implication that Jesus’s request would mean sharing her water vessel with a Jew.119 For some Jews living in the homeland, such sharing of vessels would have been a violation of Torah’s purity laws; some tannaitic rabbis, for example, considered Samaritan women perpetually impure, as “menstruants from their cradle” (m. Nid 4:1), which rendered their vessels unclean by contact as well (m. Kel. 1:1). The Samaritan woman seems to know something of this and is, therefore, puzzled by Jesus’s apparent lack of concern for his own ritual purity. However, although Jesus initiates the idea with the woman, John is careful not to have Jesus initiate contact; Jesus never actually touches the woman’s water vessel and never actually takes a drink. Instead, Jesus redirects the conversation by asserting in 4:10 that he is the one who should really be offering her water. When, in this verse, the Johannine Jesus introduces the notion of “living water,” the concrete referent of the metaphor is not only to high quality drinking water but also to the waters of ritual purification – the Samaritan woman needs both. The discussion moves to a metaphorical plane in 4:13–15, in which Jesus’s offer of “living water” is shaped around the language of thirsting/drinking. While the meaning of the “thirsting” metaphor remains ambiguous, John is explicit later on in 7:37–39 that to “drink living water” is a metaphor for one’s “immersion in the Spirit.” The same connection between “drinking living 119 D. Daube, “Jesus and the Samaritan Woman: The Meaning of συγχράομαι,” JBL 69 (1950): 137–47 (144), convincingly argued that the term συγχράομαι used in John 4:9 should be understood in the sense of “‘to use something together with another person’: Jews do not use vessels together with Samaritans, most definitely not with Samaritan women.”

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water” and Spirit immersion seems to be present in 4:13–15, although the Spirit is not mentioned directly until 4:23–24. Thus, “thirsting” in the Johannine sense, both in 4:13–15 and in 7:37–38, must imply a state in which one has not been immersed in the Spirit.120 Jesus’s gift of “living water,” the gift of immersion in the Spirit, is thus the antidote to the woman’s non-Jewish status, not ritual immersion, and it is the mechanism that overcomes the social, ritual, and cultic gaps (see vv. 20–24) that exist between Jews and Samaritans. The gift of “living water” is not only for Samaritans. If we take ὁ πιστεύων εἰς ἐμέ in 7:38 in a non-restrictive sense, as “anyone who believes in me,” then we can deduce that John intends to open up the gift of Spirit immersion to, well, anyone – Jews, Samaritans, and Gentiles. However, on a narrative level, Jesus’s proclamation in 7:37–39 comes directly on the heels of the Gospel’s first hint at a mission to Judaizing Gentiles in 7:35–36 (see chapter 3). This might suggest that Jesus’s call here is particularly directed at Judaizing Gentiles worshiping in Jerusalem at Sukkot (cf. 12:20). Nevertheless, the important point to make here is that the offer of “living water” in 7:37–39 is set within a ritual context (Sukkot), of which water libations and ritual immersion pools were an important part (see section above on Siloam). The Johannine Jesus utilizes this context to cast a metaphorized vision of ritual immersion as Spirit immersion, which would be inclusive to both Jews and non-Jews. Also important is that, within the larger narrative context of John 7–9, such metaphorical reimaginations stand next to the concrete, the “real,” without any indication that John views physical washings as a negative idea or an obsolete practice: Jesus can declare himself to be the giver of “living water,” the Spirit, while at the very same time tell a blind man to go wash in the waters of Siloam (9:7). While the Gospel seems to negotiate Jewishness away from the priestly-oriented value of 120 The connection between ‘water’ and ‘spirit’ is made in S.T. Um, The Theme of Temple Christology in John’s Gospel, LNTS 312 (London: T&T Clark, 2006). Um investigates the contribution of early Jewish literature to an understanding of ‘water’ and ‘Spirit’ in John 4:4–26 and how they aide in the development of the Gospel’s ‘temple christology.’ The work offers a valuable critical survey of the history of interpretation of John 4, and proposes that (1) ‘water’ and ‘Spirit’ should be understood in their Jewish contexts as symbols of “life–giving blessing” and “new creational life”; (2) these symbols are representative of the Edenic garden temple and the end–time temple referenced in the prophetic literature; and (3) John presents Jesus as the “true Temple who replaces the old Temple as the source of eschatological life” (p. 190). While Um offers valuable insights into the connection of ‘water’ and ‘Spirit’ in ancient Judaism and their symbolic use in John, his study also represents one that has drawn the unnecessary conclusion that, since John presents Jesus as the giver of life and applies temple symbolism to him, then John must also be presenting Jesus as the ‘replacement’ of the ‘old temple.’

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ritual immersion, its use of “living water” as a metaphor for Spirit immersion does not render the practice invalid. It simply takes a different performative and conceptual approach to ritual purity. To conclude this section, then, we can sum up with three basic points: (1) The world inside John’s text negotiates ritual purification away from the priestlyoriented value of immersion and toward partial washings, an approach valued among Jews we can describe as having both a geographically and ideologically diasporic identity. (2) John’s strategy involves a heavy emphasis on metaphorizing ritual purity practices to highlight their moral qualities and cast a mode of identity much like we see in sources of a diasporic nature, whether in the land of Israel (Qumran, rabbis) or outside it (e.g., Aristeas, Philo, Jos. Asen.). And (3) the metaphorical and the “real” practice of ritual purity are not incompatible for John. They stand together simultaneously, which suggests that John’s strategy of identity with reference to purity stands in continuity with a variety of expressions of Jewishness in the late Second Temple period.121 3.2 The Ancestral Feasts and Shabbat Feasts, understood as appointed times of communal and ritual celebration and commemoration, were a significant part of the religio-political and economic structure of many ancient Mediterranean (and other) ethnē.122 The Jewish ethnos in antiquity was no different. According to Torah, while there are seven major appointed times, including the weekly observance of Shabbat, Jewish males were legally obligated to appear before YHWH with offerings three times a year: at Pesach (plus Chag HaMatzot), Chag Shavuot, and Chag HaSukkot (Deut 16:1–17; cf. Lev 23). During the early Second Temple period through the rabbinic era, another six were added: Purim, Lag b’Omer, Tisha b’Av, Simchat Torah, Tu b’shvat, and, perhaps most importantly, the Hasmonean institution of Chanukah.123 121 A worthy comparison is Paul’s concept of ‘circumcision of the heart’ in Rom 2:29, which is really not Paul’s concept at all (see Deut 10:6; 30:6; Jer 4:4). For Paul, just as for the Hebrew Bible, the spiritual quality of ‘circumcision of the heart’ is never undermined or represented as a departure from the benefit of the physical rite of circumcision for Jews (Rom 3:1–2). I thank Karin Neutel for this comparative observation. 122 See B. Hayden, The Power of Feasts: From Prehistory to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); B. Hayden and S. Villeneuve, “A Century of Feasting Studies,” Annual Review of Anthropology 40 (2011): 433–49. 123 This, of course, is not to forget that the DSS present evidence of several other festivals, such as New Wine and First Fruits of the Oil, mentioned in the Temple Scroll. See J.C. VanderKam, “Festivals,” in Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. L.H. Schiffman and J.C. VanderKam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 291.

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In contrast to the Synoptic Gospels, whose primary geographic locus for Jesus’s activity is the Galilee, John largely focuses on Jesus’s time spent in Jerusalem and structures this time around two appearance feasts (Pesach [e.g., 2:13, 23; 6:4; 11:55; 13:1] and Sukkot [7:2]), an unidentified feast (John 5:1), one non-Pentateuchal feast (Chanukah; 10:22), and Shabbat (5:16). Indeed, as Dorit Felsch comments, “Insgesamt spielt sich weit mehr als die Hälfte des im Johannesevangelium geschilderten Auftretens, Wirkens und Lehrens Jesu im Kontext und vor dem Hintergrund jüdischer Feste ab.”124 This keen Johannine interest in contextualizing Jesus’s identity and activity by means of Jewish ancestral feasts has recently experienced a sharp increase in scholarly attention, with no less than five major monographs published in the last decade or so.125 Each of these studies has its own angle of entry into the topic with its own scope and aims. Christine Schlund deals specifically with Pesach and the meaning of Jesus’s death in John; Michael Daise looks at feasts in relation to Johannine chronology and the concept of Jesus’s ‘hour’; Mary Spaulding focuses only on Sukkot and provides a fine analysis of this feast’s role in shaping Johannine communal identity through social memory theory; and Felsch and Gerry Wheaton are concerned with how the feasts function to elucidate Johannine soteriology and divine christology, respectively.126 For the purposes of the current study, in this section I wish only to make two points: the first is a rather concise but important observation about developments within Johannine scholarship based on the recent research noted above; the second is an extended argument that builds upon and incorporates aspects of this

124 D. Felsch, Die Feste im Johannesevangelium: Jüdische Tradition und christologische Deutung, WUNT 2.308 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 2. 125 C. Schlund, “Kein Knochen soll gebrochen werden”: Studien zu Bedeutung und Funktion des Pesachfests im Texten des frühen Judentums und im Johannesevangelium (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2005); M. Daise, Feasts in John: Jewish Festivals and Jesus’ ‘Hour’ in the Fourth Gospel, WUNT 2.229 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007); M. Spaulding, Commemorative Identities: Jewish Social Memory and the Johannine Feast of Booths, LNTS 396 (London: T&T Clark, 2009); Felsch, Die Feste; and Wheaton, Jewish Feasts. We should add to this list Gale Yee’s earlier contribution: Jewish Feasts and the Gospel of John (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1989). 126 I note here, however, that only Yee’s and Felsch’s contributions (rightly) include ‘Sabbath’ among the Jewish feasts. I also note that Wheaton’s monograph was published in 2015, four years after Felsch’s and six years after Spaulding’s. I am uncertain why Wheaton does not engage or even cite these two earlier monographs. Acknowledging their contributions would seem to contradict Wheaton’s characterization of recent scholarship as “very few extended treatments of the matter [of Jewish feasts in John]” (Feasts, 7).

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research into our reading of John as a Jewish text negotiating between priestlyoriented and diasporic modes of identity. Recent scholarship has demonstrated to varying degrees a heightened sensitivity to the issue of anti-Judaism in John’s portrayal of Jesus and the feasts.127 Spaulding and Wheaton have even made the issue one of the central questions of their research, leveling important criticism of earlier studies that have seen the Johannine Jesus as replacing, superseding, or abrogating Jewish festival laws.128 And Daise and Felsch start their projects from the point of view that John’s patterns of thought on the feasts need to be understood as developing within Judaism. While both Spaulding and Wheaton approach the category of “Judaism” primarily as a “religion” to the neglect of its ethnic character, they both describe John’s portrayal of it as a matrix full of vibrant and positive institutions. John understands Jesus’s relation to the feasts in terms of symbolic transvaluation and fulfillment in a post-70 context, not supersession or replacement. Particularly in Spaulding’s model, for John, being a Christ-follower and continuing to observe Sukkot were not incompatible phenomena.129 Collectively, what these studies demonstrate is a development in Johannine scholarship away from the idea that John’s metaphorical and symbolic application of festival language to illuminate the identity of Jesus immediately implies that John has rejected Judaism’s festal laws and rituals. Rather, metaphor stands concomitantly with the concrete (or ‘real’) target reference. John might be presenting Jesus-adherence as a post-70 strategy for dealing with the loss of the temple and thus the inability for Jews to observe certain elements of the feasts (animal sacrifice, water-libations, light ceremonies, etc.).130 However, the Johannine narrative gives no indication that, because Jesus is understood metaphorically as the paschal lamb (1:29[36]; 19:14, 31) and says, “I am the light of the world” (8:12), then he has necessarily replaced or abrogated laws 127 Daise, Feasts, 2; Spaulding, Commemorative Identities, 1–3; Felsch, Die Feste, 30–38; Wheaton, Feasts, 10–11, et passim. 128 E.g., Yee, Feasts, 27: “For John, Jesus replaces and abrogates the traditional feasts of the Jews”; Kerr, The Temple of Jesus’ Body, 267: “If indeed the unnamed festival represents all festivals (cf. p. 206 and n. 5) then John may be pointing in the subsequent verses to a picture of Judaism (including the festivals) in its weakness and impotence.” 129 Spaulding, Commemorative Identities, 160. 130 This is the fundamental argument of Kerr, The Temple of Jesus’ Body; A. Köstenberger, “The Destruction of the Second Temple and the Composition of the Fourth Gospel,” in Challenging Perspectives on the Gospel of John, ed. J. Lierman, WUNT 2.219 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 69–108; and, within a less supersessionist framework, Spaulding, Commemorative Identities; and Wheaton, Jewish Feasts.

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pertaining to the observance of Pesach and Sukkot. Logic that leads to such a conclusion is, to my mind, flawed.131 Judith Lieu puts it well: Yet although commentators will find numerous links between Jesus’ teaching and the details of the festival rituals, John makes no attempt to draw attention to these, or to suggest that Jesus in some way replaces them … For John the festivals are ancillary to the Temple, occasions for the presence there of Jesus and ‘all the Jews’ (cf. the regular ‘of the Jews’).132 We, therefore, need to remember that Jewish groups, both before and after 70, engaged in various processes of negotiating their ethnic identity without access to the physical temple, and they did this without ever implying that they had departed from their Jewish identity (see chapter 6). This leads us back to building the central argument of the current study, now with a focus on Jewish festival laws. The scholars named above (and others) have already provided thorough studies of Sukkot, Pesach, and Chanukah in John. Below, I wish only to highlight that, in approaching John, it is important to understand that celebrations of these festivals in Jewish antiquity varied, finding expression, as I will argue, in both priestly-oriented and diasporic types of identity contexts. John participates in this variety, interpreting these festivals around the figure of Jesus, not unlike, as Karin Zetterholm

131 As K.H. Zetterholm, “Isaac and Jesus: A Rabbinic Reappropriation of a ‘Christian’ Motif?,” JJS 67.1 (2016): 102–20 (113–14) has argued, “[T]he identification of Jesus with the paschal lamb by Paul (1 Cor 5:7) and John (19:31–37) ought not be labelled a Christian interpretation, but should be regarded as an invention within first-century Judaism […].” Zetterholm goes on to demonstrate from several rabbinic texts that, similar to the way that early Christ-followers identified Jesus with the paschal lamb, some rabbis reappropriated this motif and applied it to the figure of Isaac (114). Thus, the symbolic identification of an individual human with the paschal lamb is not ‘un-Jewish’ or in opposition to Jewish festal law. In contrast, Pancaro’s much ealier equates John’s Jesus-oriented hermeneutics with a rejection of the Jewish law and Judaism as a whole. For Pancaro, John’s application and “transferal” of “nomistic terminology” to Jesus immediately implies “that Jn is presenting Christ and Christianity as the ‘new order’ which supplants traditional Judaism but which is also, in a certain sense, its continuation by progression and transformation – its metamorphosis” (The Law in the Fourth Gospel, 367). It is important to note, however, that Pancaro nevertheless concludes that “Jn is to be situated in a Jewish milieu” and that Johannine believers probably still followed the law, although they did not “agree that their relationship to God is determined by their relationship to the Law, that God has revealed himself and his will exclusively in the Law” (p. 530). 132 J. Lieu, “Temple and Synagogue in John,” NTS 45 (1999): 51–69 (67).

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has convincingly demonstrated, the later rabbis did with Pesach and the figure of Isaac.133 Both Spaulding and Wheaton present a picture of Pesach and Sukkot celebrations in the Second Temple period that falls into two categories. On the one hand, for Jews living in the land of Israel, the focus during Pesach revolved around the priestly desire “to connect Jerusalem, its Temple, and its priests and Levites with God’s unified centre for the national worship (and governance) of his chosen people.”134 And, as Wheaton notes, the festival’s association with the memory of the exodus, God’s redemption of Israel out of Egyptian slavery, naturally connected it with anti-Roman “nationalistic” expectations of the people’s redemption from their foreign overlords.135 In other words, there was a fundamental connection between Pesach, especially the central rite of sacrificing the paschal lamb, and the politics of priestly-oriented Jewishness Sukkot, too, as noted earlier in this chapter, was an inherently priestly-oriented celebration. From the start of the Second Temple period to the early rabbis, the festival was always closely connected to the temple altar and the authority of the Jerusalem priesthood as leaders of the people and teachers of the law (Ezra 3:1–4; Neh 8:14–18; Jub. 16:19–21; 32:1–9; m. Sukk 4:9; t. Sukk 3:16).136 It also appears to have played a role in the politics of revolution within both the First and Second Revolts.137 On the other hand, Spaulding and Wheaton rightly note that both Pesach and Sukkot could be (and were) observed for their metaphorical and eschatological import, which effectively met the ideological-ritual needs of Jews without access to the temple. While there is not a lot of textual evidence for symbolic understandings of these festivals, there is some. In Spec. Laws 147, Philo states that “those who are in the habit of turning plain stories into allegory [ἀλληγορίαν], argue that the Passover figuratively represents the purification of the soul, for they say that the lover of wisdom is never practising anything else except a passing over from the body and the passions” (trans. Yonge). But perhaps more important is that Philo metaphorically extends the eating of the paschal meal – which was to take place in the temple precincts – to the individual home: “And each house is at that time invested with the character and dignity of a temple, the victim being sacrificed so as to make a 133 Zetterholm, “Isaac and Jesus,” 113–14. 134 Spaulding, Commemorative Identities, 53–54. 135 Wheaton, Jewish Feasts, 84–87, where he notes Josephus’s reports about anti-Roman riots in the temple during Pesach in, e.g., Ant. 20:112 and War 2:13. 136 Wheaton, Jewish Feasts, 143–45; Spaulding, Commemorative Identities, 57. 137 Spaulding, Commemorative Identities, 66.

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suitable feast for the man who has provided it and of those who are collected to share in the feast, being all duly purified with holy ablutions” (Spec. Laws 149; trans. Yonge). Philo’s transference of the paschal meal from temple to home prefigures the post-70 mishnaic material that does something hermeneutically similar. In m. Pesaḥ. 10, the paschal sacrifice is not the main component of the festival but is rather given only a passing reference in 10:3 (“And in the time of the temple, they would bring before him the carcass of the Passover offering”; trans. Neusner) and then put on equal footing with the other two elements of the meal in 10:5 (i.e., unleavened bread and bitter herbs). Here the unleavened bread, bitter herbs, and roasted meat are given explicit symbolic meaning associated with God’s redemption of the people from Egypt, with R. Gamaliel ruling: “In every generation a person is duty-bound to regard himself as if he personally has gone forth from Egypt” (trans. Neusner). The meal’s transference to the home and the ritual recitation of the son’s questions about the significance of the festival and the father’s responses based upon Deut 26:5–10 become the primary focus of the celebration and the mechanisms for the festival’s continuance after 70.138 Although Philo attaches no “allegory” to Sukkot, in Flacc 116, he does note that Egyptian Jews nevertheless observed the festival by living in tents, independent from pilgrimage to the Jerusalem temple. While, as Spaulding notes, Sukkot does not appear to take on the level of reinterpretation and new symbolization that Pesach does post-70, early rabbis focused on further developing the non-temple dependent aspects of the festival’s ritual observance, specifically the building of sukkot and the lulav.139 But there is also a metaphorizing of the temple-dependent water-libation ceremony, which elucidates its eschatological significance. In m. Mid. 2:6, R. Eliezer b. Jacob explains the origins of the name “Water Gate” in connection with the water-libations performed there on Sukkot and the eschatological waters of Ezek 47:1–2 that are said to flow from the temple (“And through it the waters trickled forth and in the future will issue out from under the threshold of the house”; trans. Neusner; cf. t. Sukk. 3:3). And in t. Sukk. 3:18, R. Aqiva links the Sukkot water-libations to the eschatology of Zechariah 14, in which God promises rainwater for all nations that come to Jerusalem to worship YHWH and celebrate Sukkot (Zech 14:16– 19). Thus, the ritual elements of Sukkot that could be retained in a post-70 situation were given increased significance by the rabbis, much like the strategy of geographically diasporic Jews such as Philo. The elements that could not be retained, namely the water-libations (and the lighting of the temple 138 Spaulding, Commemorative Identities, 71–75. 139 See Spaulding, Commemorative Identities, 77–79.

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candelabrum), were reinterpreted metaphorically according to what the rabbis saw as scriptural precedent and to fit their diasporic context. While Chanukah is not among the Torah’s laws of appointed times, its institution on 25 Chislev during the Hasmonean period (ca. 164 BCE) eventually became a fixed custom within Judaism of the late Second Temple period and beyond.140 Its origins in the Hasmonean revolt against the Seleucid king Antiochus IV, and Judas Maccabaeus’s successful cleansing of the Jerusalem temple and restoration of the sacrificial altar, make Chanukah’s priestlyoriented characteristics rather clear (see 1 Macc 4:36–60; 2 Macc 1:18–2:18; 10:1– 8; Josephus, Ant. 12:316–25). As Felsch rightly notes, the feast was conceived fundamentally within a theo-political framework: it not only commemorated a Jewish political victory with the help of God over foreign oppressors who had blasphemed and defiled the temple but also represented a henotheistic confession of the one true God of Israel whose worship alone was to take place in that temple.141 Felsch further notes that in Josephus and later rabbinic tradition Chanukah gradually takes on greater symbolic significance centered upon the candlelighting ritual, so much so that Josephus even calls the festival “Lights” (φῶτα) rather than Dedication (τὰ ἐγκαίνια).142 The name “Lights,” Josephus reasons, was given perhaps to reflect the idea that such freedom (ἐξουσία) had once appeared beyond hope. The Bavli’s explanation of Chanukah, while rooted in the tradition of the victorious Hasmonean revolt, is based on a baraita that introduces the miraculous story of the pitcher of oil that fueled the lampstand for eight days even though it only had one day’s worth of oil. The focus is thus on the miracle of the candle burning rather than on the rededication of the temple. Felsch even discusses a passage from Pesiqta Rabbati 2, a work from the 9th cent. CE, which attaches eschatological salvation and cosmological significance to Chanukah.143 While the relevance of this much later work for reading John’s Gospel in the first century is debatable, Felsch could have pointed to a much earlier work that presents us with the seeds of such 140 Josephus, Ant. 12:324 says that those first celebrating the festival made it a “law” for posterity to keep as well (ὡς νόμον θεῖναι τοῖς μετ᾿ αὐτοὺς ἑορτάζειν τὴν ἀνάκτησιν τῶν περὶ τὸν ναὸν ἐφ᾿ ἡμέρας ὀκτώ). Νόμος need not refer to codified law – although this is not beyond the realm of possibility – but probably is meant to refer to a standardized cultural custom. For recent surveys of Chanukah by Johannine scholars, see Felsch, Die Feste, 233–45; Wheaton, Jewish Feasts, 159–82; Bauckham, Beloved Disciple, 253–70. 141 Felsch, Die Feste, 224: “Hauptaspekt des Festes ist der Sieg über die Tempelfrevler und Unterdrücker durch Gottes Hilfe, aber ineins damit auch das Bekenntnis zum einen wahren Gott, dem der Tempel wieder rechtmäßig geweiht wird.” 142 See Felsch, Die Feste, 224–27. 143 Felsch, Die Feste, 226–27.

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eschatological associations with the festival. In the presentation of Chanukah in 2 Macc 1:18–2:18, twice the author recounts prayers offered  – one during Nehemiah’s rededication of the altar (1:24–29) and a similar one during Judas’s analogous rededication (2:14–18) – which invoke God to gather together the people scattered abroad “into the holy place” (2:18) as a result of rescuing them from evil and purifying the temple. The passage does not demand an eschatological interpretation, such as in Tobit 14:1–5, but the author’s “hope” (ἐλπίζομεν) that this ingathering will happen “soon” (ταχέως) according to what God had “promised through the law” (ἐπηγγείλατο διὰ τοῦ νόμου) certainly makes an eschatological reading plausible. First Maccabees never draws such a connection. From this perspective, then, it is quite possible that the diasporic nature of 2 Maccabees is responsible for its association of Chanukah not only with the rededication of the temple but also with the eschatological regathering of the people (cf. John 11:52; see below). Shabbat observance was a common marker of Jewishness from both insider and outsider perspectives (e.g., Plutarch, Quaes. Conv. 4:6; Tacitus, Hist. 5:4).144 While many Jews considered the seventh day a holy day and a day of rest across the ancient Mediterranean, in pre-70 Jerusalem, Shabbat was a thoroughgoing priestly-led affair.145 The ancestral law mandated that, rather than sacrificing the normal one lamb at morning and evening, two lambs were to be offered on the altar on Shabbat (Num 28:9–10; 1 Esdr. 5:52; Josephus, Ant. 3:237). Priests signaled the beginning of the holy day by blowing trumpets, probably from a specially designated area on the temple mount (Josephus, War 4:582; Trumpeting Place Inscription [IAA 78–1439]). Shabbat days marked the changing of the showbread in the temple sanctuary, which became food for the priests on duty (Josephus, Ant. 3:256; Mark 2:26), and they also marked out the service of the twenty-four priestly courses (Josephus, Ant. 7:365). And, if we read Josephus’s discourse in C. Ap. 2:175–88 as a unified defense of the Jews as being learned in their laws through weekly instruction on Shabbat (2:175), then we should probably understand that it was the priests who were in charge of the instruction (2:184–88). 144 The most comprehensive study to-date of Shabbat and Shabbat practice in Jewish antiquity is Lutz Doering’s, Schabbat: Sabbathalacha und -praxis im antiken Judentum und Urchristentum, TSAJ 78 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999). While not nearly as exhaustive as Doering’s study, see H. McKay, Sabbath and Synagogue: The Question of Sabbath Worship in Ancient Judaism, RGRW 122 (Leiden: Brill, 1994), which addresses both insider and outsider sources related to Shabbat. Note that McKay makes an important methodological decision in distinguishing between “observance” and “worship.” 145 McKay, Sabbath and Synagogue, 2.

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Apart from temple-related activities in Jerusalem, the actual observance of Shabbat does not appear to differ greatly between priestly-oriented and diasporic types of Jewish groups. Philo and Josephus, for example, both indicate that the essence of Shabbat was cessation of ‘work’ (however defined) and an important weekly time for Jews, in the land and outside it, to assemble and learn the ancestral laws (Philo, Prob. 80–83; Hypoth. 7:11–14; Josephus, Ant. 16:43; C. Ap. 2:175). However, while not a matter of ritual practice, there are certain ideological associations with Shabbat that seem to pop up particularly in some pre- and post-70 diasporic sources. For example, Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice (4QShirShabba), which orders itself around thirteen Shabbatot for each of the four seasons of the year, brings Shabbat sacrifices into the angelic realm, with offerings made by angelic priests in the heavenly cosmic sanctuary. The ideological focus in this document is not on ‘rest’ but rather the ‘work’ of the angelic priesthood in the Holy of Holies. Philo and some early rabbinic material evince the struggle that some diasporic Jews had with the theological origins of Shabbat practice in God’s ‘rest’ from creation on the seventh day (cf. Gen 2:2). In Leg. 1:5–6, Philo asserts that, since creating is part of his own very nature, “God never ceases from making” (παύεται γὰρ οὐδέποτε ποιῶν ὁ θεός). Philo argues this point philologically, stating that Moses used the transitive term κατέπαυσεν intentionally rather than the intransitive ἐπαύσατο to express the point that God himself did not rest on the seventh day but instead “caused to rest” the things which he had created and set in motion. The post-70 Mekh. Baḥodesh 7 on Exod 20:11 expresses a similar theological dilemma: scripture says that God does not grow weary, so how can it, at the same time, say, “And he rested on the seventh day”? The midrash answers by saying, “God allowed it to be written about Him that He created His world in six days and rested, as it were, on the seventh” (Lauterbach ed. 2:329). The same general idea is presented: God, really, did not rest on the seventh day but continued his work of creating.146 If we ask, then, where John’s strategy fits within this spectrum of Jewish attitudes toward ancestral festival law, the picture becomes relatively clear, even if scholars debate some of the specifics: John employs the feasts as symbolic metaphors to describe the work and identity of Jesus. This is certainly not a new observation. Wheaton, for example, has successfully demonstrated that, while John’s narrative indeed presents Jesus as the paschal lamb symbolically put to death at the same time the actual paschal lambs were being slaughtered in the temple (John 19:14), more important for John is that the consumption of 146 See Felsch, Die Feste, 77–80 for a more detailed treatment.

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Jesus’s flesh and blood (6:53–57) is metaphorically constitutive of the restored community’s participation in the paschal meal.147 The contribution of the analysis presented here is that John’s strategy does not reflect a departure from Judaism, from membership in the Jewish ethnos (so Yee), or the fulfillment of Jewish institutions in general (so Wheaton). Rather it reflects a shift from the centrality of the paschal sacrifice in priestly-oriented types of Jewishness toward the centrality of the paschal meal as reflected in diasporic types. That John makes Jesus the central mediator of the celebration of Sukkot, too, has a significantly diasporic thread, since it focuses on reimagining around Jesus the feast’s specifically temple-oriented rituals and its ethnic scope. In Zecharian fashion (Zech 14:7–8), John’s Jesus offers metaphorical “living water” (the Spirit) at Sukkot (John 7:37–39) and claims to be “the light of the world” (John 8:12). Also like Zechariah’s eschatological vision for “all nations” to worship YHWH at this festival (Zech 14:16–19), the Johannine Jesus’s exhortation seems to envision the inclusion of non-Jews (ἐαν τις διψᾷ). Chanukah, the temple-oriented feast par excellence, is also diasporized in John. First, Bauckham has observed, followed by Wheaton, that John’s language of ‘consecration’ (ἡγίασεν; 10:36), used with reference to Jesus in his dispute with the Jews in the temple (10:22–39), presents Jesus as the eschatological ‘new altar’ of burnt offering, alluding to the one inaugurated by Judas in 1 Macc 4:47 (θυσιαστήριον καινὸν). Immediately before Bauckham draws this conclusion, however, he says: “The thought here [in John 10:36] is not of Jesus as God’s presence but of Jesus as the one God has consecrated for the offering of sacrifice” (italics mine).148 Bauckham’s statement here differs subtly from the one in which he asserts that John presents Jesus as the ‘new altar.’ The statement here suggests, rather, that Bauckham also understands the Johannine Jesus to be the person set apart by the father to offer sacrifice, which would seem to imply that John presents Jesus as a consecrated priest. This aspect of Bauckham’s interpretation, to me, actually makes better sense of the Chanukah context of the Johannine passage. While the altar itself is certainly an important part of the account in 1 Macc 4:36–60, we cannot overlook the people who were chosen to restore it. In 4:42, Judas chooses “blameless priests desirous of the law” (ἱερεῖς ἀμώμους θελητὰς νόμου) to cleanse the sanctuary (v. 43), pull down the defiled altar (vv. 45–46), and build the new altar along with the sanctuary and its holy vessels (vv. 47–51). They are also the ones who begin once again “offering sacrifices according to the law” (ἀνήνεγκαν θυσίαν κατὰ τὸν 147 Wheaton, Jewish Feasts, 83–126. 148 Bauckham, Beloved Disciple, 264.

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νόμον; vv. 52–54). Jesus, who is elsewhere in John called by the high priestly title “Holy One of God” (6:69; see chapter 6), seems to be symbolically associated not with the altar but rather with that group of people who love the law (10:35) and were responsible for cleansing the temple (cf. 2:14–17). John does this by means of the metaphor of priestly ‘consecration.’ The metaphor follows up on Jesus’s claim of being “one with the father” (10:30), a claim that his opponents (mis)understand as Jesus’s attempt at setting himself up as a god (ποιεῖς σεαυτὸν θεόν), just as Antiochus IV had done almost two centuries earlier and the Roman emperors were currently doing;149 hence, the charge of blasphemy and sentence of stoning (10:33). Second, and perhaps even more clearly diasporic in character, is that Chanukah in John is followed up in the very next chapter with the anticipation of the eschatological ingathering of the “scattered children of God”; and its impetus is the sacrificial death of Jesus (11:51–52).150 As noted earlier, the same connection between Chanukah and ingathering is found in the letter to Egyptian Jews prefixed to 2 Maccabees in 1:18–2:18 but is entirely lacking in the account in 1 Macc 4:36–60. The concept of a future ingathering, I suggest, is basically (but not necessarily exclusively) a diasporic concern, a strategy for negotiating one’s ancestral identity from a distance, whether geographical or ideological (e.g., Tob 14:1–5; 4Q509 1 iii = 1Q34 i + ii). This is precisely what we see happening in John, as its narrative world pairs Chanukah with the assembly of the scattered. John’s account of Shabbat controversies (5:10–47; 7:19–24; 9:13–17) are often cited by scholars to claim that the Johannine Jesus breaks or abrogates Jewish law.151 Reading these passages in the context of Jewish debates, particularly rabbinic ones, over Shabbat halakha in and around the first century is, in my view, informative and provides us with a tool to identify the nature of John’s 149 Second Maccabees has a particular emphasis on the “blasphemy” of the nations against Israel and its God (8:4; 9:28; 10:4, 34, 35, 36; 12:14; 13:11; 15:24, 32). In 2 Macc 9:28, Antiochus IV is called “the murder and blasphemer.” 150 On the death of Jesus and the eschatological ingathering, see J.A. Dennis, Jesus’ Death and the Gathering of True Israel, WUNT 2.217 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006). See also the discussion in chapter 3 on 11:47–52 and the role of Jesus’s death in John’s understanding of the ethnic category of ‘people,’ and chapter 5 on how this passage connects Jesus’s death to the ancestral land. 151 E.g., Doering, Schabbat, 472; Daise, Feasts in John, 2–3; R. Hakola, “The Johannine Community as Jewish Christians? Some Problems in Current Scholarly Consensus,” in Jewish Christianity Reconsidered: Rethinking Ancient Groups and Texts, ed. M. JacksonMcCabe (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 186–87.

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strategy.152 At the start, it must be noted that the conflict is not over whether Shabbat, as Jewish law, should be observed  – John gives no indication that Jesus questions this – but rather over what proper observance entails. In the context of the controversy recorded in John 5:10–47, Jesus has just told a man, whose sickness had been with him thirty-eight years, to pick up his mat and walk on Shabbat (5:8). In 5:10, the man is confronted by the Ioudaioi with, first, a statement that it is Shabbat, and, second, with their halakhic position on how that law should be observed: “It is Shabbat and it is not permitted [ἔξεστιν] for you to take up your mat.” The language of οὐκ ἔξεστιν here (“it is not permitted/possible”) does not communicate a formal legal code; there is obviously no formal law in Torah that explicitly forbids carrying a mat on Shabbat. Rather, as suggested by Louw and Nida, ἔξεστιν is a modal verb, which, in the present passage, consists in the subjective evaluation of Shabbat law from the perspective of what the Ioudaioi think should be done.153 In other words, οὐκ ἔξεστιν expresses an interpretation of Shabbat law, not Shabbat law itself. As I will argue below in the discussion of John 7:19–24, Jesus holds a different evaluation of Shabbat law as it relates specifically to the issue of healing. In 5:18, the Johannine narrator does not present the actual charges brought against Jesus by the Ioudaioi but rather the narrator’s own conclusion about the implications of Jesus’s healing and claim in 5:17 to have acted collaterally with God on Shabbat: “Because of this, the Ioudaioi were seeking all the more to kill him: he was not merely suspending Shabbat [οὐ μόνον ἔλυεν τὸ σάββατον], but he was also calling the god his own father, making himself equal with the god.” It must be said at once that the primary problem the Ioudaioi have with Jesus here is not that he has healed someone on Shabbat. While they “harass” him for this (5:16, ἐδίωκον), the Shabbat healing is clearly a secondary theme in the narrative, and it is not the issue that the Johannine author attaches to the effort of the Ioudaioi to execute Jesus.154 That effort is connected to Jesus’s 152 See Doering, Schabbat, 468–76 for his views on John. However, Doering is doubtful that the Shabbat controversies recorded by John reflect the style of genuine halakhic debate but, rather, form part of the polemical and christological aims of the Johannine community. In contrast, N. Collins, Jesus, the Sabbath, and the Jewish Debate: Healing on the Sabbath in the 1st and 2nd Centuries CE, LNTS 474 (London: T&T Clark, 2014), 218–22, argues, convincingly in my view, that Jesus, according to John, indeed, employs halakhic argumentation that is generally rabbinic in nature. I am not concerned with issues of historicity, as Collins is, but rather with the type of argumentative strategy John maps onto the figure of Jesus. 153 Louw–Nida, Lexicon, 668, 671. 154 This point is noted by Doering (Schabbat, 476) when he says, “Dagegen sprechen der nur dienende Charakter der in Joh 5 und 9 sekundär eingetragenen Sabbatthematik […]”

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assertion of divine sonship and likening himself to the Jewish god.155 In telling the man to take up his mat and walk on Shabbat, Jesus enacts a basic principle found in rabbinic literature that, when there is “any matter of doubt as to danger to life” (‫ ;כל ספק נפשות‬m. Yom 8:6; trans. Neusner), such a matter is grounds for “overriding” or “suspending” the prohibitions of Shabbat.156 Here the Johannine Jesus decides that healing the sick on Shabbat constitutes a ruling that legitimately relates to the principle of saving life and, therefore, justifies suspending Shabbat’s proscriptions. From this perspective, ἔλυεν τὸ σάββατον in John 5:18 does not refer to a “breaking” or “abrogating” of Shabbat law.157 After all, the Johannine Jesus, for his part, certainly does not think he has done such a thing. Indeed, in 7:23, Jesus expresses that what he has done on Shabbat has a perfectly valid legal reasoning, which he expects his contemporaries, if not to agree with, then at least to understand. Hence, his confusion at their anger towards him (ἐμοὶ χολᾶτε ὅτι ὅλον ἄνθρωπον ὑγιῆ ἐποίησα ἐν σαββάτῳ;). I suggest, then, that it is better to understand ἔλυεν τὸ σάββατον as in some way analogous to the mishnaic phrase ‫“( דֹוחה את השבת‬suspending the Shabbat”) and thus as referring to the Johannine narrator’s interpretation of Jesus’s actions: Jesus was overriding, suspending, Shabbat by deciding to heal the sick. Of course, the literary characters in John’s story do not agree with Jesus’s ruling. But we must recall that the ensuing conflict is not about whether Jesus (italics original). Since we rarely see physical harassment as a consequence of halakhic debate among the later rabbis, then one might ask if the Johannine Jesus is here engaged in genuine halakhic debate. Two points can be made in response. (1) The presence of physical harassment or violence between Jewish groups should not be the criterion for judging whether or not the conflict is halakhic in nature; the topic of the argument (in this case Shabbat) and the style of argumentation (in the case of Jesus especially in 7:19–24 it is akin to qal vachomer) should be the determining factors. (2) We must acknowledge that some halakhic debates did, indeed, devolve into physical conflicts, or at least were perceived as “profound” enough to lead to such. See, e.g., the traditions preserved in t. Shabb 1:16; y. Shabb. 1:4, 3c; and b. Shabb 17a. These texts consist of rabbinic lore, which describe disciples of the Houses of Shammai and Hillel stowing away a sword in the study hall as a result of an intense debate between the two rabbis, and, in another scenario, killing each other as a result of disagreement. While these stories are almost certainly exaggerations, the point still stands that it was, for some Jews, conceivable that halakhic debate could lead to harassment and even violent conflict between both individuals and groups. 155 See further discussion below. On the phrase ἴσον ἑαυτὸν ποιῶν τῷ θεῷ, and similar ones, in various ancient sources (Jewish and non-Jewish), see Dodd, Interpretation, 325–28. Note Dodd’s observation that the words ἴσος and ὅμοιος are “interchangeable” (p. 328 n. 1). 156 The most common language for the concept of “suspending Shabbat” in the Mishnah is ‫דֹוחה את השּׁבּת‬. Further, it goes without saying that what constituted “doubt as to danger to life” was itself a matter of debate among the rabbis. See note 161 below. 157 Pace Doering, Schabbat, 472; Hakola, Identity Matters, 122.

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has observed Shabbat, but, rather, whether he has observed it in a way that was “permissible” (ἔξεστιν) or “not permissible” (οὐκ ἔξεστιν) to another group.158 Only from the perspective of his opponents was Jesus’s decision to suspend Shabbat unacceptable. What we see reflected here, then, is an internal Jewish debate. Indeed, in 9:13–17, John recounts that such debate over Shabbat took place even within the Pharisees as a single group, in my view not entirely dissimilar to the internal disputes that erupted between Hillel and Shammai and their great houses of Pharisaic interpretation. As a conclusion to Jesus’s second healing on Shabbat and an attempt to draw conclusions from it about his identity, 9:16 states: “Some of the Pharisees said, ‘This man is not from God, for he does not observe Shabbat.’ But others said, ‘How can a man who is a sinner do such signs?’ And there was a division [σχίσμα] among them.” Internal Jewish argument, again, constitutes the context of John’s use of λύω in 7:23, which is a discursive continuation of the first healing controversy (5:1–17). Here Jesus engages his disputants’ legal hermeneutic by affirming the halakha, that a baby boy should, indeed, be circumcised on Shabbat in order that the heavier law of eighth-day circumcision “might not be suspended” (μὴ λυθῇ) for the sake of a lighter law.159 The Johannine Jesus builds an effective qal vachomer argument that asserts that, since it is permissible to suspend Shabbat to fulfill the rite of eighth-day circumcision,160 which was understood

158 See, e.g., m. Yom. 8:6–7; Mekh. Shabb. Exod 31:12 [Lauterbach 2:493–94]). I suggest the language of ἔξεστιν/οὐκ ἔξεστιν here is, therefore, roughly on par with Mishnaic halakhic discourse, which often employs the pair ‫( נתר‬permitted) and ‫( אסר‬forbidden) to express the rulings of various tannaitic rabbis. The point to stress here is that ἔξεστιν/οὐκ ἔξεστιν does not refer to whether an aspect of Jewish law should or should not be observed; rather it refers to the possibilities inherent in legal interpretation, creating conceptual room for debate among interpreters of the ancestral law. 159 It is best to take ὁ νόμος Μωϋσέως in 7:23 as a reference specifically to the law of circumcision. Circumcision is specifically mentioned in 7:22 as the law that “Moses has given,” and, at the start of 7:23, the performance of circumcision on Shabbat forms the protasis of the conditional. Jesus is, therefore, asserting the principle shared by some of his contemporaries, that, when a person receives circumcision on Shabbat, they do so in order that “that law of Moses,” i.e., circumcision, “might not be suspended” (μὴ λυθῇ). Instead, it is Shabbat that one suspends for the sake of circumcision. The same principle is communicated in m. Ned. 3:11: “R. Yose says, ‘Great is circumcision, since it suspends the Sabbath [‫]דֹוחה את השּׁבּת‬, which is subject to strict rules.’ R. Joshua b. Qorha says, ‘Great is circumcision, for it was not suspended [‫ ]נתלה‬even for a moment, for the sake of Moses, the righteous” (trans. Neusner). 160 E.g., m. Shabb. 18:3; m. Ned. 3:11; t. Shabb. 15:16.

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by some early rabbis to make a (male) person “complete” or “whole,”161 how much more should it be permissible for him to make “a whole person well on Shabbat” (ὅλον ἄνθρωπον ὑγιῆ ἐποίησα ἐν σαββάτῳ; 7:23), a person whose situation, to Jesus, certainly qualified under the broad umbrella of “any matter of doubt as to danger to life.”162 According to John’s Jesus, while the legal logic of his interlocutors is sound with reference to the suspension of Shabbat for 161 M. Ned. 3:11: ‫“( אברהם לא נקרא שלם עד שמל‬Abraham was not called ‘whole’ until he circumcised”; ET mine). 162 See Collins, Sabbath, 218–22, who argues that the Johannine Jesus’s argument here, while not identical to rabbinic forms, is certainly halakhic in nature, employing a qal vachomer style of argumentation. Other scholars have pointed this out as well, e.g., M. Labahn, Jesus als Lebensspender: Untersuchungen zu einer Geschichte der johanneischen Tradition anhand ihrer Wundergeschichten (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1999), 253; and, recently, R. Alan Culpepper, “Matthew and John: Reflections of Early Christianity in Relationship to Judaism,” in John and Judaism: A Contested Relationship in Context, ed. R. Alan Culpepper and P.N. Anderson, RBS 87 (Atlanta: SBL, 2017), 203–205. Hakola, Identity Matters, 140–41 argues that Jesus’s healing and subsequent argument did not meet the basic principle of ‘saving a life,’ since the rabbis asserted that one’s life must be in immediate danger, that is, be a case of certain death if one does not take action on the Sabbath. The paralytic’s life was not in immediate danger; after all, he had been sick for thirty-eight years. However, Hakola does not take into account fully that the position mentioned in Mekh. Shabb. 1, that the danger to one’s life had to be immediate and certain, is a ruling made by R. Eleazar b. Azariah’s conversation partners, R. Ishmael and R. Aqiva. It represents only one perspective in the debate. The one thing they all agree on is that Shabbat laws should be suspended when one’s life is in danger. But what actually constitutes a threat to one’s life is left unsettled. The text goes on to include rulings by three other rabbis not originally included in the discussion (Jose the Galilean, Simon b. Menasiah, Nathan). The rulings by the first two of these are insightful: “R. Jose the Galilean says: When it says: ‘But My sabbath ye shall keep,’ the word ‘but’ (ak) implies a distinction. There are Sabbaths on which you must rest and there are Sabbaths on which you should not rest.’ R. Simon b. Menasiah says: ‘Behold it says: “And ye shall keep the sabbath for it is holy unto you” (v. 14). This means: The Sabbath is given to you, but you are not surrendered to the Sabbath’” (trans. Lauterbach 2:494). These rabbis cast a general principle with reference to Shabbat observance, which follows on the heels of the earlier discussion: for some, ‘danger to life’ needed to be qualified by ‘certainty’; for others, no such qualification was necessary. For example, m. Yom 8:6 includes ravenous hunger (which could be solved by giving the person “unclean things”), a bite by a crazy dog, and a sore throat all constitute “a matter of doubt as to danger to life.” This mishnah seems to underline this sort of broad approach when it concludes with “And any [‫ ]כל‬matter of doubt as to danger to life overrides the prohibitions of the Sabbath” (trans. Neusner; italics mine). Furthermore, as mentioned above, it is quite plausible that, from the Johannine Jesus’s perspective, the paralytic’s life was indeed in danger, with the threat of something worse, perhaps even death, happening to him (“Sin no more in order that something worse might not happen to you!”).

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the performance of eighth-day circumcision, it falls apart with reference to the suspension of Shabbat in cases of “any matter of doubt as to danger to life.” Within John’s presentation, then, Jesus does anything but abolish Shabbat.163 In fact, 7:19 explicitly indicts the crowd with whom Jesus speaks as those who “do not do the law.”164 Thus, while Jesus’s opponents dispute his actions, later rabbis would have had no problem recognizing the hermeneutical strategy underlying Jesus’s argumentation here, even if in the end they would not have been convinced.165 R. Alan Culpepper has recently noted, as did C.H. Dodd before him, that John’s Shabbat narratives have a characteristically christological focus.166 As demonstrated in Dodd’s study, we see this focus especially in John’s development and christological application of the idea expressed by Philo and some later rabbis, that, while the god of Israel himself ceases from some of his work on Shabbat, he does not cease from all of it, since he continues to perform his work of giving life and judging the wicked and the righteous alike.167 Philo 163 Contra Bultmann, John, 247, but in full agreement with Culpepper, “Matthew and John,” 204. 164 Pancaro, The Law in the Fourth Gospel, 162, insightfully suggests that Jesus’ statement in 7:19, οὐδεὶς ἐξ ὑμῶν ποιεῖ τὸν νόμον, is not a reference to Jesus’s opinion that the practice of circumcision on the Sabbath is illegal; rather it should be seen in direct connection with Jesus’s following question to them: τί με ζητεῖτε ἀποκτεῖναι; That is, John is here arguing in a similar but converse vein as 5:45–47: “the Jews do not do the Law because they do not believe in Jesus and, as a result, unjustly persecute and condemn him.” 165 Hakola’s claim (Identity Matters, 140–41; made again in his “The Johannine Community as Jewish Christians?,” 186–87), that Jesus’s argument here is not a genuine halakhic discussion and would certainly not have persuaded any Jew of his day seems at odds with his earlier statement that Jesus’s reasoning indeed “formally follows the rabbinic passages” cited above. There are surely differences between the Johannine Jesus and the rabbinic discussions, as Hakola notes, but this would not seem to nullify the idea that John is presenting Jesus as thoroughly engaged in inner-Jewish debates about Shabbat. Hakola’s main reason for asserting that Jesus’s argument would have been entirely unpersuasive is that “In order for Jesus’ argumentation to be persuasive, circumcision and the miraculous healing of the lame man should somehow be comparable acts. But this is not the case […] (p. 140, where he cites and depends heavily on Derrett’s work). But the issue, both in John and the rabbinic passages, is not the comparability of circumcision and miraculous healing, but rather their relative status with reference to Shabbat: just as circumcision, which involves only one part of the body, is the heavier principle and thereby suspends/ overrides Shabbat, so (or even more so) saving a person’s whole body should be prioritized over Shabbat. Contra Hakola, then, the Johannine Jesus’s argument is strong evidence for reading it within Judaism. 166 See Culpepper, “Matthew and John,” 203–204, where he builds on the earlier work of Dodd, Interpretation, 320–23. See also Bultmann, John, 247. 167 Philo, Cher. 86–90; Leg. 1:5–6, 16; Gen. Rab. 11:10; Exod. Rab. 30:9.

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puts it thus: “That which is the cause of all things is by nature active and never stops doing the most excellent things” (Cher. 87). Whether or not John has “borrowed” this concept of God and Shabbat from Philo and the rabbis, as Culpepper suggests is possible,168 it, or something like it, is surely the foundation upon which the initial part of Jesus’s statement in 5:17 rests: ὁ πατήρ μου ἕως ἄρτι ἐργάζεται. The words κἀγὼ ἐργάζομαι, however, spotlight Jesus’s apocalyptic identity as “son of the god” and “son of man” (which becomes the central theme of the apologia of 5:19–30)169 and, as Dodd says, “imply that the life-giving work which Jesus has performed on the Sabbath is an instance of the divine activity of ζωοποίησις, and as such is exempt from the Sabbath restrictions.”170 That is, κἀγὼ ἐργάζομαι involves Jesus “in a field where God’s competence is exclusive.”171 The christological affirmation here is clear and it is high: the Johannine Jesus claims authority to work on Shabbat just as the god of Israel does, without violating the law, and thus claims an honorable status likened to the god himself (5:23). Yet we would be wrong to suppose that this affirmation necessarily sets John’s interpretation of Shabbat on a path away from Jewishness or assumes a situation in which non-observance was “self-evident.”172 After all, Jesus’s decision to heal on Shabbat, while having a christological focus in John 5, is given a halakhic rationale in John 7. Jesus’s divine identity and Shabbat observance do not appear, in John’s view, to be mutually exclusive.173 Furthermore, even if we lacked Jesus’s halakhic reasoning in 7:22–24, John’s divine christology in 5:17–47 (as will be discussed in more detail in chapter 6) is generally congruent with other traditions in ancient Judaism that feature divine figures operating somewhere on the ladder between heaven and earth.174 In particular, as Crispin Fletcher-Louis has recently argued, an 168 Culpepper, “Matthew and John,” 204. 169 C. Fletcher-Louis has recently shown the influence of the apocalyptic son of man tradition in early Judaism on John’s presentation of Jesus in 5:19–30. See Fletcher-Louis, “John 5:19–30: The Son of God is the Apocalyptic Son of Man,” in Reading the Gospel of John’s Christology as Jewish Messianism: Royal, Prophetic, and Divine Messiahs, AJEC 106, ed. B.E. Reynolds and G. Boccaccini (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 411–34 (415–23). 170 Dodd, Interpretation, 323. 171 Dodd, Interpretation, 326. 172 As argued by Hakola, Identity Matters, 143 and affirmed by Culpepper, “Matthew and John,” 205. 173 In disagreement with Bultmann, John, 247. 174 See D. Boyarin, “Enoch, Ezra, and the Jewishness of ‘High Christology,’” in Fourth Ezra and Second Baruch: Reconstruction after the Fall, ed. M. Henze and G. Boccaccini, JSJSup 164 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 337–61.

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apocalyptic son of man tradition based on Dan 7:13–14, active and lively in the first-century, seems to have inspired John’s presentation of Jesus in 5:19– 30.175 It should come as no surprise that the Johannine Jesus’s claim to be the divinely appointed son of man who works on Shabbat like his father is met with vehement opposition from some Jews but not all (cf. 9:35–38), just as those who later asserted that there were “two powers in heaven” were met with harsh criticism from some (but not all) rabbis for its apparent undermining of Jewish henotheism.176 Set within the context of conflict, then, John’s strategy is to combine two streams of Jewish thought: the Philonic notion (picked up by some later rabbis) that it is necessary, and indeed good for the world, that the Jewish god continues to work on Shabbat, and the Danielic tradition of a heavenly son of man who wields the god’s authority on earth. The result is something of a Johannine exposition of the Synoptic logion, “The son of man is lord of Shabbat” (Matt 12:8//Mark 2:28//Luke 6:5), and, while certainly exasperating for some of Jesus’s contemporaries, it sits comfortably within the fluid and flexible conceptual world of Jewish antiquity. 4

Conclusion

In conclusion, John’s narrative presents us with two competing approaches to the ancestral law and its laws. We can categorize one approach on the priestlyoriented side of the spectrum, as it interprets the laws as the statutory constitution of the ethnos, with a hermeneutic locked and loaded to defend against religio-political threats of idolatry (cf. 1 Maccabees or Jubilees). Embodied patterns of religion in this approach are the use of capital punishment (John 5:18; 10:31; 19:7), emphasis on immersion in water for purification, and the templecentric observance of appearance festivals. The other approach is that of the Johannine Jesus, although he himself engages, even participates, in priestly-oriented patterns of religion. He acknowledges the judicial requirement of the law of testimony (8:17), and he criticizes his opponents for seeking the death penalty for him, asserting that by doing so they are not practicing the law (7:19). Jesus is himself ritually immersed 175 Fletcher-Louis, “John 5:19–30,” 415–23, which builds especially on the earlier work of B. Reynolds, The Apocalyptic Son of Man in the Gospel of John, WUNT 2.249 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008). One should see also J. Harold Ellens, The Son of Man in the Gospel of John (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2010), which likewise argues for a Danielic influence on John’s son of man christology. 176 See Sifre Deut. §329; Mekh. Exod. 20:2; b. Hag. 15a; cf. 3 Enoch 12:5.

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and goes up to Jerusalem for Sukkot (7:10). However, John’s presentation of Jesus and the law clearly moves in the direction of the messianic (1:41, 45), ethnically open (1:29 [36]; 7:37–39), and apocalyptic (5:17–30). If in portions of Philo’s thought there is continuity between philosophy and the Mosaic law, in Johannine thought there is a similar but even tighter continuity between the law and Jesus as the law’s authoritative teacher. For Philo, both philosophy and the law bring one to the same goal of knowing the only true god (Virt. 65); for John, in order for the law to constitute the gift of divine revelation, it must be mediated through the Logos Ensarkos, the only one who has “seen god” (1:18). If one wishes to be faithful to the ancestral law, one must be faithful to Jesus. Further, John’s presentation of ritual purification springs from the language (e.g., βαπτίζω, λούω, ὕδωρ ζῶν) and material culture (stone vessels and ritual baths) of priestly-oriented patterns of religion but reinterprets and transposes them narratively into a diasporic framework of identity, in which immersion in the Spirit, partial washings (νίπτω), and connections with moral purity (13:10–11) seem to fit most comfortably. John’s negotiation of Jewish festal law works similarly. Temple-centered rituals (e.g., paschal sacrifice, water libation ceremony) are metaphorized (Jesus becomes the focus of the paschal meal) and eschatologized (“living water” at Sukkot becomes the gift of the Spirit) to shape a diasporic Jewish identity, that is, an identity that does not orbit around the public politics of the national cult but is still perceived as faithful to Moses and the god of Israel. The argument of this chapter has been that John’s negotiation of the ancestral law and its laws reflects conflict and movement that nevertheless make sense on the spectrum of Jewish identity. There is no real evidence that John either rejects or desires a break from the laws of the Jewish ethnos. The observance of circumcision and Shabbat is affirmed, even if the manner of their observance is disputed. While, through its language of christological interpretation, John certainly opens aspects of Jewish law to the participation of nonJews, it does not immediately follow that, by this, John intends to expropriate the ancestral law from the Jewish people in toto and redistribute it to Gentiles who have been granted covenantal status in their stead.177 Rather, in its process of criticizing a particular approach to the interpretation of the law held by the Ioudaioi (what I have called “priestly-oriented”), John perhaps foresees and even welcomes potential Judaizing behavior from non-Jews. As I argued 177 In respectful disagreement with A. Reinhartz, Cast Out of the Covenant: Jews and Anti-Judaism in the Gospel of John (Lanham, MD: Lexington/Fortress Academic, 2018), chapter 3 (especially p. 62).

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in chapter 3, such openness toward the participation of non-Jews is neither a departure from nor an act of expropriation of Jewish identity but an expression of welcome toward Gentile sympathizers to Judaism. Concerning John’s stance specifically on water rituals and purity laws, Miller makes an apt statement, based primarily on Harrington’s earlier work, that: For early Christians, the Holy Spirit may have been increasingly associated with Jesus and the dawn of the messianic age, but this should be seen as an outgrowth rather than a departure from ideas present among contemporaneous Jews, many of whom appear to have believed that the spirit was a property of all humans that lay dormant and was only activated in extraordinary persons. It is not only “inaccurate,” as Harrington demonstrates, to view water purification in the Gospel of John as a symbol of a rejected past that was now to be supplanted by Jesus, it is also counterintuitive … Long before the Fourth Gospel was written, salvation and the spirit (however it is understood) were associated in the Jewish imagination with the water’s salvific properties and divine origins.178 Indeed, John’s portrayal of the ancestral law, and Jesus as its teacher, might indicate a new development in prior elements of Jewish history, but there is no indication that, after John 1:14, the Gospel’s narrative promotes a departure from Jewishness. Indeed, John’s strategy works as a form of Judaism, with Moses and Jesus working in concert and ultimately speaking the same ethnoreligious language. Ancestral laws in antiquity were seldom, if ever, engaged and negotiated without a geopolitical context. That is, for most ethnic bodies of law, there existed a politically demarcated territory to which those laws were intimately connected – they were ‘laws of the land,’ so to say. The category of ‘land’ was thus crucial for discourse on ‘law.’ This was certainly the case for ancient Jews, and, as we will see in the following chapter, John, too, is keen on negotiating the concept of ‘the ancestral land,’ with Jesus at its hermeneutical center. 178 Miller, Texts and Material Finds, 145.

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Reterritorializing Jewish Identity John and the Ancestral Land 1

Introduction

W.D. Davies’s classic treatment The Gospel and the Land, originally published in 1974, sparked a flurry of interest in the role of “the land” within ancient Judaism and the theological world of the early Christ-followers.1 However, as Joel Willitts pointed out in his 2007 work on Matthew – a point that still seems relevant today – the general trend in New Testament scholarship has been to underappreciate the role of the land of Israel, not just as a theological category but also as an ethnic and political one.2 This is particularly true for John’s Gospel, as evidenced by the almost complete scholarly focus on John and land from the perspective of symbolic geography.3 The aim of the current 1 W.D. Davies, The Gospel and the Land: Early Christianity and Jewish Territorial Doctrine (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994 [orig. 1974]). Chapter 10 (pp. 288–335) is devoted to the land in John’s Gospel (referenced page numbers are to the 1994 Sheffield reprint). On ‘the land of Israel’ in ancient Judaism, see, e.g., F.W. Marquardt, Die Juden und ihr Land (Hamburg: Siebenstern, 1975); D. Mendels, The Land of Israel as a Political Concept in Hasmonean Literature: Recourse to History in Second Century B.C. Claims to the Holy Land, TSAJ 15 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1987). For recent studies of ‘land’ and the early Christ-followers, see D.E. Holwerda, Jesus and Israel: One Covenant or Two? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995); P. Walker, “The Land and Jesus Himself,” in The Land of Promise: Biblical, Theological, and Contemporary Perspectives, ed. P. Johnston and P. Walker (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 100–20; J. Willitts, Matthew’s Messianic Shepherd-King: In Search of ‘The Lost Sheep of the House of Israel,’ BZNW 147 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2007); K.J. Wenell, Jesus and Land: Sacred and Social Space in Second Temple Judaism, LNTS 334 (London: T&T Clark, 2007); R. Bauckham, “Historiographical Characteristics of the Gospel of John,” NTS 53 (2007): 17–36 (esp. 19–24); A. Marchadour and D. Neuhaus, The Land, the Bible, and History: Toward a Land That I Will Show You (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007), esp. chapter 2; G.M. Burge, Jesus and the Land: The New Testament Challenge to ‘Holy Land’ Theology (London: SPCK, 2010); A. Runesson, Divine Wrath and Salvation in Matthew: The Narrative World of the First Gospel (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2016). 2 Willitts, Matthew’s Messianic Shepherd-King, 157–58. 3 The most recent treatment, as far as I am aware, is J.M.V. Bruegge, Mapping Galilee in Josephus, Luke, and John: Critical Geography and the Construction of Ancient Space, AJEC 93 (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 139–79, which is his chapter on John. But, as I will discuss again below in section 3, Bruegge’s work, as its title indicates, is interested in John and the land from a geographical and topographical perspective rather than an ethno-political one. Bruegge’s excellent history of research on John and the land (pp. 142–52) demonstrates clearly that by far the dominant

© Wally V. Cirafesi, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004462946_006

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chapter is to advance the discussion of John’s conceptual relationship to the land of Israel by approaching “land” as an ethno-political category in antiquity that functioned variously within a range of discursive constructions of Jewish identity. 2

Ethnos and Land in Greco-Roman and Jewish Antiquity

Ancient historians, just as people today, used a variety of techniques to justify a group’s claim to a particular land, that is, a politically demarcated territory populated and controlled by particular persons and their gods and regulated by their own laws and authoritative customs. A popular one used by Greek and Roman historiographers was to construe myths of autochthony, the idea that an ethnos had its origins in people native to a territory, who had “sprung from the soil” of a specific plot of earth.4 Jonathan Hall has argued, followed by Josine Blok, that autochthony was a discursive strategy that, in Greek contexts, created an ethnic identity that served the purposes of a contemporary situation, such as the need to assert ownership over territory and rightful citizenship.5 If it could be shown that an ethnos had always lived in the land it currently occupied, indeed, had even “sprung” from it, then one could, as Blok says, promote “an identity which was politically meaningful to one’s own community first of all, but also suitable to impress the outside world.”6 The Athenian myth of autochthony was perhaps the most well known, but it was, simultaneously, view is to see a “symbolic geography” in John, i.e., named places and regions are assigned a symbolic and theological value. See especially, e.g., Donatien Mollat, “Remarques sur le vocabulaire spatial du quatrième évangile,” in Studia Evangelica 1, ed. K. Aland, TU 72 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1959), 321–28; W. Meeks, “Galilee and Judea in the Fourth Gospel,” JBL 85.2 (1966): 159–69; R.T. Fortna, “Theological Use of Locale in the Fourth Gospel,” AThRSup 3 (1974): 58–95; J.M. Bassler, “The Galileans: A Neglected Factor in Johannine Community Research,” CBQ 43 (1981): 243–57; J.H. Neyrey, “Spaces and Places, Whence and Whither, Homes and Rooms,” BTB 32.2 (2002): 60–74; These studies are very different from the interests and approach of the current study. 4 See, e.g., Herodotus, Hist. 8:73 on the Arcadians and Cynurians, who he says were autochthonous to the Peloponnese; Thucydides, Hist. 6:2:2 on the self-asserted autochthony of the Sicanians in Sicily; and Strabo, Geog. 10:4:6 on the Eteo-Cretans and Cydonians. On the meaning and modulations of the term αὐτόχθων in different historical periods, see J.H. Blok, “Gentrifying Genealogy: On the Genesis of the Athenian Autochthony Myth,” in Antike Mythen: Medien, Transformationen, und Konstruktionen, ed. U. Dill and C. Walde (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2009), 251–75. 5 J. Hall, Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 54–56; Blok, “Gentrifying Genealogy,” 254. 6 Blok, “Gentrifying Genealogy,” 256.

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perhaps the most contested.7 Even Josephus offers a back-handed slight of the idea when he says that, although the Athenians claim to be autochthonous and devoted to learning (οὓς αὐτόχθονας εἶναι λέγουσιν καὶ παιδείας ἐπιμελεῖς), their ancient writings (and those of the other ethnē) are really not so ancient, and certainly not as ancient as those of the Jews (C. Ap. 1:21). Philo, as is typical for him, uses autochthonic language metaphorically to describe Jews who are “native members” (οἱ αὐτόχθοντες) of the ethnos in contrast to Gentile “foreigners” (ἐπηλύτος, μετοίκος, ἀλλογενής) who, he says, should nevertheless be welcomed with open arms if they wish to come over to the Jewish way of life (e.g., Spec. 1:52; Virt. 104, 108). But neither Philo nor any other Jewish or non-Jewish author describe the relationship of Jews to their ancestral land using a myth of autochthony. Nor could they. Indeed, as Daniel Boyarin notes (and Davies before him), “[t]he biblical story is not one of autochthony but one of always already coming from somewhere else.”8 Greek, Roman, and Jewish sources repackage this idea in different ways, but, interestingly, the basic story-line remains the same: the Jewish ethnos came into its land as once an outsider, into a land full of others (e.g., Strabo, Geog. 16:35–37; Tacitus, Hist. 5:2; Josephus, C. Ap. 1:127; Philo, Spec. 2:170).9 Thus, the strategy employed in the biblical tradition, which is taken up later, at least by figures such as Philo and Josephus, is one of possession predicated upon divine promise.10 The story of the Jewish people’s political possession of their ancestral land, whether conceptualized narrowly as Judea or broadly as “Israel” (Judea, Samaria, and the Galilee),11 is closely bound to the history and politics of 7 Blok, “Gentrifying Genealogy,” 263–64. 8 D. Boyarin, A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity (Berkley: University of California Press, 1994), 252; W.D. Davies, The Territorial Dimension of Judaism: With a Symposium and Further Reflection (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992 [orig. 1982]), 11–12). 9 The passage from Philo, Spec. 2:170 is interesting rhetorically, since, while Philo says the ethnos of the Jews (τὸ Ἰουδαίων ἔθνος; e.g., in 2:166) replaced those impious people who dwelled in the land beforehand, he goes on to say that: “These things happened so that those who replaced them might be sobered by the calamities of others, and learn from their deeds that those who become devotees of evil deeds will suffer the same fate but those who have honored a life of virtue will possess their assigned portion, numbered not among emigrants (μετοίκοις) but among the native residents (αὐτόχθοσιν)” (trans. Yonge). Philo seems to argue that living a life of virtue triggered a change in the ethnos’s status, from being a nation of “emigrants” to a nation of “native residents.” 10 The book of Deuteronomy is particularly notable on this (e.g., Deut 1:8, 21; 3:18, 28, et passim). See Davies, The Gospel and the Land, 15–24. 11 The return narratives of Ezra–Nehemiah focus minimally on Yehud and Jerusalem, but when prophetic texts like Jeremiah and Ezekiel envision the restoration of ‘Israel’ into the land, they seem to envision what had once encompassed both the northern and southern kingdoms (Davies, The Gospel and the Land, 43–45). This is the so-called ‘maximalist’

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empires. The fall of Judah as a kingdom in the 6th century at the hands of the Neo-Babylonians meant an end to the autonomous rule of the land by people associated with Israelite lineage. It also meant the exile of a large number of Judahite elite to Babylon (2 Kgs 24:10–17) – many of whom apparently became well established and stayed there permanently12 – and the beginnings of diasporic expressions of YHWH devotion, including eschatological visions found in texts like Jeremiah and Ezekiel of regathering into the land and of temple sanctuaries alternative to the one in Jerusalem.13 When, under Cyrus’s edict, groups of former Judahites were allowed to re-enter the land, “Yehud” was reorganized administratively as a semi-autonomous vassal province of the Achaemenid Empire. Under the leadership of priests, Levites, and the “heads of the fathers’ houses of Yehudah and Benjamin,” these Yehudites were tasked with re-establishing the cult of YHWH in Jerusalem (Ezra 1:2–4). On the other hand, the Elephantine papyri (5th–4th cents. BCE) demonstrate that, nearly contemporaneous to the return, communities of Judahites existed at other locales besides Babylon (cf. Jeremiah 44). These documents show that a similar diasporic situation had developed in Egypt, too, in which Judahites were

12

13

view. John Hyrcanus’s understanding of the ancestral land was certainly broader than just Judea, as he extended the Hasmonean kingdom south into Idumea and north to Samaria and even the Galilee. However, the Hasmonean focus on the ‘land of Israel’ and its purification recounted in 1 Maccabees seems to have originally (before ca. 140 BCE) centered on Judea and Jerusalem, and then only later extended into the Galilee. See Mendels, Land of Israel, 47–49; M. Aviam, “The Transformation from Galil Ha-Goyim to Jewish Galilee: The Archaeological Testimony of an Ethnic Change,” in Galilee in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods. Vol. 2: The Archaeological Record from Cities, Towns, and Villages, ed. D.A. Fiensy and J.R. Strange (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015), 9–21. Davies, The Gospel and the Land, 118; Mendels, Land of Israel, 7. Josephus, Ant. 15:14 indicates that in the 1st century BCE “there were Jews in great numbers” in Babylon. On Judeans and Judean life in Babylonia during the exilic period, see the recent study by Tero Esko Alstola, “Judeans in Babylonia: A Study of Deportees in the Sixth and Fifth Centuries BCE” (Ph.D. dissertation, Leiden University, 2017). Alstola argues that there was considerable diversity in socio-economic status and integration of Judean deportees into Babylonian society, and that the majority of them were settled in rural ethnically homogenous communities, which supported the survival Judean culture and tradition. On eschatological visions of regathering into the land in the prophetic literature, especially Jeremiah and Ezekiel, see Davies, The Gospel and the Land, 36–48. On Jewish temples outside of the land of Israel, specifically in Casiphia (near or in Babylon), see A. Runesson, The Origins of the Synagogue: A Socio-Historical Study, CBNTS 37 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2001), 404–409. On ethnic cults outside one’s ancestral land, see the essays in B. Ego, A. Lange, and P. Pilhofer, eds., Gemeinde ohne Tempel: Zur Substituierung und Transformation des Jerusalemer Tempels und seines Kults im Alten Testament, antiken Judentum und frühen Christentum, WUNT 118 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999).

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finding ways to express adherence to their ethno-religious traditions while detached from their ancestral land (see chapter 2). Already by the Persian period, then, we see a general dichotomy emerge around the concept of ‘land.’ On one end, reflected in the return narratives of Ezra–Nehemiah, there is an orientation toward the land as a concrete political entity, as something ideally possessed by Yehudites, and shaped around the leadership of the priesthood and Jerusalem temple cult. On the other end, although the picture is not very thorough or very clear, the land could be eschatological, a utopian (not necessarily an otherworldly or heavenly) concept for a regathered people (Jeremiah, Ezekiel), or simply a non-criterion for Judahite life as a YHWH-adherent (Elephantine papyri).14 These two different trajectories of identity develop and persist in various ways throughout much of the history of ancient Judaism. As Doron Mendels has observed, although Ben Sira (ca. 180 BCE) is not yet concerned with the question of the political possession of the land as the Hasmoneans were to be, the work, especially its ‘Praise of the Fathers’ in chs. 44–50, “looks back with nostalgia to Jewish kingship, viewing it in a positive manner” and “emphasizes the entirety of the Jewish people on their Land at a time when this nation is spread all over the world.”15 This ‘maximalist’ vision of Ben Sira – that is, the idea that the ‘land’ was synonymous with the borders 14

15

P. Cowley 30/Porten B19, dated 25 November 407 BCE, is a petition from the entire Jewish community in Elephantine (Porten B19, l. 22) to Bagavahya (Persian?), governor of Yehud, asking for a letter of recommendation to the Persian authorities in Egypt to allow the rebuilding of their temple for YHW (ll. 23–28). This temple had existed in Elephantine for years before its destruction at the hands of Egyptian priests and their chief Vidranga, and it had been a place for meal, incense, and burnt offerings (ll. 21–22, 25), the last of these suggesting the place was home to a sort of sacrificial cult (l. 28). A short oral response to the request, captured in an eleven-line papyrus (P. Cowley 32/Porten B21), demonstrates the governor’s support for rebuilding the temple and reinstituting meal-offerings and incense, but there is no explicit endorsement of burnt offerings. Porten, followed in ASSB no. T2–4, suggests that the lack of reference to burnt offerings in this response implicitly indicates a cult centralization ideology that developed in the Persian period, limiting animal sacrifices to the Jerusalem temple. See B. Porten, The Elephantine Papyri in English: Three Millennia of Cross-Cultural Continuity and Change, DMOA 22 (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 148–49, 149 n. 12, 151 n. 15. This implicit reference is made explicit in P. Cowley 33/ Porten B22, in which the Elephantine Jews respond by accepting the idea that animals were not to be sacrificed in their temple any longer (ll. 10–11). The important point to make here is that, while the Elephantine Jews were compelled to have the support of Persian authorities in the land and accepted the notion of a centralized sacrificial cult by ca. 407 BCE, their own temple had long functioned  – since at least 525 BCE (Porten, Elephantine Papyri, 141 n. 46) – as a place of legitimate sacrificial worship outside Israel. This perspective is paralleled in the 2nd century BCE in the Oniad temple in Leontopolis. Mendels, Land of Israel, 16.

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of the twelve tribes of Israel in the Bible (Sir 44:23)16 – had become a political reality by the time of the Hasmonean priest-king Alexander Jannaeus (103–76 BCE). Simon, who was “the high priest, the governor and leader of the Jews” (1 Macc 13:43; ca. 140 BCE), had “enlarged the borders of the nation and taken possession of the land” (1 Macc 14:6). John Hyrcanus I after him (134–104 BCE) had extended the Hasmonean kingdom south into Idumea and north into Samaria (destroying Mt. Gerizim) and even parts of upper Galilee (Josephus, Ant. 13:254–58). By the time of Jannaeus’s death, the territory under Jewish political rule had expanded significantly and included Gaza, Ituraea (the Golan), the Gilead region, among other places (Josephus, Ant. 13:395–97). This special focus of Jannaeus on political control over the land is born out in the numismatic record, too, which evidences a large and broad circulation of Jannaeus’s coinage. Ya‘akov Meshorer has argued that Jannaeus was the first of the Hasmoneans to mint coins; 300 Jannaeus coins were discovered in excavations at Gamla in the Golan Heights, and an abundance of them have been (and continue to be) found at Magdala.17 Mendels argues that before 140 BCE, the Hasmonean program was largely unconcerned with political possession of the land, and rather focused upon fidelity to Torah (e.g., 1 Macc 2:27), purification of Jerusalem and its temple (1 Macc 4:38–61), and the rescue of Jews being attacked by their non-Jewish neighbors (1 Macc 5).18 That is, he suggests the Hasmonean ideology of conquest really only began in the time of Simon’s priestly rulership, when “the yoke of the nations was taken away from Israel” (1 Macc 13:41). Josephus, on the other hand, seems to indicate that Judas Maccabeus’s military campaign sprung, at least in part, from the idea that the land needed to be purified from its defilement (Ant. 12:286). Admittedly, ‘purification’ of the land is not necessarily conceptually equivalent to its political possession. Davies, however, is right to suggest that, from the start of the uprising, underlying the Hasmonean ideal of loyalty to Torah was an ideal of loyalty to the land: Israel, as the covenant people, could only occupy the land securely if the commandments were observed. The occupation of the land presupposed loyalty to the Torah. Loyalty to the latter was a form of 16 17

18

Mendels, Land of Israel, 13. Y. Meshorer, Ancient Jewish Coinage: Vol. 1: Persian Period through Hasmoneans (New York: Amphora Books, 1982), 35, 45; M. Zapata-Meza et al., “The Magdala Archaeological Project (2010–2012): A Preliminary Report of the Excavations at Migdal,” ‘Atiqot 90 (2018): 83–125 (117–19), which reports on coin finds from only the first two excavation seasons. Many more Jannaeus coins have been found in years since 2012. Mendels, Land of Israel, 47–49.

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loyalty to the land. Torah and land are, even if not inextricable, closely related. The threat to the Torah was in a tangible, though indirect, sense a threat to the land. And in periods when Israel actually dwelt in the land, as in the Maccabean and Roman periods, the explicit concentration was naturally on the former.19 This close relationship between Torah and possession of the land is also expressed in the book of Jubilees, a work probably contemporaneous with the beginning of the Maccabean Revolt (ca. 167 BCE).20 In Jub. 1:12–14, God says he will “remove from the midst of the land” evil-doing Israelites (cf. Pss Sol 17:11); in 6:12–13, the breaking of kashrut law leads to one’s being “rooted out of the land”; and, conversely, in 15:28–29, one’s observance of circumcision allows one to stay in the land.21 Jubilees and 1 Maccabees, then, seem to reflect a similar pattern of thought in which the categories of law and the land are concrete ethnic entities bound to one another in a dependent relationship. The ancestral law is a law for a particular land and a particular people, and political possession of the land, with the Jerusalem temple at the center, is an ideal predicated upon the people’s loyalty to their ancestral law. This value of political possession of the land attained by the Hasmoneans in the 2nd and early 1st century BCE ran, although turbulent with intra-kingdom strife as it was, until 63 BCE, when the Romans under Pompey entered the Judean landscape (Josephus, Ant. 14:55–76).22 While Jewish independence was lost and there was no mistaking the Romans now as the ultimate authority over the land (14:77–79), rule of the people was still in the hands of the Jewish priestly elite, which was allowed to continue orchestrating Judean public politics and the national cult.23 Indeed, according to Josephus, after seizing control of Jerusalem Pompey nevertheless restored the high priesthood to Hyrcanus II (14:73), who would then be the first to function in the capacity of 19 20

21 22 23

Davies, The Gospel and the Land, 94. See pp. 94–98, where he argues that a commitment to the land was a presupposition, even if unexpressed in the sources, of one’s loyalty to Torah in both the Hasmonean and “Zealot” revolts. On the date of Jubilees, see J.C. VanderKam, An Introduction to Early Judaism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 97; on the work’s priestly character, see VanderKam, “The Origins and Purposes of the Book of Jubilees,” in Studies in the Book of Jubilees, ed. M. Albani, J. Frey, and A. Lange, TSAJ 65 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), 19. Translations here are from R.H. Charles’s volume. See also Jub. 20:4; 21:22; 36:9; 50:5. For a comprehensive historical reconstruction of Roman Judean from 63 BCE–37 BCE, see now N. Sharon, Judea under Roman Domination: The First Generation of Statelessness and Its Legacy, EJL 46 (Atlanta: SBL, 2017). Sharon, Judea under Roman Domination, 260–61.

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Judean ethnarch (ἐθνάρχης; 14:148 et passim).24 In 40 BCE, with the help of the Parthians and to the frustration of the Romans, Judea had itself a Jewish king, Mattathias Antigonus, the last of the Hasmoneans to proclaim himself, on his coinage no less, both high priest and king of the Jews (14:379).25 Three years later, Judea still had a Jewish king, but this one was not a high priest and was, instead, backed politically by the Romans: Herod I (14:385). Herod (37–4 BCE) seems to have had a contentious relationship with the high priesthood due to, among other things, his dubious, even (according to Josephus) unlawful, high priestly appointments.26 But his kingship clearly had a significant impact, even if only artistically and architecturally, on the temple cult and the priestly class.27 In other words, although Herod was not a priestly ruler, he represented continuity with the identity values of priestly-oriented Judaism, an expression of which was valuing the direct political control of the land by Jews. The situation in the land changed after Herod’s death in 4 BCE. After the failed ethnarchy of Herod’s son Archelaus and the fracturing of Herod’s kingdom into a tetrarchy, the Romans introduced direct control of Judea in 6 CE with their prefects and, later, procurators. The idea of a land of Israel politically controlled by Jews would now be even further removed from lived experience. On the other hand, it meant that, once again, the high priesthood formed the main political liaison between the people and Roman officials, at least in Judea. And this was so until the Great Revolt began in 66 CE.28 The 24

25 26

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N. Sharon, “The Title Ethnarch in Second Temple Period Judea,” JSJ 41.4 (2010): 472–93. In Ant. 14:117, Josephus describes the office of ethnarch as one “who governs the nation, and distributes justice to them, and takes care of their contracts, and of the laws to them belonging, as if he were the ruler of a free republic (ὡς ἂν πολιτείας ἄρχων αὐτοτελοῦς; trans. Whiston). This description is set within the context of the Jewish ethnarch in Egypt, thus suggesting that there were multiple ethnarchships throughout the Jewish world in the Roman period. Meshorer, Ancient Jewish Coinage, 1:87–98. For example, Josephus says, out of fear of opposition from the former illustrious high priest Hyrcanus II, Herod appointed to the high priesthood an obscure priest out of Babylon named Ananelus (Ant. 15:22). In 15:39–41, Josephus says that Herod broke the law, like Antiochus Epiphanes before him, when he deprived Ananelus of the priesthood in favor of Aristobulus, his son with Mariamne the Hasmonean (cf. 20:16). See also P. Richardson and A.M. Fisher, Herod: King of the Jews and Friend of the Romans, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2017), 55; S. Rocca, Herod’s Judea: A Mediterranean State in the Classical World (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 20. See N. Avigad, The Herodian Quarter in Jerusalem: Wohl Archaeological Museum (Jerusalem: Keter, 1989). See, e.g., Josephus, War 2:411, in which he describes the role of chief priests working to dissuade the people from revolting against the Romans. See also John 18:19–38, in which the chief priests clearly take the political role of questioning Jesus and bringing him before Pilate.

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revolt itself, no matter its specific causes or origins,29 had Torah and land, specifically Jerusalem and its temple, at the center of its agenda, much like the Hasmoneans did over two centuries before. Groups such as the “Zealots” and “Sicarii” developed almost certainly, although not exclusively, as priestlyoriented-type movements,30 since not only were priests among their ranks but, according to Josephus’s portrait, both groups were marked by a desire for political “freedom” (ἐλευθερία) and for the Jewish god alone to be king (Ant. 18:23–25; War 2:117–18; 7:320–36, 407–19). These specific groups obviously did not represent the entire Jewish population during the revolt.31 The conflict became, socially and geographically, much more encompassing, extending from the Galilee to Masada and involving Pharisees, priests, and peasants alike, even unwilling ones.32 In this sense, the revolt was not only the revolt of the “Zealots.”33 Chief priests not associated with any particular religio-political party acted, at least early on in the war, as governors (αὐτοκράτορες) and generals (στρατηγοί) over cities and regions.34 Furthermore, in light of the increasing amount of archaeological evidence from the late Second Temple period that demonstrates a close connection between Jews in the northern regions (i.e., the Galilee and Golan Heights) and the Judean priesthood and Jerusalem temple,35 29

30 31 32 33 34 35

That is, no matter whether it began as the result of regional conflict or Roman ‘religious’ oppression of Jews. The former theory is advanced in S. Mason, A History of the Jewish War: A.D. 66–74 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016); the latter is advanced in M. Hengel, The Zealots: Investigations into the Jewish Freedom Movement in the Period from Herod I until 70 A.D., trans. D. Smith (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988 [orig. German 1961; 2nd ed. 1976]). Goodblatt, Elements of Ancient Jewish Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 87–107; Hengel, Zealots, 62–63 et passim; Mason, Jewish War, 447–49. See also discussion in chapter 2 of the current work. Davies, The Gospel and the Land, 98. See Josephus, War 3:492–3, where he describes the “natives” of Tarichaea (Magdala) as not wishing to fight against the Romans from the beginning but being forced to by “foreigners,” that is, those rebels who had fled to the city from elsewhere. See Davies, The Gospel and the Land, 94–98, where Davies often calls the Great Revolt the ‘Zealot’ Revolt, but clearly acknowledges that the ‘Zealots’ were a minority group. See, e.g., Josephus, War 2:562–66. According to Josephus, by the end of the war, some chief priests had actually defected to the Romans (War 6:113–15). See J. Choi, Jewish Leadership in Roman Palestine from 70 CE to 135 CE, AJEC 83 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 163–65. I have in mind three points of evidence for this here. (1) The Gamla coin, as noted earlier in chapter 2, resembles the Jerusalem silver sheqels minted in years one to four of the war, which were discovered during excavations in the Herodian Quarter, the home of a sizeable portion of Jerusalem’s priestly elite during the late Second Temple period and probably some sort of command center during the Roman sieges. The inscription on the coin has traditionally been read, “For the Re[demption] of Jerusalem the H[oly],” and the image of the chalice on it may be symbolic of the hope of divine vengeance to be

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it is not implausible to suggest, as Davies does, that a priestly-oriented-type vision of a land-state centered around Jerusalem and free of Roman domination did eventually come to characterize the revolt as a whole. The revolt failed, but, as Junghwa Choi has recently shown, it is unlikely that the authority and prestige of the Judean priestly elite completely evaporated after 70 CE.36 The idea of a Jerusalem-centric ‘free Israel’ clearly lived on, finding expression again less than seventy years later in the Bar Kokhba war. We do not have much to go on with reference to the scale and scope of support for Bar Kokhba’s campaign. On the one hand, as noted in chapter 2, strong support for the “freedom of Israel” (‫ )לחרת ישראל‬and its “prince” (‫ )נ ]שי[א‬can be seen in a document as mundane as a Jewish divorce bill from 135 CE (P. Hev/Se 13 ll. 1–2). Bar Kokhba also seems to have minted an extensive array of coinage, engraved with cultic images such as the temple’s façade and the Showbread Table, and inscribed with language such as “Jerusalem,” “Year X of the Redemption of Israel,” and “Eleazar the Priest.” One of Bar Kokhba’s own letters, P. Yadin 57, discusses preparations for Sukkot observance among his fighters, and indicates that, from his perspective, the camp was quite large.37 Adele Reinhartz has argued that Bar Kokhba, indeed, found support among the tannaitic rabbis.38 On the other hand, Bar Kokhba’s letters also seem to suggest that not all Jews were on board with his program: P. Yadin 54, for example, represents the leader’s orders about dealing with a number of miscreants, including “any Tekoan man.” In other words, the Tekoans were apparently not supporting the rebellion as Bar Kokhba thought they should be (see also P. Yadin 61). It is also possible, as Peter Schäfer has argued, that Reinhartz

36 37 38

poured out upon the Romans (see chapter 2). (2) The Magdala Stone is a 3D artistic representation of the Jerusalem temple, found in 2009/2010 excavations at the Magdala synagogue site (see W.V. Cirafesi, “The Magdala Synagogue and Its Decorated Stone: Judean Connections with the Galilean Mission of Jesus in the Gospel of John,” in Archaeology and the Fourth Gospel, ed. P.N. Anderson, Studying the Historical Jesus Series [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans], forthcoming). And (3) stone vessel remains provide evidence of vessels found at Galilean sites but that were produced in the vicinity of Jerusalem (see M. Aviam, “Reverence for Jerusalem and the Temple in Galilean Society,” in Jesus and Temple: Textual and Archaeological Explorations, ed. J.H. Charlesworth [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014], 126–28, who suggests “the distribution of stone vessels from Jerusalem, similar to the mikvaot, is an attempt to ‘export’ the purity and holiness of Jerusalem and of the temple to the periphery”; see chapter 4 for my treatment of stone vessels and Jewish ritual baths). Choi, Jewish Leadership, 165–73. Y. Yadin, Bar-Kokhba: The Rediscovery of the Legendary Hero of the Last Jewish Revolt against Imperial Rome (Jerusalem: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971), 128–29. A. Reinhartz, “Rabbinical Perceptions of Simeon Bar Kosiba,” JSJ 20 (1989): 171–94 (182).

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is wrong, and that the rabbis did not support the revolt after all.39 Whatever the case may be, two things are relatively clear. First, the Bar Kokhba rebels, like the Hasmoneans and the ‘Zealots’ of the First Revolt before them, were motivated to a significant degree by the ideology of land-state, the concept of a politically free ‘Israel,’ with Jerusalem, its temple, and its priesthood functioning at the center.40 Second, the Romans in fact responded more harshly to this revolt than they did to the one of 66–73 CE. This is evidenced by the mass migration/deportation of Jews out of Judea, the importation of a large nonJewish population into the land, into both Judea and the Galilee (which only grew as time went on), and Hadrian’s restructuring of Jerusalem’s urban planning into a Roman polis, which was outfitted with a cardo maximus, a temple dedicated to Capitoline Jupiter on the Temple Mount, and a new name for both the city (Aelia Capitolina) and the region (Syria Palaestina). The priestlyoriented ideal of an independent state had been thoroughly squashed.41 Running chronologically parallel, but clearly in different directions with reference to orientation of identity, are sources we have characterized so far as ‘diasporic.’ Jewish thinkers in Egypt provide some particularly interesting attitudes toward the concept of ancestral homeland. For example, the fragments of Artapanus, if they are trusted,42 portray an attempt by an Egyptian Jew in the 2nd century BCE to, as Isaiah Gafni says, “straddle both worlds,” that is, the world of his Jewish ancestry and the world of his home in Egypt.43 While, in 39 40 41

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P. Schäfer, “Bar Kokhba and the Rabbis,” in The Bar Kokhba War Reconsidered: New Perspectives on the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome, ed. P. Schäfer, TSAJ 100 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 1–22. G. Aran, “The Other Side of the Israelite Priesthood: A Sociological-Anthropological Perspective,” in Was 70 CE a Watershed in Jewish History? 46. Perhaps not so coincidentally, it is after the Bar Kokhba war that, as Y. Adler has argued, the production of ritual baths and stone vessels for purity declines significantly. See Y. Adler, “The Decline of Jewish Ritual Purity Observance in Roman Palaestina: An Archaeological Perspective on Chronology and Historical Context,” in Expressions of Cult in the Southern Levant in the Greco-Roman Period: Manifestations in Text and Material Culture, ed. O. Tal and Z. Weiss (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), 269–84. On the Christian preservation of this material by Eusebius in Praeparatio Evangelica, see J.J. Collins’s introduction to the Artapanus fragments in OTP 2:889–95. The references to various fragments above are thus from the OTP entry. There appears to be no compelling reason to doubt that what Eusebius has transmitted is a generally reliable account of Artapanus’s writings. I. Gafni, “Babylonian Rabbinic Culture,” in Cultures of the Jews: A New History, ed. D. Biale (New York: Schocken Books, 2002), 230. The Jewishness of Artapanus has been questioned, but see E. Gruen, “Hellenism and Judaism: Fluid Boundaries,” in “Follow the Wise”: Studies in Jewish History and Culture in Honor of Lee I. Levine, ed. Z. Weiss et al. (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2010), 56–59 (57 n. 12), who argues that Artapanus’s work would likely have been intelligible only to Jews, or at least to very few Gentiles.

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his account of the exodus, Artapanus mentions that Moses rescued the Jews, “leading them to their ancestral homeland” (εἰς τὴν ἀρχαίαν ἀγαγεῖν πατρίδα; frag. 3:21), the focus in these fragments is clearly on the idea that the land of Egypt was where civilization all began.44 Artapanus’s main goal, however, was apparently to demonstrate that it was, in fact, heroes of the Hebrews that had made Egypt so great in the first place. Abraham taught the Egyptian Pharaoh astrology (frag. 1); Joseph was the first to organize and farm Egypt in an orderly manner, thus making it fruitful (frag. 2:2); and Moses, the greatest Hebrew of all, “invented boats and devices for stone construction and the Egyptian arms and the implements for drawing water and for warfare” (frag. 3:4; trans. OTP 2:899). Eric Gruen notes that Artapanus’s strategy here is one of presenting these figures within a framework of ethnic and cultural interconnectedness and “exemplifies the self-perception of Jews who reckoned insight into other cultures as an enrichment of their own.”45 Indeed, as Arnaldo Momigliano noted before him with reference to Artapanus’s contemporaries, Aristobulus46 and Aristeas, “Alexandrian Jews were altogether devoted to their Ptolemaic kings and displayed something like Egyptian patriotism.”47 In other words, if pushed on the political question of land-allegiance, at least some Jews in Egypt would not have responded with the answer: “the land of Israel.” This includes Philo, the intellectual progeny of thinkers such as Artapanus and Aristobulus.48 Now, as Maren Niehoff, Sarah Pearce, and more recently Anthony Le Donne, have each suggested in their own way,49 Philo is certainly Jerusalem-centric in his presentation of Jewish identity in Egypt, at least in

44 45 46 47

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Gafni, “Babylonian Rabbinic Culture,” 230. Gruen, “Hellenism and Judaism,” 59. On the similar status of Aristobulus’s preservation to the fragments of Artapanus, see A.Y. Collins’s introduction in OTP 2:831–36. A. Momigliano, Alien Wisdom: The Limits of Hellenization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 116. The words “something like” in the quotation from Momigliano save him, in my opinion, from the accusation of anachronism with reference to the concept of ‘patriotism.’ A.Y. Collins, OTP 2:834. M. Niehoff, Philo on Jewish Identity and Culture, TSAJ 86 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), 33–37; S. Pearce, “Jerusalem as ‘Mother-City’ in the Writings of Philo of Alexandria,” in Negotiating Diaspora: Jewish Strategies in the Roman Empire, ed. J.M.G. Barclay, LSTS 45 (London: T&T Clark, 2004), 19–36; A. Le Donne, “Complicating the Category of Ethnos toward Poliscentrism: A Possible Way Forward within Second Temple Ethnography,” in The Urban World and the First Christians, ed. S. Walton, P.R. Trebilco, and D.W.J. Gill (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017), 3–19.

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his later works, In Flaccum and Legatio.50 As mentioned in chapter 2, one of the most well-known examples of his thought on Jerusalem is Flacc 45–46, in which the city is presented as both the μητρόπολις (‘mother-city’) and ἱερόπολιν (‘holy city’) of all Jews everywhere, being their place of origin and home to the nation’s deity (ὁ τοῦ ὑψίστου θεοῦ νεὼς ἅγιος).51 But while, in this passage and in others (e.g., Legat. 281–84), Philo’s attitude can be described as poliscentric (Le Donne’s term), his attitude also in this passage and in others (e.g., Mos. 1:278; 2:232) is decidedly not patris-centric. That is, Philo complicates his myth of Jewish origins by asserting that, Jerusalem might be the ‘mother-city’ of the ethnos, but Jews consider the regions of Egypt that they have settled for generation upon generation to be their “fatherlands” (πατρίδας), their ancestral homes: [A]lthough looking indeed upon the holy city as their metropolis in which is erected the sacred temple of the most high God, but accounting those regions which have been occupied by their fathers, and grandfathers, and great grandfathers, and still more remote ancestors, in which they have been born and brought up, as their fatherland (Flacc 46; trans. slightly adapted from Yonge; adaptations in italics). μητρόπολιν μὲν τὴν ἱερόπολιν ἡγούμενοι, καθ᾿ ἣν ἵδρυται ὁ τοῦ ὑψίστου θεοῦ νεὼς ἅγιος, ἃς δ᾿ ἔλαχον ἐκ πατέρων καὶ πάππων καὶ προπάππων καὶ τῶν ἔτι ἄνω προγόνων οἰκεῖν ἕκαστοι· πατρίδας νομίζοντες, ἐν αἷς ἐγεννήθησαν καὶ ἐτράφησαν·

50

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See Niehoff, Philo, 37–42, where she argues that only in these later works does Philo introduce a focus on Jerusalem in his myth of Jewish origins. Prior to these works, neither Jerusalem nor the temple is a factor, but rather Philo’s focus is on “the country as a whole” (p. 38). By this Niehoff means Philo’s positive portrayal of Jewish ‘colonists,’ i.e., Jews who settled in Egypt, and the idea that the Jewish nation had grown so large that their home country could not contain them all. Niehoff concludes that, seen within the context of the Jewish pogroms in Alexandria and Claudius’s defiling of the temple ca. 38–41 CE, Philo in both Legat. and Flacc. was “recommending an orientation toward Jerusalem,” and that “Jews should in Philo’s view make the city and the Jerusalem temple their first priority. Local issues should not unduly engage their attention and evoke dissatisfaction with Rome” (p. 42). In other words, Jerusalem as ‘mothercity’ is a late addition to Philo’s thinking about the relation between Jews and their ancestral city. This passage is part of Philo’s discursive portrait of Agrippa’s letter to Gaius, in which Agrippa claims ultimate loyalty Jerusalem as his mother-city, which is also, he says, the mother-city of Jewish colonies which have been sent out to neighboring lands.

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Whatever Philo’s specific discursive aims in Flacc 46,52 he clearly inscribes Jerusalem with supra-local significance, using idealistic and transcendent language that infuses the city with symbolic meaning, a meaning bound up with emotions and memory. In Conf. 78, Philo does something very similar. There he says that, while the land that Jewish colonists inhabit – the land of their everyday, lived experience – actually stands in place of their ‘mother-city’ (ἀντὶ τῆς μητροπόλεως), their metropolis always remains that place to which they long to return (ἡ δ᾿ ἐκπέμψασα μένει τοῖς ἀποδεδημηκόσιν, εἰς ἣν καὶ ποθοῦσιν ἐπανέρχεσθαι).53 Thus, in the Flaccus passage, neither Jerusalem nor the demarcated land within which it is situated is conceived as a political entity that should be possessed, conquered, or even inhabited only by Jews. The city’s centripetal force lies in its symbolic, not political, power. Niehoff puts it nicely for us: While Judea was not the physical homeland of most Jews, Philo made its capital the symbolic centre of Jewish ethnicity. To be sure, the physical existence of the city and especially the Temple are of special importance to him. Yet Jewish identity could not be defined by actually living there. Jews differed, in other words, from Judeans.54 Even with his continued commitment to the symbolic significance of Jerusalem, Philo’s attitude is an expression of the kind of reterritorializing of ethnic identity that J.Z. Smith says rapidly increased during the Hellenistic and Roman periods.55 With the emergence of wider commercial networks, the formation of major urban centers, the spread of Greek as the region’s lingua franca, and, perhaps most importantly, the development of more sophisticated road systems and travel technology, members of various ethnē in antiquity, including Jews, were faced with the need, or presented with the opportunity, to be 52

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Niehoff, Philo, 39, suggests that both Legat. and Flacc. had the purpose of encouraging Jews in Egypt to orient their identity supra-locally, as ‘colonists,’ toward Jerusalem, and not get caught up in anti-Roman sentiment so active in the wake of the Jewish pogroms in Alexandria: “Both the Legatio and In Flaccum aimed at defending Philo’s pro-Roman politics.” That is, “He wished to convince his Jewish readers back home that the more radical positions, which had been adopted by many Jews during his stay in Rome, were unwise and doomed to failure. Street violence would only bring disaster.” Portrayals along similar (though certainly not the same) lines of the land of Israel in general as a product of one’s memory occur, e.g., in Tob 14:4 (“that good land”); 1 Enoch 89: 40 (“a good place and a pleasant and glorious land”); Arist. 107 (“plentiful and beautiful”); and Wis. 12:3–7 (“holy land” and “a colony of God’s children”). Niehoff, Philo, 33. J.Z. Smith, Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 121–43.

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increasingly mobile. As Catherine Hezser has shown, this was especially so for Jews living in the post-70 period, after the central political and symbolic space of the Jewish world went up in flames, with debates ensuing over the role of the land in Jewish self-definition.56 While, in the post-70 period, Jerusalem, the temple cult, and the land remained a memory within the collective consciousness of certain Jewish communities in Israel and throughout the geographical diaspora, the need surfaced to look beyond earthly Jerusalem in order to negotiate and re-create Jewish ethnic identity. Meeting this type of need, according to Dereck Daschke and Liv Ingeborg Lied, is precisely the function of post-70 apocalypses like 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra.57 On the one hand, both of these works prioritize the land and the city as redemptive categories: 2 Bar. 29:2, for example, asserts that, when the god of Israel is to bring his eschatological disaster upon the entire earth, he will “only protect those found in this land at that time.” In 4 Ezra 13:48, Ezra’s sixth vision of the last times interpreted, we find something similar. There the god of Israel says to him, “But those who are left of your people, who are found within my holy borders, shall be saved.” In other words, the land in these passages plays an active role in the salvation of the people of Israel (cf. 2 Bar. 71:1; 4 Ezra 9:7–8). On the other hand, as Lied has insightfully argued with reference to 2 Bar. 1–9, the concept of the ‘land,’ which in this work includes the city of Jerusalem and its temple, is imaginatively and spatially reoriented toward the ‘other world,’ the world of heavenly incorruptibility and the messianic reign (cf. 4 Ezra 7:26–32).58 “The time has arrived,” as 2 Bar. 6:9 declares, “when Jerusalem will also be delivered up for a time, until the moment that it will be said that it will be restored forever.” Read in light of 2 Bar 4, the ‘eternal restoration’ mentioned here must be referring not to an earthly Jerusalem but to the revelation of the paradisiacal city and celestial temple that God tells Baruch he had prepared before the world began. From this perspective, neither the land as a whole nor Jerusalem is rejected; there is no abandoning of the land in favor of the lands of other ethnē. Instead, as Lied says, “[T]he change of location is rather a part of the creative redefinition of what the Land can be … By redefining Messianic

56 57

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See C. Hezser, Jewish Travel in Antiquity, TSAJ 144 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011). L.I. Lied, The Other Lands of Israel: Imaginations of the Land in 2 Baruch, JSJSup. 129 (Leiden: Brill, 2008); D. Daschke, City of Ruins: Mourning the Destruction of Jerusalem through Jewish Apocalypse, BibInt 99 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), chs. 3 and 4 (on 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch, respectively). See statements in Lied, Other Lands of Israel, 58, 310.

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spaces and heavenly spaces as the Land, 2 Baruch is both able to prove that the covenant still is valid, and that righteousness assures redemption.”59 In other sectors of post-70 Judaism, the concept of the land was a matter of dispute as well as creative re-imagination. The tannaitic rabbis certainly viewed the land of Israel as unique and separate from all other lands and, according to m. Qidd. 1:9, there were certain laws that were to be observed there and nowhere else: “Every commandment which is dependent upon the Land applies only in the Land, and which does not depend upon the Land applies both in the Land and outside the Land” (trans. Neusner).60 The land of Israel, as presented m. Kelim 1:6, is “holier than all the lands,” and, in contrast to other nations, the land and its “gatherings of water” (‫ )מקוות‬are clean (m. Miqw. 8:1).61 For the early rabbis to take such a land-dependent approach to halakha, however, they needed a relatively clear set of geographical borders to determine what, in fact, constituted “the land of Israel.” Such an attempt at defining borders is, indeed, precisely what we see some rabbis doing in the baraita de-tehumin, a tradition not included in the Mishnah but appearing in a number of rabbinic texts and in a synagogue mosaic inscription from Rehov, which attempts to outline the boundaries of the land of Israel.62 Thus, whereas for Bar Kokhba and his followers the land’s borders would demarcate, first and foremost, a political entity to be ruled and possessed militarily, for the early rabbis the construction of borders was fundamentally for halakhic reasons.63 The halakhic distinctiveness of the land of Israel for tannaitic rabbis went hand-in-hand with the issue of whether Jews should prioritize actually living 59 60 61

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Lied, Other Lands of Israel, 310. For examples of land-dependent halakha, see m. Avodah Zarah 1:8; m. Gittin 1:2; m. Orlah 3:9; m. Baba Qama 7:7. On the term ‫ מקוות‬here referring to a natural collection of water, not a purpose-built immersion pool, see S. Miller, At the Intersection of Texts and Material Finds: Stepped Pools, Stone Vessels, and Ritual Purity among the Jews of Roman Galilee, JAJSup. 16 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015). See t. Shev. 4:10; Sifre Deut.  §51; y. Shev. 6:1. On the Rehov synagogue inscription (ca. 6th cent. CE), see Y. Sussman, “The Inscription in the Synagogue at Rehov,” in Ancient Synagogues Revealed, ed. L.I. Levine (Jerusalem: IES, 1982), 146–51. Jodi Magness has recently related the phenomenon of the restriction to the land of Israel of archaeological finds of stone vessels and ritual baths to this baraita. That is, she argues that the baraita was an attempt of the rabbis to determine the place land-bound laws were to be practiced, and that purity using stone vessels and ritual baths are part of those land-bound laws. See J. Magness, “Purity Observance among Diaspora Jews in the Roman World,” Archaeology and Text 1 (2017): 39–65. This is not to suggest that rabbinic halakha is non-political; halakha certainly has a political element to it, but it is clearly of a different kind of politics than the Bar Kokhba movement.

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in it. The perspective given already in t. Avodah Zarah 4 is quite clear about the inherent rightness of living in the land. But the issue seems to have developed into full-fledged debate in later periods. For example, b. Ketubot 111a builds on the Tosefta’s positive outlook by stating, “Our Rabbis taught: One should always live in the Land of Israel,” asserting that any Jew who does not is “as one who worships idols” (Epstein ed. 712). But the gemara also recounts the sharp disagreement of prominent Babylonian Rab Judah b. Ezekiel, who ruled: “Whoever goes up from Babylon to the Land of Israel transgresses a positive commandment,” and later, “Whoever lives in Babylon is accounted as though he lived in the Land of Israel” (Epstein ed. 712, 715).64 Rab Judah and R. Joseph are even interpreted as giving a combined ruling that Babylonia outdoes the Land of Israel with respect to purity of Jewish lineage (‫)יוחסין‬: “The lineage of all lands is muddled compared to that of the Land of Israel, and the lineage of residents of the Land of Israel is muddled compared to that of Babylonia.” As Gafni has noted, this trajectory of rabbinic thought emerges within a context not only having to do with the ‘ethnic’ and ‘religious’ survival of the Jewish community in Babylonia but with the shaping of its unique Jewish identity, quite distinct from most other, if not all, Jewish communities abroad.65 Interwoven with rabbinic discourse about the land are ideas about the “world to come” (‫)העולם הבא‬, the resurrection of the dead, and the portability of God’s presence (‫)שכינה‬. In the passage from b. Ketubot 111a above, we see statements from some rabbis like, “Even a Canaanite maidservant in the Land of Israel is assured a place in the world to come” (cf. Matt 15:21–28), as is “[a]nyone who walks four cubits in the Land of Israel.” On the other hand, in objecting to the more restricted view of R. Eleazar, R. Abba b. Memel rules that Jews who die in the land of Israel are not the only ones who will be resurrected but rather those who die outside it will be raised also. There is, thus, an emphasis on connecting the land to another world in passages like this, a world which lies in the future and is reserved for Jews who are “fit” (‫)כשרין‬. This 64

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Cf. also b. Git. 6a; b. Baba Qamma 80a, both which assert something like “we in Babylonia have made ourselves like those living in the land of Israel.” However, these appear not as blanket statements or abstract principles; the assertion in b. Git. 6a is specifically with reference to halakha related to divorce bills, and b. Baba Qamma is with reference to halakha related to raising small, domesticated animals. For further discussion, see I. Gafni, Land, Center and Diaspora: Jewish Constructs in Late Antiquity, JSPSup. 21 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), 116; R.A. Sarason, “The Significance of the Land of Israel in the Mishnah,” in The Land of Israel: Jewish Perspectives, ed. L.A. Hoffman, University of Notre Dame Center for the Study of Judaism and Christianity in Antiquity 6 (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press), 109–37; S. Rosenberg, “The Link to the Land of Israel in Jewish Thought: A Clash of Perspectives,” in The Land of Israel, ed. Hoffman, 139–169. Gafni, “Babylonian Rabbinic Culture,” 228–38.

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observation resonates with Daniel Schwartz’s comments on rabbinic Jews in general, whether living in the land or not: “For many rabbinic Jews, that seems, finally, to have reflected a yet more basic stance, according to which they were not really ‘at home’ anywhere in the world. Rather, they taught that, as opposed to ‘the peoples of the world’… for Jews, this world is only an anteroom” (m. Avot 4:16–17).66 Although the land of Israel is certainly never forgotten, through their theohalakhic reflection and debate about the world to come and the resurrection of the dead, the Babylonian rabbis, just as their exilic ancestors, were able to reterritorialize their ethno-religious identity and praxis. Included in this reterritorializing process was the role of Jerusalem as the place of divine presence. For example, a baraita attributed to R. Shimon b. Yohai in b. Megillah 29a says, “Come and see how beloved the children of Israel are before the Holy One. For in every place that they were exiled, the Divine Presence was with them.” The gemara that immediately follows asks: “Where in Babylonia [does the divine presence reside]?” Abaye gives an answer: the synagogues of Huzal and Neharde’a. According to the baraita and gemara, not only were rabbinic Jews able to worship and pray to the god of Israel effectively in their Babylonian synagogues but his very presence could be experienced, even heard.67 These rabbinic texts are, of course, much later than John’s Gospel, and they have their own socio-religious contexts, which complicate their interpretation. On the other hand, the pattern of thought they reflect is, conceptually, not very different than, say, Philo or even the Elephantine community, which centuries before had developed its own strategy of negotiating the land in its construction of Jewish ethnic identity in Egypt. While rabbinic literature is sufficiently different to warrant caution as we consider how Johannine strategies compare and contrast, it is helpful, even necessary, to consider later developments like this in order to appreciate John’s Gospel within a trajectory of Jewish thought on the concept of the ancestral land.

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D.R. Schwartz, Judeans and Jews: Four Faces of Dichotomy in Ancient Jewish History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), 46–47. Schwartz goes on to say on p. 47 that the teaching of R. Jacob recounted in m. Avot 4:16–17 is intimately connected to the thought recounted in a contemporaneous “Christian” text, the Epistle of Diognetus 6, which says that Christ-believers are “in the world but not of the world.” This leads Schwartz to describe the author of the Epistle and R. Jacob, not only as contemporaries but also as “soulmates.” What Schwartz does not mention is that the Epistle of Diognetus is clearly drawing upon language from John 17:11–19. “The Divine Presence came [into the synagogue] and they heard a loud sound, so they arose and left.”

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We have charted two different but related approaches to the land within Jewish antiquity, one we can call a priestly-oriented type and the other a diasporic type. But, before moving on to John’s Gospel, we must circle back chronologically and discuss briefly some texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls, which have been put aside until now, as they express conceptual features that are characteristic of both priestly-oriented and diasporic types of identity. On the one hand, some Scrolls render a pattern of thought similar to what we saw in the Hasmonean and Roman era sources. The land is an entity to be possessed and controlled by faithful Jews, the “congregation of his chosen ones who do his will” (4QpPsa 2:4–5).68 The land has discernible boundaries, which YHWH has, however, removed due to sin in the land (CDa 1:15–16). Within the eschatological vision of 1QM, the “sons of light” are the political occupiers of the land, using it has a home base for their end-time war against the nations: “Th]is is a time of salvation for the nation of God and a period of rule for all men of his lot, and of everlasting destruction for all the lot of Belial” (1QM 1:4–5; trans. DSSSE). But quite different, as Davies notes, is the perspective that the land, especially the ‘holy city,’ had been internally defiled, that is, defiled by other law-breaking Jews.69 The Habakkuk Pesher (12:6–10) gives a clear and well-known example of this: Hab 2:17 « Owing to the blood 7 of the city and the violence (done to) the country ». Its interpretation: the city is Jerusalem 8 in which the /Wicked/ Priest performed repulsive acts and defiled 9 the Sanctuary of God. The violence (done to) the country are the cities of Judah which 10 he plundered of the possessions of the poor (trans. DSSSE).70 The notion that the land and its capital city were defiled with wickedness, with the “sons of light” living as a diaspora, as “exiles” (‫ )גולות‬waiting to “return from the desert of the nations” (‫ ;בשוב ממדבר העמים‬1QM 1:3), gave rise to the idea that the land was still under God’s judgment and in need of atonement. 68

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See also, e.g., 11Q19 51:15–16; 56:12–13; 1QM 10:1–8. For discussion, see Davies, The Gospel and the Land, 52–54; W.J. Lyons, “Possessing the Land: The Qumran Sect and the Eschatological Victory,” DSD 3 (1996): 131–50, which considers especially the land within the blessing section of 4Q285 and 11QBerakhot. Davies, The Gospel and the Land, 99. Davies, even in 1974, put it quite well: “They [the group associated with the scrolls] did not consider Israel as a static theocracy that had achieved a desired status in the land, a land undefiled, but as a community still standing under the wrath of God. There thus coexisted, in post-exilic Israel, those for whom Israel was a theocracy, which had ‘arrived,’ and those for whom it was still under the shadow of eschatology.” See also CDb 20:22–23. For further discussion, see Davies, The Gospel and the Land, 98–104.

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But it was the Yaḥad itself,71 not the Jerusalem establishment, that was to provide it. Oozing with metaphors of temple cult, 1QS 8:5–10 presents a clear connection between the righteous activity of the Yaḥad and not only atonement for the land but also judgment upon the wicked: 3[T]o preserve faithfulness in the land with firm purpose and repentant spirit in order to atone for sin by doing justice 4 and undergoing trials, and to walk with everyone in the measure of the truth and the regulation of the time. When these things exist in Israel 5 the Community council shall be founded on truth, Blank to be an everlasting plantation, a holy house for Israel and the foundation of the holy of 6 holies for Aaron, true witnesses for the judgment and chosen by the will (of God) to atone for the land [‫ ]לכפר בעד הארץ‬and to render 7 the wicked their retribution. Blank This (the Community) is the tested rampart, the precious cornerstone that does not Blank 8 /whose foundations/ shake or tremble from their place. Blank (It will be) the most holy dwelling 9 for Aaron with eternal knowledge of the covenant of justice and in order to offer a pleasant /aroma/; and it will be a house of perfection and truth in Israel 10 in order to establish {/…/} a covenant in compliance with the everlasting decrees. /And these will be accepted in order to atone for the land [‫לכפר‬ ‫ ]בעד הארץ‬and to decide the judgment of the wickedness {in perfect behaviour} and there will be no iniquity (trans. DSSSE). Since the Yaḥad considered the land to be defiled and thus defined itself, at least in part, by reference to the concept of “exile” (e.g., CD 1:1–2:1; 1QM 1:3; 4QCatenaa [177] i 8–9),72 the remedy for its present situation, before any “return” to Jerusalem or the land in general was possible, was to make atonement for it by “preserving faithfulness in the land” (‫ ;לשמור אמונה בארץ‬1QS 8:3). In other words, while the connection is not made explicitly in 1QS, it does appear that the Yaḥad understood “atonement for the land” to be a necessary 71 72

This is regardless of how we are to interpret this group historically and sociologically. For futher discussion, see chapter 6. Admittedly, whether and to what extent the Yaḥad perceived itself as being in a continued state of exile is debated by scholars. See A. Schofield, “Re-Placing Priestly Space: The Wilderness as Heterotopia in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in A Teacher for All Generations: Essays in Honor of James C. VanderKam, JSJSup. 153, ed. E. Mason et. al. (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 469–90 (475–76), which draws on Michael Knibb’s earlier work on the “exilic consciousness” in Jewish literature of the Second Temple period (“The Exile in the Literature of the Intertestamental Period,” Heythrop Journal 17 [1976]: 253–72) to argue that “exile” as “conceptual space,” in distinction from historical and geographic space, plays an important role in the self-definition of the Yaḥad.

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pre-condition before there could be a regathering of the faithful “sons of light” into it. From this perspective, the Yaḥad’s desire for control of the land yet its simultaneous experience of exile from it bring out both its priestly-oriented and diasporic characteristics. 3

John and the Ancestral Land

Where does John, which has for so long been read in light of Clement of Alexandria’s characterization of it as a “spiritual Gospel” (apud Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 6:14:7), fit within the larger world of thinking about the ancestral land of Israel?73 While John’s narrative world takes place almost entirely within the land’s borders,74 the role that its major regions play in the Gospel, as well as the more specific named locales within them, has been a matter of longstanding debate. John Bruegge’s recent work on the topic from the perspective of critical geography and space gives an excellent history of research and demonstrates that, over the last 100 years, there have been two dominant interpretive approaches to John and the concept of the land.75 One, which finds expression in the work of scholars such as Wayne Meeks, Robert Fortna, Jouette Bassler, and Jerome Neyrey, has been to interpret John’s geographical and topographical references symbolically.76 Galilee and Judea, for example, are understood to represent places of Jesus’s acceptance and rejection, and the possibility of either region being Jesus’s πατρίς (John 4:44) functions simply as a foil to the Johannine portrait of Jesus’s true origins “from above.” As Bruegge notes, in the more forceful interpretations of this symbolic geography, any concern for the land as real territory dissipates completely; all that is left is the land as symbol. The other dominant approach, put forth most adamantly by Davies, has been to conclude that, while John does not necessarily “reject” the land of Israel,77 it simply does not care much about it to begin with; the spatial dimension that is most central is the so-called “vertical” one, Jesus’s origins “from above,” 73 74 75 76 77

Davies, The Gospel and the Land, 288, begins his chapter on John and the land by way of reference to Clement’s characterization. The Gospel does, however, reference the “diaspora of the Greeks” and the “children of god who are dispersed.” See 3.3 below. Bruegge, Mapping Galilee, 142–52. See references in note 3 above. This is indeed an important point to make, since there is nothing in John of the sort that we see said, for example, in Tacitus, Hist. 5:5 or Philo, Virt. 102 about the ‘convert,’ who either “disowns homeland” (exuere patriam) or leaves it behind (πατρίδα … ἀπολελοιπότας) to join another one.

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not the “horizontal.”78 The Gospel’s take on geography and named places – the Jerusalem temple, the pools of Bethesda and Siloam, Galilee, Judea, Samaria, etc. – moves in the direction of the universal, the cosmological, and serves only to advance the Johannine replacement motif. That is, in John, “holy places” are displaced by the person of Jesus, “the One from above, whose Spirit bloweth where it listeth and is not subject to the geographical dimensions that had been dear to Judaism.”79 My goal in the following section is neither to deny that there is symbolic meaning in John’s geographical and topographical references, nor to argue that John lacks a focus on the “vertical” spatial dimension. My goal here, rather, is to rethink the hermeneutical framework within which (to use Davies’s terms) the “vertical” and the “horizontal” interact, and to suggest that the horizontal – the ‘landedness’ of John’s narrative – far from being irrelevant, provides the impetus for John’s ultimate aim of taking an expression of Jewish identity and reorienting it in a way that is able to transcend the land’s borders without leaving the land behind.80 From this perspective, I also want to question whether ‘displacement’ or ‘replacement’ are really the best terms to describe what John is doing with the land as a category of ethnic identity. As seen in the treatment of Jewish sources above, the geographical dimensions that Davies says “had been dear to Judaism” and to which the Johannine Jesus was apparently not subject were really only dear to certain expressions of Judaism. There is plenty of evidence that suggests other Jews attempted to think of and imagine life outside the box of Israel’s geographical borders. Framing John’s strategy regarding the land as one of ‘reorientation’ and ‘transcendence’ rather than ‘dispossession’ and ‘replacement’ encourages us to think about the Fourth Gospel within the trajectory of other ‘diasporic’ expressions of Jewish identity. In this vein, we will address three themes that play a role in John’s negotiation of land-bound identity: (1) the King of Israel, King of the Jews, and the Kingdom of God; (2) the role of the city of Jerusalem; and (3) the gathering of “the scattered children of God.” Each of these themes, I will argue, undergo diasporization, which functions to move the reader away from the priestlyoriented politics of the land towards the diasporic values of a land unbounded and oriented toward the world to come.

78 79 80

Davies, The Gospel and the Land, 334 n. 95, 335. Davies, The Gospel and the Land, 329; longer quotation from p. 335. I am inspired here by Bruegge’s work, especially in Mapping Galilee, 177.

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Jesus as the King of Israel, the King of the Jews, and the Kingdom of God Despite debate over its thematic prominence within John’s Gospel, Jesus’s identity as “King of Israel” is nowhere in the New Testament stated more clearly and with positive connotation than in John 1:49, Nathaniel’s programmatic confession of Jesus’s messiahship (see also 12:13).81 The term ‘Israel’ here undoubtedly carries with it an association with the land as real territory,82 and ‘king’ unambiguously imbues the title with political connotations. The epithet’s relationship to another found in John, “King of the Jews,” seems to be one of endonymic situation types (insider designation) vs. exonymic ones (outsider designation).83 That is, the title “King of Israel” is ascribed to Jesus by only a fellow insider to ‘Israel,’ indeed, a ‘true Israelite’ no less, whereas “King of the Jews” occurs only when Pilate, a clear outsider to both ‘Israel’ and the Jewish ethnos (18:35) is an interlocutor. Both titles are equally politically charged: Pilate is concerned that Jesus’s ascribed kingship, as well as his Caesar-like making of himself a “son of god” (19:10), poses an ethno-political threat to Roman control of the land (19:12);84 and Nathaniel’s confession, framed by Jesus’s response in 1:50 with πιστεύω language, amounts to a declaration of political loyalty to 3.1

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For recent work developing the kingship theme in John’s Gospel, see especially B.M. Stovell, Mapping Metaphorical Discourse in the Fourth Gospel: John’s Eternal King, LBS 5 (Leiden: Brill, 2012); and Joel Willitts, “David’s Sublation of Moses: A Davidic Explanation for the Mosaic Christology of the Fourth Gospel,” in Reading the Gospel of John’s Christology as Jewish Messianism: Royal, Prophetic, and Divine Messiahs, ed. B. Reynolds and G. Boccaccini, AJEC 106 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 203–25. The precise label ‘King of Israel’ occurs profusely in the Hebrew Bible (usually as ‫מלכ‬ ‫ )ישראל‬and LXX (usually as βασιλεύς Ἰσραηλ), but the vast majority of these occurrences are found in 1–2 Kings and 1–2 Chronicles, where ‘Israel’ seems to be both territory and people. Outside of these books, the label occurs surprising little. As far as I can tell, among texts from late Second Temple period, the Dead Sea Scrolls included, it occurs only in Pss Sol 17:42 (cf. 17:4 where it is βασιλέα ἐπὶ Ἰσραηλ). It occurs in Sifre Deut. §§26, 334, 348, but all in its midrashic exegesis with reference to David. On the terms ‘Israel’ (endonym) vs. ‘Jews’ (exonym), see K.G. Khun, “Ἰσραήλ, Ἰουδαῖος, Ἑβραῖος in Jewish Literature after the OT,” TDNT 3:359–69; P.J. Tomson, “‘Jews’ in the Gospel of John as Compared with the Palestinian Talmud, the Synoptics, and Some New Testament Apocrypha,” in Anti-Judaism and the Fourth Gospel, ed. R. Bieringer, D. Pollefeyt, and F. Vandecasteele-Vanneuville (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 176–212; R. Bauckham, The Testimony of the Beloved Disciple: Narrative, History, and Theology in the Gospel of John (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007), 230–31; D. Goodblatt, “Varieties of Identity in Late Second Temple Judah (200 BCE–135 CE),” in Jewish Identity and Politics between the Maccabees and Bar Kokhba: Groups, Normativity, and Rituals, ed. B. Eckhardt, JSJSup. 155 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 11–27. See C.D. Land, “Jesus Before Pilate: A Discourse Analysis of John 18:33–38,” in Modeling Biblical Language, ed. S.E. Porter, C.D. Land, and G.P. Fewster, LBS 13 (Leiden: Brill, 2016),

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Jesus’s messianic mission, as several scholars have recently noted with reference to John’s use of such language.85 But there do appear to be at least two differences between the titles worth mentioning here. The first is that “King of the Jews” foregrounds the element of the Jewish people, not to the exclusion of the land (i.e., Judea) but certainly to its backgrounding. As we discussed in chapter 3, Ioudaioi is an ethno-religious label primarily referring to a people group with, secondarily, ancestral connections to the land of Judea, whether or not the Ioudaioi in question themselves considered Judea their πατρίς.86 The emphasis, however, flips with reference to “King of Israel,” with land taking the foreground and people taking the background; Jesus is not titled ‘King of the Israelites.’ Second, and more importantly, as borne out in our earlier discussions (especially in chapter 2), more than one ethnic group, and certainly more than one geographical region, had a claim to be identified with or as ‘Israel.’ Samaritans, too, claimed Israelite ancestry,87 and according to Mendels, they claimed Samaria as part of the land of Israel and Shechem as its ‘holy city.’88 Richard Horsley has argued that Galileans in the late Second Temple period were also descendants of the ancient Israelites and thus “shared a common Israelite cultural heritage,” but one which was distinct from both Judean and Samaritan ethno-religious expressions.89 Thus,

85

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237, where he notes that the Pilate–Jesus dialogue draws “repeatedly from a domain of meanings related to politics.” J. Ripley, “Killing as Piety? Exploring Ideological Contexts Shaping the Gospel of John,” JBL 134.3 (2015): 605–35; T. Morgan, Roman Faith and Christian Faith: Pistis and Fides in the Early Roman Empire and Early Churches (Oxford University Press, 2015), who notes frequently the political usages of the Greek πίστις and Latin fides in Greco-Roman sources but oddly does not bring it to bear on her chapter on the Johannine literature; and R. Horsley and T. Thatcher, John, Jesus, and the Renewal of Israel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013),140–41. See chapter 6 of the present study for more discussion. Philo’s discourse in Flacc 45–46 discussed above clearly shows that not all Ioudaioi did consider Judea their πατρίς. R. Pummer, The Samaritans: A Profile (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), 9–25. Pummer notes that even modern-day Samaritans self-identify as ‘Israelite Samaritans’ (p. 2). See also G.N. Knoppers, Jews and Samaritans: The Origins and History of Their Early Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 12; and the inscriptions mentioned in chapter 2 that identify diaspora Samaritans at Delos as ‘Israelites’ (SEG 32:809 [150–50 BCE]; SEG 32:810 [250–175 BCE]). Mendels, Land of Israel, 109–119. On Shechem as the Samaritan ‘holy city,’ Mendels points specifically to a fragment of Theodotus (1:7): ἡ διερὴ Σικίμων καταφαίνεται, ἱερὸν ἄστυ (‘holy town’). R.A. Horsley, Galilee: History, Politics, People (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1995), 50–51. As Mark Chancey notes, Horsley’s theory is controversial, since it envisions first-century Galileans as, on the one hand, under Judean cultural and religious influence but, on the other, as forming their own distinct ethno-religious entity; they were ‘Israelite’

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while Jews certainly could use the terms ‘Israel’ and ‘Israelites’ to refer only to themselves and restrictedly to the land of Judea, these terms could also have a broader range of ethno-religious designation, which included Samaritans and Galileans. For John, ascribing the ethno-political title “King of Israel” to Jesus, indeed, meant that he was King of Judea and the Jews, but it also meant he was King of Samaria and the Samaritans as well as of the Galilee and the Galileans. This idea bears itself out within John’s narrative world in a subtle but clear way, as these regions collectively form the focus of the Johannine Jesus’s messianic mission to “all Israel.”90 Many scholars have noted John’s emphasis on Jesus’s work in Judea, particularly Jerusalem (see below), but, in fact, Judea, Samaria, and the Galilee are all framed in some way or another as necessary land components for Jesus’s activity. Thus, for example, Jesus must work in Judea “for the glory of God” and the revelation of his own glory as God’s son (11:4–16). Likewise, Jesus “wishes” (ἠθέλησεν) to go to the Galilee (1:43), where he collects disciples committed to his messiahship (1:45), launches a successful “signs” campaign in Cana (2:11), and is once again explicitly ascribed kingship (6:15).

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but not ‘Jewish.’ See M.A. Chancey, The Myth of Gentile Galilee: The Population of Galilee and New Testament Studies, SNTSMS 118 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 25. Horsley makes the further distinction that the Hasmoneans did not force the Galileans to ‘convert’ in the sense of bringing them over into the Judean ethnos but rather more simply brought the region under the influence of Jerusalem’s culture and politics. In my view, Horsley is right to identify Galileans as bound up with a broader Israelite cultural heritage and to distinguish them from Judean Jews, but he is wrong to separate them from the Jewish ethnos as a whole. There is no way to tell whether the Hasmoneans only sought to bring the Galilee under Judea’s sphere of influence or whether they forced Galilee’s inhabitants to ‘convert’ to the Jewish ethnos. As presented in other parts of the current study, the archaeological and textual data demonstrate both a shared material culture between Judea and the Galilee and clear religio-political connections between them. In other words, while I can see how Galilean Jews may have differed from Judean Jews, if only because of geopolitical situation, I cannot see how Galileans would have represented an entirely separate ethno-religion independent from the Jewish ethnos; they do not appear to have been a third offspring of ancient “Yahwistic Israel,” a distinct sibling to Jews and Samaritans (see chapter 2), but rather a regional expression within the larger spectrum of Jewish identity. As Rainer Riesner has suggested, if the enigmatic reference in John 1:28 to John’s baptizing activity taking place in “Bethany across the Jordan” is read as referring actually to the northeastern region of Batanaea (Bashan in the days of ancient Israel), then “all four classical regions of the Jewish motherland – Galilee, Judaea, Samaria, and the land east of the Jordan – have a specially emphasized place in the Fourth Gospel. And so with the help of topography also the Evangelist makes it clear that the sending of Jesus is for the whole of Israel.” See R. Riesner, “Bethany Beyond the Jordan (John 1:28): Topography, Theology, and History in the Fourth Gospel,” TynBul 38 (1987): 29–63 (quote from p. 63).

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And, at the start of John 4, as Jesus is once more headed to the Galilee, the narrative aside in 4:4 asserts that “it was necessary [ἔδει] for him to pass through Samaria.” Ἒδει here could be read cartographically, making Samaria simply a necessary part of the map of Jesus’s travel log as he heads north. However, by the time the reader reaches 4:31–38 – Jesus’ mini-parable about his “food” and the fields white for harvest – it is rather clear that John intends this necessity of passing through Samaria, like Jesus’s work in Judea and the Galilee, to be inherently connected to Jesus’s mission of “doing the will of the one who sent me and completing his work” (4:34). The epithet “King of Israel”, then, bears itself out as an ethno-political title with the concept of the ancestral land of Israel at its center. Or to use Davies’s descriptor, it focuses on the “horizontal” spatial dimension, extending Jesus’s kingship to “all Israel,” in a way highly evocative of David’s rule during the days of Israel’s united monarchy. John, however, is not content to leave us, or Jesus for that matter, on the horizontal plane. Let us return to the Nathaniel episode. While Jesus does not outright reject Nathaniel’s application of the royal title to him, his response in vv. 50–51 does indeed evince a definite reorientation. It moves us from the horizontal dimension we developed above to the “greater things” of the “vertical” dimension, namely toward a vision of the heavenly work of Jesus as the apocalyptic son of man.91 The allusions in these verses to the “opened heavens” of Ezek 1:1 and Jacob’s dream-vision in Genesis 28 at Bethel of the ladder on which “the angels of God were ascending and descending” have been noted by many scholars.92 The interesting point, though, is that, in Jacob’s vision, there is the reassertion of God’s promise to make Jacob’s offspring exponentially numerous and to give them land. In John, what were once land-bound concepts – ‘King of Israel’ and a promise from the ancestral deity of a demarcated territory – are ‘apocalypticized,’ or as J.Z. Smith might put it, ‘utopianized,’ with Jesus’s identity as heavenly son of man taking the foreground and moving the concept of the ancestral land beyond Israel’s borders. John redeploys this strategy in other places that kingship and kingdom are a topic of concern. In his nighttime conversation with Nicodemus – a Pharisee who held a high-ranking office and worked closely with the priestly elite on matters 91 92

On the Johannine son of man as an apocalyptic figure, see B.E. Reynolds, The Apocalyptic Son of Man in the Gospel of John, WUNT 2.249 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008). See discussions, e.g., in A. Kerr, The Temple of Jesus’ Body, JSNTSup 220 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), 136–66; G.T. Manning, Echoes of a Prophet: The Use of Ezekiel in the Gospel of John and in Literature of the Second Temple Period, LNTS 270 (London: T&T Clark, 2004), 150–60. On the potential allusion in John 1:51 to the place of Jacob’s dream, Bethel (‘house of God’), and thus an allusion to the temple, see Davies, The Gospel and the Land, 296–98, who is followed by Kerr.

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of Judean legal politics – Jesus mentions here, and only here, the “kingdom of God” twice (3:3, 5). The “kingdom of God,” per se, is not the part of the discussion that trips Nicodemus up; as a Jewish person with priestly-oriented values, he would have been well acquainted with contemporary ideas about the Jewish god as king over a territory politically controlled by the Jewish people. What confuses Nicodemus – but what Jesus expects him to understand as “teacher of Israel” – is that the boundaries of this kingdom are not visible to the human eye, and that entering into it requires one to receive a second birth, a birth “from above,” or as Ernst Haenchen says, “ein neue, himmlische Existenz.”93 As stated flatly by Jesus later on in the Gospel (18:36), this kingdom, now Jesus’s kingdom, is otherworldly (οὐκ ἔστιν ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου τούτου), though not necessarily “unpolitical,”94 and is not unlike the heavenly kingdom depicted in the Book of Watchers, as Philip Esler has recently suggested, or the possibly heavenly messianic kingdom described in 2 Baruch, noted by Liv Lied.95 In a similar pattern as the Nathaniel episode, Jesus’s dialogue with Nicodemus takes a “horizontal” category, “kingdom of God,” and reorients it “vertically,” leading immediately into a short discourse on “heavenly things” in 3:11–15, involving Jesus’s identity as, once again, the ascending and descending son of man. The strategy continues in John 6:1–15. After Jesus miraculously feeds five thousand people, v. 15 indicates the people’s response once they recognize the origin of the food: they wish to seize Jesus and make him king. Scholarly explanations for the crowd’s response to the miracle have varied, ranging from a misunderstanding to a perceived fulfillment of messianic expectation.96 But whatever one’s specific interpretation, what our colleagues working in Feasting 93 94 95 96

E. Haenchen, Johannes Evangelium: Ein Kommentar, ed. U. Basse (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1980), 217. So Haenchen, Johannes Evangelium, 303. P. Esler, God’s Court and Courtiers in the Book of the Watchers: Re-interpreting 1 Enoch 1–36 (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2017), 54; Lied, Other Lands of Israel, 235–39. In his famous commentary, Rudolf Bultmann, explained the people’s response as a misconception of Jesus’ messianic kingship, a view predicated upon a misunderstanding of the kind of salvation Jesus was intending to bring. See R. Bultmann, Gospel of John: A Commentary, trans. G.R. Beasley Murray (Oxford: Blackwell, 1971), 213–14. Ernst Bammel, followed in Keener’s more recent commentary, set the people’s desire to make Jesus king within the context of first-century Jewish messianic expectations of a Mosaic prophetking and the political problems messianic pretenders often presented Judean authorities. See E. Bammel, “The Feeding of the Multitude,” in Jesus and the Politics of His Day (ed. E. Bammel and C.F.D. Moule; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 211–240; Keener, John, 1:669–671. See most recently, G. Wheaton, The Role of Jewish Feasts in John’s Gospel, SNTSMS 162 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 83–126 (esp. 84–87), who associates Jesus’ abundant provision of food with the Pesach (6:4) and the ‘nationalistic’ (anti-Roman) expectations associated with the feast.

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Studies have shown from archaeological and ethnographic data is that the provision of mass amounts of food for large groups of people in antiquity would have been perceived as a political act with the intent of garnering social capital (cf. Dio Chrysostom, Or. 66:9; Josephus, War 2:1–5//Ant. 17:200–205).97 In other words, the crowd’s association of the mass provision of food, not least a miraculous one, with political kingship is not a misunderstanding; they respond as most ancients would have. Jesus withdraws and avoids their attempt to make him king of the land, but in the Bread of Life discourse to follow (John 6:22– 71), he, again, reorients his interlocutors toward un-bordered heavenly realities and his identity as son of man, who gives the food of eternal life (6:27) and will “ascend” to where he was before (6:62). 3.2 The City of Jerusalem The city of Jerusalem appears far more frequently in John than in the Synoptics. It is the place of mass gathering for the major festivals – Pesach, Sukkot, and Chanukah – and it is the home of the god of Israel’s house, which Jesus zealously defends in 2:14–17.98 While John does not use Matthew’s exact language to describe Jerusalem as “the city of the great king” (Matt 5:35),99 it nevertheless renders a similar portrait in John 12:12–15, in which Jesus, on his way into the city, is hailed as “King of Israel” (12:13). It is also the place within John’s narrative world in which Jesus and his disciples demonstrate already an openness toward the inclusion of godfearing Greeks (12:21).100 Jerusalem is, quite clearly, the geospatial focus of Jesus public activity. On the other hand, for the Johannine Jesus, the city and its central institution, the temple cult, are controlled by Ioudaioi whom he deems ‘of the devil,’ ‘blind,’ and polluters of his father’s house. Jerusalem is thus a city in tension, prized above all others by the Johannine Jesus but, from his perspective, obviously in a precarious situation. We get no sense from John’s narrative that Jesus rejects or, to use the language of Tacitus, “disowns” Jerusalem as his mother city or, even less, as the city of the Jewish god, but it certainly does play an important role in the Gospel’s strategy of reterritorializing Jewish ethnic identity. The fundamental problem presented by John, particularly in Jesus’s dialogue with the Samaritan woman, 97

B. Hayden, The Power of Feasts: From Prehistory to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), esp. 335–40, which focuses on the politics of food production in the ancient Mediterranean contexts of the Greek and Roman empires. 98 For more discussion of this passage, see chapter 6. 99 On the portrait of Jerusalem given in Matthew, see A. Runesson, “City of God or Home of Traitors and Killers? Jerusalem according to Matthew,” in The Urban World and the First Christians, 219–35. 100 On which, see chapter 3.

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is that Jerusalem (and Gerizim, for that matter) is currently (νῦν ἐστιν) not fit to accommodate “true worship” of Israel’s god (4:20–24): the temple cult has been profaned, reduced to a “house of trade” (2:16), and it and the people are under the leadership of unfit shepherds (10:7–18). By the time the narrative arrives at 14:1–4, the “house” of Jesus’s father does not even reside in Jerusalem but exists in the sphere of the otherworldly.101 Indeed, like Matthew’s Gospel and unlike Luke, in John’s second ending the disciples have moved away from Jerusalem and show no signs of returning, with the movement beginning in the Galilee (21:1–3).102 To be sure, John does not use the graphic language of the Habakkuk Pesher to describe Jerusalem as a city defiled with bloodshed and oppression of the poor, but clearly it and the sanctuary have problems that, to Jesus, make true worship there impossible (cf. Pss Sol 2:3; 8:22–28). The idea of becoming a “true worshipper” who worships “in spirit and truth” is a ‘utopian’ technique not for disowning Jerusalem as God’s holy city but for transcending its political borders and reimagining worship of Israel’s god that is both undefiled and accessible within diasporic contexts. While, as Le Donne has suggested, the identity values of many Jews in the Second Temple period orbited in some way around the ‘mother city,’103 John’s move out of Jerusalem’s orbital force as God’s dwelling place would have been entirely intelligible to those familiar with the Jewish prophetic tradition. As Raimo Hakola observes, the idea that the profanation of the temple led to the departure of the divine presence is well documented in the Bible (2 Chron 29:6–9; Isa 1:10–20; Jer 7:1–15; Ezek 5:1–11; 8–11; Mal 1:6–2:9; 3:1–3). Hakola rightly notes that, “[a]ccording to John, Jesus’ contemporaries are thus guilty of the same crime their forefathers have [sic] been punished for many times.”104 In other words, Jesus’s problem is not with Jerusalem but with the priestly-oriented-type Judean Jews who control it and its public institutions. After all, the Johannine Jesus’s plain statement in 4:20 – “an hour comes when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the father” – had for centuries already been a lived reality for most Jews (and Samaritans), who were scattered throughout the Mediterranean world and beyond. The notion that worship of Israel’s god was not, at least for the time being, going to revolve 101 102 103 104

We will return to this in chapter 6 in discussion of John and the national cult/temple. See Runesson, “Jerusalem according to Matthew,” 222 n. 15. Le Donne, “Complicating the Category of Ethnos.” R. Hakola, Identity Matters: John, the Jews, and Jewishness, NovTSup 118 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 95. See also Runesson, “Jerusalem according to Matthew,” esp. pp. 228–29, where he stresses this idea with reference to Matthew’s understanding that unfaithful Pharisees had defiled the temple, with the result that, in Matthew’s view, God indeed no longer lived in Jerusalem.

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around one’s physical presence in Jerusalem was, indeed, not a new invention. John’s Jesus is stating, similar to Philo earlier,105 something that had been rather obvious for a long time: yes, Jerusalem is an important piece of the ancestral puzzle, but Jews for generations have had the ethno-religious infrastructure in place to construct identities well beyond its borders, especially in times of the city’s perceived defilement by the ‘unfaithful.’106 John’s unique contribution is its adding of Jesus to this infrastructure. Jesus himself is a mechanism for a mobile Jewish identity, deployed to promote an alternative vision of Judaism (and Samaritanism) that, far from advocating the land’s rejection or the going over to the land of another ethnos, interprets the ancestral land and its ‘holy city’ away from priestly-oriented values. Jesus’s body is John’s supreme example, or better, reminder to Jews and godfearing Greeks, of the portability of the divine presence (2:21), and his education of the Samaritan woman on the topic of worship “in spirit and truth” centers on the portability of YHWH devotion.107 These Johannine ideas, it seems to me, run in a very similar trajectory as not only other post-70 Jewish texts such as 2 Baruch and, eventually, the Babylonian rabbis, but also, and more broadly, other Greco-Roman ethno-religions, which moved out of their homelands and into major diasporic urban centers. Indeed, as Smith has shown from a history of religions point of view, the need for such mobile techniques to facilitate worship of ethnic deities outside of one’s ancestral land was widespread throughout Mediterranean antiquity.108 In this sense, Jewish identity, including of the Jesus-oriented type, was no different. 3.3 Jesus’s Death and the Regathering of the “Dispersed Children of God” The last theme we shall discuss, which is interwoven with notions of the land, comes principally from John 11:47–52, but, as John Dennis’s monograph on this passage has demonstrated, concepts found here are dispersed throughout the Gospel.109 We, however, will limit our comments to this passage alone and refer the reader to Dennis’s book for a more detailed treatment. Here the high priest Caiaphas unknowingly gives a prophecy that Jesus “was going to die in behalf of the ethnos, and not in behalf of the ethnos only but also so 105 See Flacc 45–46 treated above. 106 Beyond sources already cited, see from the Hebrew Bible Zeph 2:11; Mal 1:11, both of which emphasize the universality, in terms of place, of the worship of YHWH. 107 See chapter 6. 108 Smith, Drudgery Divine, 121–45. 109 J.A. Dennis, Jesus’s Death and the Gathering of True Israel: The Johannine Appropriation of Restoration Theology in the Light of John 11.47–52, WUNT 2.217 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006).

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that he might gather into one the children of God who are dispersed.” As we discussed in chapter 3 with reference to the category of ‘people,’ this passage is loaded with ethno-political language.110 The land, however, is not mentioned, at least not explicitly. Yet, in biblical and early Jewish texts that speak of the dispersed people of Israel and their promised regathering, the concept of the land is always present;111 being ‘(re)gathered’ always presupposed a place for that gathering. To elucidate the land’s influence as an idea in John 11:47–52, we need to take two interpretive steps. First, as we have seen throughout this study, the term ἔθνος (occurring four times in the Johannine passage: 11:48, 50, 51, 52), could be used in antiquity to describe the Jews throughout the Mediterranean world with regard to their ancestral connections to a particular people, laws, land, and god/national cult. However, the context of John 11:47–52 (and 18:35)112 might suggest that John uses the term here with specific reference to the land and those politically connected to the leadership of the chief priests and the temple cult, those who would have been most anxious about “the Romans coming and taking away our place [i.e., the temple] and ethnos” (11:48).113 In 11:50, ἔθνος is distinguished from λαός – in behalf of whom Jesus is also said to die – in that λαός refers narrowly to the ethnic category of ‘people,’ whereas ἔθνος is broader, potentially encompassing all four of the categories mentioned above. But in light of the language in this passage of “dispersion” (διεσκορπισμένα) and “gathering” (συναγάγῃ), and because temple and land are so intricately linked in other Jewish sources, I suggest that John’s uses of ἔθνος in 11:47–52 intend especially to foreground the category of ‘land.’114 That is, while Jesus, as Caiaphas ironically 110 E.g., ‘Ρωμαῖοι, πιστεύω, τόπος, ἔθνος (3×), διεσκορπίζω, λαός, τέκνα τοῦ θεοῦ, the last four of which I discussed in chapter 3. 111 Dennis, Jesus’ Death, 313–14. 112 In John 18:35, Pilate says to Jesus: “I am not a Jew, am I? Your ethnos and the chief priests handed you over to me. What have you done?” Thus, the connection in John’s Gospel between ethnos and priestly-oriented (land-based) Jews is clear. 113 See M. Satlow, “Jew or Judaean,” in “The One Who Sows Bountifully”: Essays in Honor of Stanley K. Stowers, ed. C.J. Hodge et al., Brown Judaic Studies (Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 2013), 171 on the point that ἔθνος held a dual usage to refer to “the polity occupying a territory – or a group of people, living hither and yon, who share a set of common practices.” 114 This suggestion would make sense in light of John 11:48, where τὸν τόπον καὶ τὸ ἔθνος would be taken to mean that the chief priests and Pharisees were concerned about the Romans coming and destroying the temple and ransacking the land. This would mean also that John is employing the terminology of ἔθνος very similarly to ancient historians and ethnographers, such as Polybius and Diodorus Siculus who, as Michael Satlow notes, consistently use territory as the key identifying criterion of an ἔθνος. See Satlow, “Jew or Judaean,” 168.

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asserts, will indeed die “in behalf of the people,” his death will also atone for the ancestral land, its “place” (the temple) included, which unfit leaders have polluted.115 Second, the death of Jesus has an additional function stated in 11:52b, one that is closely related but ultimately distinct from its function in 11:51–52a. While it has an atoning effect for the ethnos, especially its ‘land’ component, John is not content to leave it there. Jesus’s death also triggers an event for “the children of God who are dispersed,” but it has nothing to do, at least not directly, with atonement. Whereas Jesus would die “in behalf of the ethnos,” he dies “so that” – note the change from the preposition ὑπέρ to the conjunction ἵνα – he might gather these scattered children into one. The progression from 11:51 to 11:52, from atonement for the ethnos/land to the gathering of the dispersed, is quite similar to the progression we see in other early Jewish texts, such as 2 Macc 2:18, Pss Sol 8:28, Tob 14:4–5, and the Scrolls material mentioned earlier in this chapter. All of them seem, like John, to start their discourse on the scattering/regathering motif from the perspective that Jerusalem or the entire land of Israel had been defiled by unfaithful leaders or by other nations. Atonement or some great act of God’s mercy was necessary before a regathering of geographically scattered Israelites into the land could take place. Dennis suggests, however, that the phrase τὰ τέκνα τοῦ θεοῦ τὰ διεσκορπισμένα cannot be limited to Israelites in the geographic dispersion because, in his view, “the children of God” represents “the totality of the restored community and not simply a part of it.”116 In other words, if τὰ τέκνα τοῦ θεοῦ here already includes those living in the land, then John cannot only be referencing 115 I acknowledge here the significant debate in the history of scholarship over the interpretation of the Johannine ὑπέρ texts (6:51; 10:11, 15; 11:50–52; 15:13; 18:14), that is, whether or not John intends these texts to be read with reference to a christology of sacrificial atonement or divine revelation. See Dennis’s excellent and very thorough discussion in Jesus’ Death, 13–24. While I do not think we should necessarily exclude the element of revelation from ὑπέρ texts such as John 11:50–52, I think J. Frey states it well when he contextualizes such passages with others that appear to attribute a sacrificial/atoning character to Jesus’s death, John 1:29 especially: “Dazu gehört zunächst das Täuferzeugnis über Jesus, der als ‘das Lamm Gottes’ die ‘Sunde der Welt wegtragt’ (Joh 1,29). Hinzu kommen eine Fülle weiterer Worte, die eine explizite soteriologische Deutung des Todes Jesu bieten, so die unterschiedlichen mit ὑπερ-Aussagen gestalteten Worte, die – auch wenn die Formulierungen variieren – im vierten Evangelium in ihrem Zusammenklang zu interpretieren sind: ‘Mein Fleisch [geben] für das Leben der Welt’ (Joh 6:51c), ‘mein/sein Leben [hingeben] für die Schafe’ (Joh 10,11. 15. 17); ‘[sterben] für das Volk’ und ‘damit die zerstreuten Gotteskinder zur Einheit zusammengefuhrt werden’ (Joh 11,51f).” See J. Frey, “Die ‘theologia crucifixi’ des Johannesevangeliums,” in Kreuzestheologie im Neuen Testament, ed. A. Dettwiler and J. Zumstein, WUNT 151 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), 169–238. 116 Dennis, Jesus’ Death, 311.

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those in the diaspora by its use of τὰ διεσκορπισμένα; those “dispersed” live in the land and outside it. Dennis thus argues that John is reinterpreting biblical and early Jewish traditions about ‘dispersion’ by removing the concept of the land and adding the person of Jesus. The dispersed children of God in 11:52 are not actually dispersed from the land; “rather,” he says, “Israel is dispersed and estranged from Jesus who is himself the dwelling of God and the eschatological Temple.”117 Dennis is certainly correct that τὰ τέκνα τοῦ θεοῦ is a broad category that encompasses the “totality of the restored community,”118 that is, all who had received the Logos, becoming loyal to the ‘Word’ of Israel’s god (John 1:12), whether Jew, Samaritan, or Judaizing Gentile.119 But he pushes his christological reading of τὰ διεσκορπισμένα too far. There is no compelling reason to suggest that John understands ‘dispersion’ any differently from how the biblical and early Jewish tradition did, as referring to geographically scattered YHWH adherents. Dennis himself admits that the syntax of τὰ τέκνα τοῦ θεοῦ τὰ διεσκορπισμένα could easily be read with τὰ διεσκορπισμένα specifying a particular portion of the broader category τὰ τέκνα τοῦ θεοῦ; that is, while there are children of God both in the land and outside of it, John 11:52 is expressly concerned with those outside of it.120 He also admits that, in the end, “it nevertheless seems to be the case that there is a specific concern for Diaspora Israelites evident in John’s language.”121 It seems to me, then, that we are on better footing to read 11:51–52 with the kind of two-step logic we see patterned in other Jewish texts: the death of Jesus, first, atones for the land; and this atonement, second, effects the ‘gathering’ of ‘true Israelites’ (cf. 1:47) – Jews, Samaritans, and Gentile godfearers loyal to YHWH’s ‘Word’  – scattered across the Roman world.122 117 Dennis, Jesus’ Death, 315. 118 Dennis, Jesus’ Death, 311. 119 On the last of these, see John 12:20–22, a group which, I think, is also intended in the offhanded remark of some Ioudaioi in 7:35: “Where is this man going to go that we will not find him? He is not going to go to the diaspora of the Greeks and teach the Greeks, is he?” History tells us that, while Jesus never did this, his later followers of course did. 120 Dennis, Jesus’ Death, 311–12. 121 Dennis, Jesus’ Death, 315. Dennis, as far as I can tell, does not take John 7:35, where a geographic diaspora is explicitly mentioned, into account in his discussion here. 122 As I argued in chapter 3, in this reading, 11:52 (as well as 7:35) would be the only two places in which the Gospel mentions a world outside of the land of Israel, a world the Johannine Jesus has nothing to do with. This strongly suggests that, within John’s narrative world, the “children of God who are dispersed,” that is, those who have had no contact with the mission of Jesus in the land and are nevertheless called “children of God,” are, in fact, not Christ-followers but are Jews and non-Jews who were faithful to the Word of Israel’s

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Where John is different, where it actively reinterprets prior tradition christologically, is not with reference to the idea of ‘dispersion’ but rather that of ‘gathering.’ In contrast to texts like, for example, 2 Macc 2:18; Pss Sol 8:28; Tob 14:4–5, Jesus, not the god of Israel, gathers together the dispersed (συναγάγῃ), and he gathers them together “into one” (εἰς ἕν). Τhe question that arises from this is: “into one” … what? That is, is the land in view here or, as Dennis has powerfully argued from the ‘oneness’ motif found throughout the Gospel, is it unity in human relations among the children of god?123 To be sure, once again, the land is not explicitly mentioned by John. On the one hand, this could mean that John, quite similarly to 2 Baruch, leaves the place of regathering ambiguous and ultimately constructed around not ‘real’ political territory but the righteous praxis of a community of people.124 On this reading, John would envision the ‘real’ land as a non-essential for the eschatological gathering initiated by Jesus’s death – the “unified children of god” functions as the place of gathering.125 To my mind, however, the reading above still does not answer the question: If Jesus’s ‘gathering’ activity is not predicated upon the ‘real’ land, why is it important for John to state in 11:51–52 that Jesus would die “in behalf of the ethnos,” a phrase that surely includes the land within its purview?126 In

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god (Torah). There is thus a distinction between the land and the geographic diaspora with reference to criteria for inclusion in the “children of God.” (1) Because the mission of the Johannine Jesus, as the enfleshed Logos, and his disciples is restricted to the land of Israel, those in the land must “receive” and “become loyal” to Jesus to have the “authority to become children of God.” (2) Those outside the land become “children of God” in the same sense as those who received the Logos before its incarnation (1:12–13). If we allow ourselves to step outside John’s narrative world, then we could imagine that the Gospel envisions those in (2) to be people prepared in advance, a ripe harvest so to say, to receive Jesus upon hearing the message of his messiahship. In this way, John 5:46 is a sort of hermeneutical key: if one is loyal to Moses (Torah), then he or she is precisely the one who will be ready to be loyal to Jesus. Dennis, Jesus’ Death, 313. On 2 Baruch, see Lied, Other Lands of Israel, 176–79. This is also similar to how the later Babylonian rabbis understand the land in relation to one’s ‘resurrection’ (see Sec. 2 above). ‘Resurrection’ is a theme quite prominent in John’s Gospel as well (e.g., 11:1–46), and, as Davies (The Gospel and the Land, 331–33) has suggested, it is also connected to the concept of the land. As Schwartz, Judeans and Jews, 46 notes, belief in the resurrection presupposed for ancient Jews the idea that the soul exists apart from the body. Thus ‘resurrection’ “posits for the individual what Diaspora does for the nation.” In other words, the concept of ‘resurrection’ was a diasporic strategy intimately linked to the idea of a ‘national’ regathering of scattered Israelites (i.e., the ‘soul’) into the land (i.e., the ‘body’). That is to say, at the very least, ethnos in 11:51–52 includes the land, whether or not it is foregrounded, subsuming under it all four ethno-religious categories, each of which are affected by Jesus’s death.

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other words, why does Jesus need to die for the Jewish homeland, if the land is not required for the eschatological regathering? To provide an answer, we can recall the interaction between the “horizontal” and “vertical” planes within John’s narrative world that we have been developing so far. Because John is concerned with challenging and reorienting values characteristic of priestlyoriented-type Judaism, it must provide a mechanism to compensate, or better, atone for its perceived failings. For John, it is Jesus’s death that atones for the land; this is the “horizontal” significance of his death. At the same time, however, John stops short of making the real territory a necessary criterion of place for the eschatological gathering of the children of god; this ability to regather without real land is the “vertical” significance of his death. This, the inherent ambiguity in the short Johannine phrase “into one,” I suggest, is John’s way of extending the significance of Jesus’s death beyond the land’s borders. It is a way for John to fix the problem of the land’s defilement and, simultaneously, answer the question of how the trans-ethnic group of the “children of god,” that is, the “sheep of different folds” (John 10:16) in the geographic diaspora can and should relate.127 4

Conclusion

What scholars have sometimes interpreted as John’s departure, neglect, or ambivalence toward an important category of Jewishness – the land – is really John’s strategy of moving from one expression of Jewishness to another. The concept of the ancestral land as a political entity controlled by Jews certainly appears on the pages of John’s Gospel but not on the lips of the Johannine Jesus. His task is consistently to move his interlocutors beyond the land’s borders and reorient them to the world to come. Jesus is the king of Israel, but at the same time his kingdom is not of this world; Jerusalem is home to his father’s house, but a time has come in which his father cannot be worshiped truly there; and his death triggers the eschatological gathering, but with relations among a multi-ethnic people as the end goal, although not to the exclusion of his death’s importance for the land itself. But this re-territorializing strategy should not be confused with ethnic defection, which, according to at least Tacitus and Philo, would involve disowning or forsaking one’s homeland and joining oneself to the ancestral land of another. I simply do not see this happening in John’s narrative. Rather, John’s approach represents a pattern of thinking common to other diasporic expressions of ethno-religious identity in 127 On the “children of god” and the “sheep of different folds,” see chapter 3.

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the Greco-Roman world, which had to wrestle with the complicated question of how to make and remake their native traditions relevant and useful within a non-native context. Developing an interpretation of Jesus-oriented Jewishness that highlights his cosmic and trans-ethnic significance was John’s answer to this question. We are now left with a final category of ethnic identity to discuss, which will be taken up in the following chapter. If, as we have explored so far in this study, an ethnos in antiquity cohered principally around the notion of a people group that had laws that governed over a particular land, then how a people were understood to prosper was largely dependent on their worship and adherence to the laws of the gods who inhabited that land in a national cult. As we will see, Jews across the Mediterranean world had varying relationships to this institution and negotiated their worship of Israel’s god in a plurality of ways. The question for us will be, how does John fit within this plurality?

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The National Cult, the Public Assembly, and Jewish Associations John between the Institutions of Temple and Synagogue 1

Introduction

The task of this chapter is to consider a final ‘site’ of Jewish ethnic identity formation, one that has held a particularly important place in the scholarly discussion about John and Judaism: the national cult. Since national cults in the ancient world had to do with much more than a people’s interaction with the gods (although this was certainly important), we must look to their larger social context  – that is, their relationship to other kinds of socio-religious institutions – to get a better sense of how institutions like the Jerusalem temple functioned, and, more importantly, how individuals and groups thought about these institutions and used them in the construction of Jewishness. Thus, we will be concerned not only with John’s general attitude toward the Jewish national cult but also with how John uses the public space of the institutions of temple and synagogue to negotiate its particular vision of Jewish ethnic identity. I will argue that John’s strategy facilitates not a break with Judaism but rather an understanding of Jewish identity predicated upon alternative modes of access to the ancestral cult and disassociation from the official politics of the public assembly. 2

National Cult, Public Assemblies, and Associations in Greco-Roman and Jewish Antiquity

In both Mediterranean and Near Eastern antiquity, there existed an inherent connection between, on the one hand, people and their native territory, and, on the other, the ethnic deities that inhabited that territory.1 For the gods 1 Although it predates the period we have been most concerned with in this study, one of the finest and most famous examples of the ancient connection among people groups, gods, ‘houses’ of gods, and territory is the Cyrus Cylinder (6th cent. BCE). The Cylinder tells the story of the evil ruler Nabonidus and his lack of reverence for the chief Babylonian god Marduk. Nabonidus had brought the gods of various territories into Babylon, thus driving them from the sanctuaries in which they had normally inhabited. The result of Nabonidus’s

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to join themselves to and bestow their blessing upon a particular land, they needed houses to dwell in, that is, temples or sanctuaries, in which their (cultic) worship could be ritually performed.2 Thus, for example, the Egyptians built houses for Isis, the Greeks for the Twelve Olympian gods, the Romans for Capitoline Jupiter, and the Jews and Samaritans for YHWH, the former in Jerusalem and the latter on top of Mount Gerizim.3 Monumental temples housed the major deities of an ethnos, functioning as the material space in which humans interacted with the divine. But, importantly, such cults were not simply ‘religious’ institutions; they were ethnic ones, tightly integrated into the social, political, and economic structure of an ethnos, usually sponsored by official political bodies, and often incorporating the worship of a deified ruler.4 National cults were thus fundamental to the wickedness was the great unhappiness of the gods and the severe suffering of the city’s people. The Cylinder declares that Marduk had come to the rescue by raising up Cyrus as a king who took (peaceful) control of Babylon, sent all the gods back to their dwelling places, and sent all the people associated with these deities back to their respective homelands (see esp. lines 9–12 and 30–34). For a description of the artifact (British Museum) and a translation by Irving Finkel, see http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_ object_details.aspx?objectId=327188&partId=1. On the Persian political strategy underlying the Cylinder’s proclamation, see A. Kuhrt, “The Cyrus Cylinder and Achaemenid Imperial Policy,” JSOT 25 (1983): 83–97. See also 2 Kgs 17:26–27 for the connection among law – god – land well before the Hellenistic period. 2 According to Josephus, Lysimachus asserted that Egypt’s temples needed to be purged of Jews so that “the land would yield her increase” (C. Ap. 1:307; trans. LCL 186, 287). Jubilees 1:10 reads: “My tabernacle and my sanctuary, which I sanctified for myself in the midst of the land so that I might set my name upon it [the land] and might dwell (there).” Trans. OTP 2:53. On temples as ‘houses’ for the gods in ancient Greece, see V. Scully, The Earth, the Temple, and the Gods: Greek Sacred Architecture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962); W. Burkert, Griechische Religion der archaischen und klassischen Epoche, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2011), 56–59. 3 On Isis as the Egyptian goddess par excellence, see F. Dunand, Isis, Mère des dieux (Arles: Actes Sud, 2008), 19–70. On the Twelve Olympian Gods, who are perhaps most famously depicted on the east frieze of the Parthenon in Athens, see Burkert, Griechische Religion, 198; I.S. Mark, “The Gods on the East Frieze of the Parthenon,” Hesperia 53.3 (1984): 289–342, with plates. On the special significance of the Temple of Capitoline Jupiter for the Romans as well as the cult’s relation to the Jews around the time of the First Revolt, see J. Magness, “The Arch of Titus and the Fate of the God of Israel,” JJS 59.2 (2008): 201–17; see also E. Perry, “The Same but Different: The Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus through Time,” in Architecture of the Sacred: Space, Ritual, and Experience from Classical Greece to Byzantium, ed. B.D. Wescoat and R.G. Ousterhout (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 175–200. One of the clearest articulations of belief in the need to build a ‘house’ for YHWH, “the god who is in Jerusalem,” is Ezra 1:1–7, a text which has some interesting historical parallels with the Cyrus Cylinder (see note above). 4 R.B. Finnestad, “Temples of the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods: Ancient Traditions in New Contexts,” in Temples of Ancient Egypt, ed. B.E. Shafer (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,

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public life of an ethnos.5 Even visually, Greek and Roman temples, for example, drew heavily from the arena of public and political architecture, embedding the sphere of the gods into the everyday experiences of everyday people. Columned stoas, which characteristically framed public gathering areas such as Hellenistic agorae or Roman fora, also lined the perimeters of sanctuaries, creating public spaces that could be used for a variety of purposes.6 Temples were erected and functioned in close proximity to other civic buildings, such as courtrooms (δικαστήρια), city council halls (βουλευτήρια), and other places of public assembly (ἐκκλησιαστήρια, θέατρα, basilica). These public gatherings were sometimes places of intense political conflict and debate (sometimes even deadly), but they were also places in which the gods were worshiped.7 Outfitted with official priesthoods, which carried significant (even supreme) 1997), 227–33; W.S. Bubelis, “Temple Economy, Greek and Roman,” in The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, vol. 11, ed. R.S. Bagnall et al. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), 6580–82. An epigraphic example of the close association of king and cult from the early Hellenistic period is the Priene Inscription (CIG 2904, British Museum 0320.88; ca. 334–330 BCE): “King Alexander erected the temple for Athena Polias.” A good example contemporary to John’s Gospel is the depiction of Titus’s apotheosis on the apex of the Arch of Titus (ca. 81 CE). Here Titus is shown metamorphosing into the image of an eagle, the symbol of Jupiter. The dedicatory inscription on the arch’s attic reads: Senatus populusque Romanus divo Tito divi Vespasiani f. Vespasiano Augusto (“The Roman senate and people, to the divine Titus Vespasianus Augustus, son of the divine Vespasian”). See Magness, “Arch of Titus,” 202. 5 Although from classical Athens, see the central place of temples and cultic sacrifice in the public sphere in Demosthenes, Olynth. 3:25–26: “Out of the wealth of the state they [our forefathers] set up for our delight so many fair buildings and things of beauty, temples and offerings to the gods, that we who come after must despair of every surpassing them” (trans. LCL 238, 57). 6 M.H. Hansen and T. Fischer-Hansen, “Monumental Political Architecture in Archaic and Classical Greek Poleis: Evidence and Historical Significance,” in From Political Architecture to Stephanus Byzantius: Sources for the Ancient Greek Polis, ed. D. Whitehead, HEFT 87 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1994), 79–81; P.J. Goodman, “Forum,” in Encyclopedia of Ancient History, 5:2732–34. 7 For example, in his account of the conflict between Theramenes and Critias in the city council, Xenophon (Hell. 2:52–56) not only recounts how Theramenes was expelled from the roll of the Three Thousand and sentenced to death but also mentions a sacrificial altar (ἑστία) to the gods in a bouleuterion, by which Theramenes sought divine help. The inscription SEG 40.590 (2nd cent. BCE) might also reference statues of some gods in a bouleuterion as well. A vivid depiction of the power of the multitude within the Hellenistic public assembly (called here an ἐκκλησία) is given in Dio Chrysostom, Or. 7, also known as the Euboicus, perhaps Dio’s most famous oration. See J. Ma, “Public Speech and Community in the Euboicus,” in Dio Chrysostom: Politics, Letters, and Philosophy, ed. S. Swain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 108–24. Here Dio describes the collective ‘anger’ (orge) exercised by the popular assembly toward speakers in the theater (Or. 7:24–25). Cf. the conflict in synagogue space recounted in Luke 4:16–30 and Josephus, Vita 276–95.

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political authority, national cults not only functioned as the central medium of bringing heaven to earth (so to say) but were also a key mechanism for regulating politics and civic administration. Indeed, they were the heart of the public institutional infrastructure of Greco-Roman antiquity. Standing next to, and in various ways interacting with, these public institutions were the ‘semi-public’ Greco-Roman associations, variously termed collegia, hetaeriae, θιάσοι, ἐκκλησίαι, and even συναγωγαί.8 J.Z. Smith has shown that the Hellenistic period brought with it a significant increase, for whatever macro-historical reasons, in the migration of “native religions” into diasporic centers, with these diasporic expressions taking the organizational form of the Hellenistic ‘voluntary’ association.9 In distinction from national cults and other kinds of public assemblies, associations were membership-based. Associations could be established, for example, as occupational guilds, philosophical schools, or cult-groups, although, as Harland notes, all associations typically had a cultic element to them.10 Ethnicity and/or geography could also form the networks from which an association drew its membership, but in many cases, associations were multi-ethnic. Associations could be quite small, as little as ten members,11 or quite large, spanning networks of groups with shared rituals and material cultures,12 but were typically “not established or financially supported by civic or provincial institutions in an ongoing way.”13 Indeed, as the letters of Pliny to Trajan seem to indicate, associations 8 There has been a recent uptick in interest in the Greco-Roman associations from scholars of ancient Judaism and early Christianity, especially those from the ‘Toronto School.’ See, e.g., P.A. Harland, Associations, Synagogues, and Congregations: Claiming a Place in Ancient Mediterranean Society (Minnesota: Fortress, 2003); J.S. Kloppenborg, “Collegia and Thiasoi: Issues in Function, Taxonomy and Membership,” in Voluntary Associations in the Graeco-Roman World, ed. J.S. Kloppenborg and S.G. Wilson (London: Routledge, 1996), 16–30; R.S. Ascough, P.A. Harland, and J.S. Kloppenborg, Associations in the Greco-Roman World: A Sourcebook (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2012); and R. Last, “The Other Synagogues,” JSJ 47 (2016): 330–63. 9 J.Z. Smith, Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 121–43 (esp. 125). 10 On the various categories of associations and the social networks from which they could draw, see Harland, Associations, Synagogues, and Congregations, 19–43, where he addresses the categories of household, ethnic/geographical, neighborhood, occupation, cult/temple. 11 Harland, Associations, Synagogues, and Congregations, 13–14. 12 A good example is the cult association of the god Mithras, which was especially popular within the Roman military in the 2nd–4th centuries, and which has some comparable features to early Christ-groups (see, e.g., Justin Martyr, 1 Apol. 66; Tertullian, Cor. 15.3–4; Origen, Cels. 6.22; Firmicus Maternus, Err. prof. rel. 5.2). 13 Harland, Associations, Synagogues, and Congregations, 14.

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could actually have a quite antagonistic relationship to official government (Ep. 10:96). The association model of socio-religious organization among Jewish groups will be discussed more below. The Yehudite/Judean national cult, although having its roots in Solomonic Israel, first emerged as a centralized institution in Jerusalem sometime during the Persian period.14 According to later Jewish tradition, Jerusalem had long been the special place in which Israel’s god promised to dwell, being singularly designated as the place for the nation’s sacrificial cult (e.g., Jub. 8:19; cf. 1 Kgs 5:5; 8:12–26). For some Jews, the Jerusalem temple was a representation of the cosmos, heaven and earth (literally) carved and stitched into stone and fabric; for others, it was an earthly analogue to a heavenly sanctuary that had an angelic priesthood in which humans could only dream to participate.15 But Jerusalem in the 6th century BCE operated like any other fortified ancient Near Eastern city, with its public assemblies, city administration, and other socio-religious activities being held not in the temple precincts but at its city gates (e.g., Nehemiah 8–9).16 This, however, appears to have changed when the Greeks entered the historical landscape. Under Alexander and his Ptolemaic and Seleucid successors, a transition seems to have been triggered in the land’s urban planning and institutional organization. Some scholars have noted that with the gradual Hellenization of Judea came a simultaneous shift in the region’s main civic and commercial space, away from its city-gate complexes and into open spaces organized basically like Greek agorae.17 Indeed, 14

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For a survey of hypotheses regarding when and why the ‘second’ temple was rebuilt in the Persian period, see D.V. Edelman, The Origins of the ‘Second’ Temple: Persian Imperial Policy and the Rebuilding of Jerusalem (London: Equinox, 2005), 3–9. Edelman herself argues that it was rebuilt during the reign of Artaxerxes I, sometime in the 440s BCE, and “as part of a Persian policy that established a network of birot, guard stations, inns, and caravanserai along the major road systems of the empire, to facilitate trade, imperial communication, and military mobility” (p. 9). J. Klawans, Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple: Symbolism and Supersessionism in the Study of Ancient Judaism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 111–44. Further discussion below. See T.H. Blomquist, Gates and Gods: Cults in the City Gates of Iron Age Palestine, CBOT 46 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1999); N.M. May “Gates and their Functions in Mesopotamia and Ancient Israel,” in The Fabric of Cities: Aspects of Urbanism, Urban Topography and Society in Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome, ed. N.N. May and U. Steinert (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 78; C. Walsh, “‘Testing Entry: The Social Functions of City-Gates in Biblical Memory,” in Memory and the City in Ancient Israel, ed. D.V. Edelman and E. Ben Zvi (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2014), 43–61; and C. Quine, “On Dying in a City Gate: Implications in the Deaths of Eli, Abner and Jezebel,” JSOT 40 (2016): 399–413. L. Levine, “The Nature and Origin of the Palestinian Synagogue Reconsidered,” JBL 115.3 (1996): 425–448 (437); Levine, The Ancient Synagogue, 43; D. Binder, Into the Temple Courts:

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the archaeological record from late Hellenistic and early Roman Judea suggests that the earlier six-chambered city-gate complexes, once so popular throughout the ancient Near East, fell (relatively) out of use.18 With the prominence of its city gates reduced, the main civic center in late Hellenistic and early Roman Jerusalem moved onto the temple mount and into the temple precincts, a large rectangular space that was eventually framed by the public architecture of columned stoas, just like nearly all known Hellenistic agorae.19 By the time of Jesus, the temple was not only understood as the unique house of the Jewish god but also, and perhaps even more importantly for the average Jew living in or visiting Jerusalem, it had been thoroughly adapted into a public gathering space.20 The Jewish national cult, like other ethnic cults of the Greco-Roman world, functioned within a larger system of public institutions in the land of Israel.

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The Place of the Synagogues in the Second Temple Period, SBLDS 169 (Atlanta: SBL, 1999), 217–218; A. Runesson, The Origins of the Synagogue: A Socio-Historical Study, CBNT 37 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wicksell, 2001), 366. According to Binder, Into the Temple Courts, 217–18, a good example of this shift is the Hellenistic city of Marisa (Mareshah), which is located on Judea’s southern coastal plain. Adjacent to the Hellenistic style gate is an enclosed court (Block I), forty-five meters square, surrounded by various rooms and halls. The area certainly served as an agora, and its placement near the city gate demonstrates the transition from the gate space model of the Iron Age to the Hellenistic period, in which, architecturally, gates seemed to have served more often as entryways to the public space of the agora rather than as public space themselves. See also M. Avi-Yonah, “Maresha,” in NEAHL 3.948–951; Levine, “Nature and Origin,” 437; and F.E. Winter, Studies in Hellenistic Architecture (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 37. Binder, Into the Temple Courts, 218; S. Kostof, A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 137–90 (see pp. 151 and 176 for a diagram of the Athens agora at the start of the 4th century BCE and at the end of the 1st, respectively). A characteristic of the design and layout of agorae was the relatively close proximity of a temple shrine to the city’s βουλευτήριον, a monumental building designed as a public council hall. According to Josephus, there was a βουλευτήριον adjacent to the Jerusalem temple courts complex, where members of the public and city council gathered to make various religio-political decisions (War 5:144; 6:354). On this, see L. Levine, Jerusalem: Portrait of a City in the Second Temple Period (538 B.C.E.–70 C.E.) (Philadelphia: JPS, 2002), 234. Interestingly, although described in the news report as a “Roman theater” and currently dated to the 2nd or 3rd century CE, remains of a semicircular building, much like the shape of the so-called ‘new bouleuterion’ (see note 23 below), were recently uncovered below the Western Wall tunnels of the Old City. See the report published on 16 October 2017: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4984384/Roman-theate r-uncovered-base-Jerusalems-Western-Wall.html. L. Ritmeyer, “Imagining the Temple Known to Jesus and to Early Jews,” in Jesus and Temple: Textual and Archaeological explorations, ed. J.H. Charlesworth (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2014), 19–57; Levine, Jerusalem, 226–43.

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While the Jerusalem temple courts did the heavy institutional lifting for both the ‘mother-city’ and, on the national level, the ethnos as a whole (particularly at pilgrimage festivals), villages throughout Hellenistic and Roman Judea and Galilee, having also moved away from reliance on city-gate spaces, gathered in public synagogues to perform socio-religious activities on local levels.21 Public synagogues in the pre- and post-70 period22 could assemble in public buildings and typically represented the socio-religious center of local Jewish society throughout the land.23 They housed regular ritual performances, the most important being reading of the ancestral writings (e.g., Luke 4:16–31; Acts 15:21; Josephus, Ant. 16:42–43),24 and at the same time functioned as civic space for legal disputes and political controversies (e.g., Sus 28; Josephus, Vita 276–81, 294–95). Furthermore, there is solid evidence that early public synagogues could be highly institutionalized (NB: not uniform).25 That is, they had a well-defined, although not necessarily fixed, leadership structure, with scholars increasingly suggesting that priests, not the Pharisees, had a, if not the most, significant role within them.26 Sources do, however, attest to a variety 21

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Several scholars who have advocated recently for this theory, that the city gate was the institutional forerunner out of which the synagogue originated are: Binder, Into the Temple Courts; Runesson, Origins; Levine, The Ancient Synagogue; and J. Ryan, The Role of the Synagogue in the Aims of Jesus (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017), 26–29. Further, it is important to note that the current state of synagogue scholarship suggests that we can now, with near certainty, say that synagogues existed in the land of Israel as both physical buildings and formal public socio-religious institutions before 70 CE. See discussion in A. Runesson and W.V. Cirafesi, “Reassessing the Impact of 70 CE on the Origins and Development of Palestinian Synagogues,” in The Synagogue in Ancient Palestine: Current Issues and Emerging Trends, ed. R. Bonnie, R. Hakola, and U. Tervahauta, FLRANT 279 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021), 37–57. On the continuity of the public synagogue in all its major aspects (spatial/architectural; liturgical; non-liturgical [i.e., political]; institutional [i.e., leadership and organization]) from the pre-70 period to ca. 200 CE, see Runesson and Cirafesi, “Reassessing the Impact of 70 CE.” Some scholars have suggested, rightly in my view, that public synagogue architecture emerged sometime in the Hellenistic period and was modeled generally upon the political architecture of the Greek bouleuterion. See especially A. Runesson, “Synagogues without Rabbis or Christians? Ancient Institutions beyond Normative Discourses,” Journal of Belief and Values 38.2 (2017): 159–72. See Runesson, “Synagogues without Rabbis or Christians?” 162–63, who suggests the centrality of Torah reading in public synagogues based upon the archaeology and architecture of 1st century synagogues in the land of Israel. On the historical plausibility of Luke 4:16–31, see Ryan, Role of the Synagogue, 172–83. On the importance of this for John’s synagogue passages, see below. L. Levine, “Nature and Origin,” 440–41; Binder, Into the Temple Courts, 355–60; Sanders, Judaism, 171–73; M. Grey, “Jewish Priests and the Social History of Post-70 Palestine” (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina, 2011); W.V. Cirafesi, “The Magdala Synagogue and Its

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of officials within public synagogues: besides town elders and village scribes, the most-often mentioned functionary, both inside and outside of the New Testament, is the ἀρχισυνάγωγος/‫( ראש הכנסת‬who could also be a priest; see CIJ 2.1402). The mention of rabbis, on the other hand, is almost, if not entirely, absent. Such evidence for rabbis as leaders within synagogues does not appear until as late as the 4th or perhaps even the 5th century CE.27 Runesson and Binder, who have been followed recently by Jonathan Bernier and Jordan Ryan, have suggested that, in late Second Temple period Jerusalem, it was the open space of the temple courts that functioned as the city’s main public “synagogue,” its administrative, economic, and religio-political center.28 It was also the central public gathering space of the Jewish ethnos, particularly during the pilgrimage festivals when the population in Jerusalem spiked exponentially.29 Thus, while the temple was, of course, the special house of YHWH and his sacrificial cult, temple and public synagogue – both fundamentally ethnic institutions  – operated in tandem, as complimentary parts of a larger system of Jewish public institutions in the land.30 But Jews, both in the land and outside it, negotiated their ethnic identity in relationship to these institutions in a variety of ways. I suggest we can identify at least two major categories with one having several subcategories.

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Decorated Stone: Judean Connections with Jesus’s Galilean Mission in the Gospel of John,” in Archaeology and the Fourth Gospel, ed. P.N. Anderson, Studying the Historical Jesus Series (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans), forthcoming. Other figures possessing authority, such as the archon and the priest (who could also be an ἀρχισυνάγωγος), are also attested. There is an abundance of research available on the role and status of the ἀρχισυνάγωγος. The most helpful presentations of the data are T. Rajak and D. Noy, “Archisynagogoi: Office, Title and Social Status in the Greco-Jewish Synagogue,” JRS 83 (1993): 75–93; Binder, Into the Temple Courts, 348–52; and Levine, The Ancient Synagogue, 415–27. See also Binder, Into the Temple Courts, 344, for a helpful chart of nine terms used in reference to synagogue leaders and their location in the sources. However, one should note that Binder does not draw the same distinction we do between public and association synagogues. Thus, my interpretation of the sources is slightly different. Runesson, Origins, 352–53, 365 et passim; Binder, Into the Temple Courts, 220 et passim; J. Bernier, Aposynagōgos and the Historical Jesus in John: Rethinking the Historicity of the Johannine Expulsion Passages, BibInt 122 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 66–68; and Ryan, Role of the Synagogue, 34–35. Sanders, Judaism, 127, offers the reasonable estimate of 300,000–500,000 attendees at major festivals. Josephus gives the exaggerated estimate of 3,000,000 for Pesach in War 2.280. See also Cirafesi, “Magdala,” forthcoming. More discussion below.

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2.1 “Common Judaism” and Public Synagogues in the Land of Israel As already noted in prior chapters, scholarship spearheaded by E.P. Sanders has suggested that the great majority of Jews living in and around the firstcentury CE did not belong to any particular religio-political group or sect, a point borne out especially by the archaeological record. Average Jews in Judea and the Galilee, at least until after Bar Kokhba, looked to Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish ethnos and to its temple (even if no longer standing) as the sanctuary of YHWH and the seat of national politics. They understood the Torah as their ancestral law, perhaps having it taught to them by members of the priesthood, and the public-assembly synagogue as the institutional medium for local socio-religious activity. “Common Jews” should thus be described as being on the priestly-oriented side of the identity spectrum, in the sense that they were thoroughly integrated into the politics of public Jewish life and self-administration. 2.2 Jewish Association-Type Synagogues One of the major developments in recent synagogue scholarship has been the theory that the public synagogue was not the only kind of “synagogue” in the ancient Jewish world. Rather, what we call today synagogues seem to have existed in the first century as two types of institutions: the public/civic assembly, found only in the land of Israel, and the Jewish associations, which were designated by the same synagogue terms as the civic institutions but held different socio-religious functions.31 These latter institutions, modeled upon the Greco-Roman associations (see above), could be found in the land of Israel and in the geographic diaspora.32 In this way, public and association synagogues had an institutional relationship typologically similar to the Greco-Roman βουλευτήρια and ἐκκλησιαστήρια, on the one hand, and the Hellenistic associations on the other. The former were ethnicity-based, public, and directly responsible for the governance of a πόλις; the latter were membership-only and not always built around an exclusive ethnic criterion, but rather around the kind of social network from which the group originated (e.g., domestic 31

32

On the general distinction between public and association synagogues, see Runesson, Origins, esp. 213–235 and, more recently, Runesson and Cirafesi, “Reassessing the Impact of 70 CE,” 40–41; Runesson, “Synagogues without Rabbis or Christians?” 159–72, which includes discussion of the architectural differences between public and association synagogues. See also Ryan, Role of the Synagogue, 29–32. On the traditional Jewish “sects” in the land of Israel as modeled on the Greco-Roman associations, see A. Baumgarten, “Graeco-Roman Voluntary Associations and Ancient Jewish Sects,” in Jews in a Graeco-Roman World, ed. M. Goodman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 93–111.

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networks, neighborhood relations, occupation guilds, and cult deity groups).33 In general, Jewish association synagogues, like their Greco-Roman counterparts, could meet in a variety of spaces, both public and private, and were typically for members only, whether based upon, e.g., a shared approach to Torah interpretation, one’s occupation, or simply one’s reverence for the Jewish god.34 Thus, not all Jewish associations were alike. We must further distinguish among several different kinds, based upon geography and level of sociopolitical integration within the Jewish public assembly. 2.2.1 Integrated Associations in the Land of Israel Integrated associations in the land of Israel had a well-defined membership base but at the same time participated in, and sought to influence, the on-goings of the public assembly, on both the national and local levels.35 The Pharisees, Sadducees, and ‘Zealots’  – all labeled in Josephus (Ant. 13:171) and the New Testament (Acts 5:17; 15:5; 26:5) with a term from the world of Greco-Roman associations, αἱρέσις36  – are examples of strongly integrated Jewish associations in the pre-70 period, as are, possibly, the Theodotos Synagogue group (CIJ 2.1402) and the earliest Jesus movement (also called, at least by Luke, an αἱρέσις; Acts 24:5).37 We should probably assume that these associations had their own member-gatherings, that is, their own ‘synagogues’ that were shaped around their particular religio-political ideology, but, as noted in chapter 2, their

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Harland, Associations, Synagogues, and Congregations, 23–43; R. Last, “The Other Synagogues,” JSJ 47 (2016): 330–63 (334). See the response to Last given recently by B. Eckhardt, “Craft Guilds as Synagogues? Further Thoughts on ‘Private Judean-Deity Associations’,” JSJ 48 (2017): 246–60. On the issue of synagogues and the semi-public nature of association architecture, see Richardson, “Architectural Case,” 90–117; Runesson, “Synagogues without Rabbis or Christians?,” 159–72. The terms “integrated” and “non-integrated” (see below) are mine. The distinction I make here perhaps resembles, but is not identical to, Harland’s distinction between official and unofficial associations in Greco-Roman contexts. R. Last, “The Election of Officers in the Corinthian Christ-Group,” NTS 59 (2013): 365–81 (374–78), although Last here is making the argument that αἱρέσις in 1 Cor 11:19 should be translated into English as “elections” (as frequently used in association sources) and not the more common “factions.” On the Theodotos Synagogue as a Jewish association, see Runesson, “Synagogues without Rabbis or Christians?” 163. Runesson’s conclusion that the Theodotos Inscription is evidence of an association-type synagogue is based primarily on the mention of guest chambers, upper-rooms, and water installations for visitors from broad noted in the inscription, architectural features which “do not belong to the sphere of political institutions” (p. 163).

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activity was, nevertheless, aimed toward the public assembly.38 That is, these groups also seemed to have been concerned with public politics, the preservation of the Jewish homeland, and the centrality of the temple and its sacrificial cult. Moreover, if not priests themselves, they sometimes worked quite closely with the priestly leadership to accomplish certain political goals (Josephus, Ant. 13:288–298; War 2:411–416; and Matt 21:45–46; John 11:47, which show the Pharisees working with the chief priests to arrest Jesus).39 While these associations had no direct or official control – this remained in the hands of the priesthood, town elders, village scribes and the like – they were nevertheless ‘integrated’ with public society and intimately involved in shaping its diverse nature.40 This integration, in my view, means their constituents leaned toward the priestly-oriented side of the spectrum of Jewish ethnic identity. In the post-70 period, the early rabbinic movement in the land of Israel seems to be an example of a weakly integrated association – or, perhaps better, network of associations. While vying on some level for influence within local public assemblies (now without a national one), in the tannaitic period 38

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Both Runesson, “Synagogues without Rabbis or Christians?” 163 and P. Richardson, Building Jewish in the Roman East (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2004), 128, suggest that the Theodotos Synagogue would have had little connection to the Jerusalem temple, other than perhaps (as Runesson notes) its water installations being used by visitors for temple purity, and (as Richardson notes) Theodotos’s status as priest. In my view, the proximity of the synagogue (if we take the inscription find site as the approximate location of the synagogue, which, admittedly is not at all certain) to the temple courts, the inscription’s focus on the building’s use for teaching the law and commandments to Jews from abroad, and the priestly identity of Theodotos, make it difficult to imagine this synagogue having little or no connection to the public socio-religious realm of the Jerusalem temple. While I am not suggesting that Theodotos’s was a public synagogue – it almost certainly did not carry a political/administrative function akin to the temple or other known public synagogues in the land (see above) – I do think we should see in it a higher level of integration with the public political realm than Runesson or Richardson seem to allow for. In my view, this ability of associations to influence public politics is precisely what we see happening with the association of the Pharisees in John’s Gospel: while they have no official control over the public assembly, their influence within it is seen in their collaboration with public officials, especially the chief priests, and in their ability to evoke fear among those officials who would otherwise publicly identify with Jesus (John 12:42). See below. One of the major arguments made by A. Saldarini, Pharisees, Scribes, and Sadducees in Palestinian Society (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), is that not only were groups like the Pharisees and Sadducees organized as “voluntary associations” but also that these groups were much more active in public life than thought by previous scholars. I am in full agreement with Saldarini on this; I part ways with him, however, on his portrait of the Essenes as being likewise highly integrated into Judean society.

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rabbinic groups were organized as small (and rather marginal) disciple circles, and seem to have been more concerned with constructing their own world of halakhic debate and drawing distinctions between themselves and nonrabbinic Jews.41 While priests were quite clearly counted among the tannaitic rabbis, the trajectory of early rabbinic sources seems to indicate movement away from the values of priestly-oriented Jewishness. Since Torah study is emphasized just as much, if not more, than temple sacrifice, and since debates over the importance of the land and over the Jewish community’s level of openness to its non-Jewish neighbors take an important place in rabbinic discourse, there is a discernible diasporic quality to early rabbinic Judaism as a ‘voluntary’ association.42 2.2.2 Non-Integrated Associations in the Land of Israel While having the same basic organizational structure as integrated ones (officers, initiates, members, etc.), non-integrated associations did not share the same participatory attitude toward the public assembly and national cult. The Essenes and the network of groups connected with the ‘sectarian’ documents found at Qumran seem to be good examples of this type of association.43 These 41

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The early rabbis were clearly concerned on some level with the ongoings of the public synagogue (e.g., m. Mak. 3:12; m. Ned. 5:5; m. Meg. 3:1–3; Mekhilta Exod. 20:20), although, as some scholars have pointed out, their primary institution seems to have been the more insular house of study (bet midrash). See Runesson, Origins, 486–88; D. Schwartz, “Was 70 CE a Watershed in Jewish History?” in Was 70 CE a Watershed in Jewish History? On Jews and Judaism before and after the Destruction of the Second Temple, ed. D.R. Schwartz and Zeev Weiss, AJEC 78 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 13–14. On the early rabbinic movement in the land as small disciple circles, see C. Hezser, The Social Structure of the Rabbinic Movement in Roman Palestine, TSAJ 66 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997). See discussion in D.R. Schwartz, Judeans and Jews: Four Faces of Dichotomy in Ancient Jewish History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), 21–47. Other scholars have also suggested classifying the Essene/Qumran group as an association: Saldarini, Pharisees, Scribes, and Sadducees; Baumgarten, “Ancient Jewish Sects,” 93–111; Richardson, Building Jewish, 117 et passim; Y.M. Gillihan, Civic Ideology, Organization, and Law in the Rule Scrolls: A Comparative Study of the Covenanters’ Sect and Contemporary Voluntary Associations in Political Context, STDJ 97 (Leiden: Brill, 2012); Runesson, “Synagogues without Rabbis or Christians?” 163–64. Note that Josephus also includes the Essenes under the association label αἱρέσις. My use of the phrase “network of groups” above is meant to acknowledge, in light of Alison Schofield’s recent work, the strong possibility that the sectarian texts among the Dead Sea Scrolls should not be identified with a single, historically static, and completely isolated community that lived at the Qumran site. Rather these documents reflect a broader network of “Yaḥad groups” that pre-date the Qumran site, groups that were somewhat varied in thought and practice, and widely dispersed throughout Hellenistic and Roman Judea (From Qumran to the

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groups apparently had their own ‘synagogue’ gatherings – Philo explicitly calls the Essene gatherings συναγωγαί – but the nature of these gatherings is discernibly for members only, that is, for those who share the same socio-religious views, rather than for a public assembly (e.g., Philo, Prob. 81; Josephus, War 2:129; 1QS 6:8–13).44 Josephus says the Essenes were numerous, having settled in cities throughout the land, and that local Essene groups welcomed members of the larger association who lived elsewhere (War 2:124). But he also says that, as a group, they were “barred from those precincts of the temple that are frequented by all the people and perform their rites by themselves” (Ant. 18:19; trans. LCL 433, 17).45 Thus, whatever the level of their involvement in other aspects of Jewish society, their group identity, that is, their identity as members of the association of the Essenes, was met with an explicit ban on their participation in the national cult and the Jewish public assembly. The textual and archaeological data from Qumran seem to reflect an analogous social and ideological situation, one in which a network of Yaḥad groups (Schofield’s term) throughout Judea stood socio-religiously outside of Judaism’s system of public institutions and, rather, held its own assemblies for those who had been initiated.46 In light of the similarity, we can, therefore, probably speak of a non-integrated Yaḥad–Essene association.

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Yaḥad: A New Paradigm of Textual Development for the Community Rule, STDJ 77 [Leiden: Brill, 2009]). I follow Schofield’s general sympathy for the Essene Hypothesis. She suggests that the Yaḥad, mentioned for example in the Serekh texts, was not restricted to the inhabitants at Qumran but was representative of a larger movement associated with the Essenes, who pre-dated the specific group at Qumran (pp. 34–42). The inhabitants at Qumran, therefore, are only one segment of a broader audience meant for texts such as the Community Rule. For a detailed treatment of the synagogue of the Essenes/Qumran, see Binder, Into the Temple Courts, 453–68. The Greek text of this verse reads: εἰργόμενοι τοῦ κοινοῦ τεμενίσματος ἐφ᾿ αὑτῶν τὰς θυσίας ἐπιτελοῦσιν. Note that Feldman translates τὰς θυσίας as ‘rites’ rather than the more normal ‘sacrifices.’ This might suggest, then, that, according to Josephus, the Essenes practiced their own form of sacrificial worship outside the realm of the Jerusalem temple, since they had been excluded from it. Cf. Philo, Prob. 75, where he commends the Essenes for their devoutness “not by offering sacrifices of animals, but by resolving to sanctify their minds” (trans. LCL 363, 55). This, of course, does not mean Philo believed the Essenes disapproved of animal sacrifices but rather that the real reason for their piety was their focus on the discipline of the mind. While I thoroughly agree with Schofield (e.g., From Community to Yaḥad, 220–71) on the point that the sectarian scrolls reflect a broad network of Yaḥad members, some of whom only later settled the Qumran site, I disagree with her and A. Saldarini on their theory that the Essenes (and thus the entire Yaḥad network) were just as active and integrated into Jewish politics and public life as other groups, such as the Pharisees and Sadducees.

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While Yaḥad–Essene groups may have practiced their own rituals, perhaps even sacrificial ones,47 they do seem to have participated in a broader Jewish ideology of constructing alternative temple sanctuaries. Among the ‘sectarian’ texts of the Dead Sea scrolls, we see at least three ways in which the earthly sanctuary is re-envisioned. First, we see presented an ideal eschatological Jerusalem temple, which the god of Israel himself promises to build at the end of days. As Martínez has demonstrated in numerous articles, texts such as the New Jerusalem text, 4QFlorilegium, and 11QTa 29:8–10,48 present the reader not with a heavenly temple but with the blueprint of the celestial model that will be established on earth in the eschatological age.49 Second, evidence from the Qumran Pesharim, as well as from some of the other “sectarian” scrolls (e.g., 1QH, 1QS), indicates that at least one group among

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While they are certainly right to claim that the sources indicate that associations like the latter two were thoroughly integrated into the political and public realms, both scholars seem to superimpose the data for the Pharisees and Sadducees onto the Essenes, the data for whom are of a fundamentally different character. That is, Schofield and Saldarini do not acknowledge that there were different kinds of associations in the Greco-Roman (and thus Jewish) world, which subsequently had different kinds and levels of engagement with official public administration. Furthermore, while Essenes, theoretically, could be active socially – e.g., engage in commerce, be active in their neighborhoods – it is an entirely different claim to suggest that they, as an association, had political influence in the public assembly, as Saldarini seems to do. Again, while Greco-Roman and Jewish associations certainly could function in this way, it is quite clear that not all of them did. This is especially the case for Greco-Roman cult associations (see above). See note 45 above on Essenes. Whether the group at Qumran has their own non-Jerusalem sacrificial practices is difficult to say. The Temple Scroll certainly outlines a particular perspective on sacrificial regulations within an idealized earthly temple, but it is unclear whether these are meant to be read as a critique of the current temple sacrifices, i.e., as the group’s idiosyncratic views, or as regulations intended actually to be implemented in the Jerusalem temple, just under different priestly leadership. See J. Maier, The Temple Scroll: An Introduction, Translation, and Commentary, JSOTSup. 34 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1985 [orig. German 1978]), 58–59. 11QTa 29:8–10: “with them forever and eternally. And I shall sanctify my [sanctuary with my glory for I shall cause 9 my glory to dwell upon it until (?) the day of blessing (?) on which I shall create (anew) my sanctuary (?)] to prepare it for myself for all [t]ime according to the covenant which I made with Jacob at Bethel.” This translation is from Maier, Temple Scroll, 32, who notes that the manuscript is difficult to read. The translation above, thus, must be held open to debate. F. García Martínez, “New Jerusalem at Qumran and in the New Testament,” in The Land of Israel in Bible, History, and Theology, ed. J. van Ruiten and J.C. de Vos, VTSup. 124 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 276–89. As a post-70 example of such a ‘New Jerusalem’ concept, see 2 Bar. 4.

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the broader Yaḥad–Essene network was, and perhaps remained,50 at sharp odds with the Jerusalem temple cult, believing that a wicked priesthood had polluted and defiled the entire system.51 While we get no sense whatsoever that the group categorically rejected Judaism’s national cult (the texts listed above suggest otherwise), the apparent conflict between the group and the leaders of the Jerusalem public assembly generated the ideological need for alternative sanctuary space as the group anticipated its eschatological renewal. Thus, the strategy we see is the transformation of the earthly temple into a heavenly one, outfitted with its own (angelic) priesthood serving in an idealized Holy of Holies, and graced with the presence of the Merkavah, the divine chariot throne of YHWH himself.52 Derived from the apocalyptic vision of the postexilic priest Ezekiel (Ezek 1:4–28; 10:9–19),53 the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice 50 51

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On the destruction of the Qumran site in 68 CE, see Schiffman, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls, 395–97; VanderKam and Flint, The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls, 41. On the early Qumran “community” as a response, particularly to the Hasmonean priesthood, see my earlier treatment in W.V. Cirafesi, “The Temple Attitudes of John and Qumran in the Light of Hellenistic Judaism,” in Christian Origins and Hellenistic Judaism, ed. S.E. Porter and A.W. Pitts, TENT 10 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 315–39. A good deal of my thought and terminology has changed since the publication of this essay, but my perspective on the early Qumran community’s conflict with Jerusalem has not changed significantly. See also Martínez, “New Jerusalem,” 285–86. On the angelic and otherworldly priesthood in the Scrolls, see J. Angel, Otherworldly and Eschatological Priesthood in the Dead Sea Scrolls, STDJ 86 (Leiden: Brill, 2010). As noted by Robert Hayward, in some sources (e.g., Jub. 30:14; 31:15), the ideological “transformation” of the earthly temple (and its priestly service) into a heavenly one (with its angelic priestly service) in no way was meant to sever the correspondence that was believed to exist between the two realms. See R. Hayward, The Jewish Temple: A Non-Biblical Sourcebook (London: Routledge, 1996), 10, 159, 160–61. On the importance of Ezekiel’s vision of the Merkavah for later Jewish usage of this theme, see D.J. Halperin, The Faces of the Chariot: Early Jewish Responses to Ezekiel’s Vision (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1988); R. Elior, The Three Temples: On the Emergence of Jewish Mysticism, trans. D. Louvish, LLJC (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); and P. Schäfer, The Origins of Jewish Mysticism (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009). Both Elior and Schäfer locate the origins of Merkavah mysticism in Ezekiel’s dream-vision, although Schäfer, to an extent, wishes to deconstruct the notion of a unified “Jewish mysticism” in antiquity. Important for the current study is Elior’s demonstration that visions of the divine Merkavah where fundamentally tied to priestly-oriented-type groups that had lost their connection to the mainstream Jerusalem establishment. From the perspective of this current study, such groups reside on the middle ground of the priestly-oriented – diasporic identity spectrum, since, while retaining a priestly concern, they were severed from the political life of the national cult and thus had no control or influence with it. Since ‘diaspora’ is defined in this study, with D.R. Schwartz, as “life under foreign rule,” these groups have a significant diasporic element within the conception of their ethnic identity.

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(4Q405 [ShirShabbf] frags. 20 ii–22 lines 1–11 = 11Q17 [ShirShabb] VII) presents us with an example of the group’s otherworldly vision of the innermost sanctuary.54 Although having a number of interpretive difficulties, the majority view of the Songs is that it expresses the idea of an angelic priesthood, tasked with the cultic service of Israel’s god in the heavenly temple, and representative of – and perhaps in communion with – the ideal human priesthood ministering on earth.55 But the construal of otherworldly temple sanctuaries is, of course, not a strategy unique to Qumran literature; it is readily seen in ancient Jewish

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That the Holy of Holies, the innermost sanctuary, is being described in this text is demonstrated by the text’s association of the throne’s ‘fiery wheels’ with sanctuary cherubim (4Q405 20 ii–22 3, 7–8; cf. Ezek 10:2, 6, 9). See also Klawans, Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple, 136; J.H. Charlesworth and C. Newsom, Angelic Liturgy: Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999), 8–9, and C. Newsom, Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice: A Critical Edition, Harvard Semitic Studies 27 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985), 51–58. The book of Ezekiel was clearly an important text at Qumran, which is suggested not only by the influence of Ezekiel’s Merkavah on 4QShirShabb but also by the explicit and thorough reworking of Ezekiel’s vision in five copies of 4QPseudo-Ezekiel (4Q385 [4QpsEzeka], 4Q385c [4QpsEzekc], 4Q386 [4QpsEzekb], 4Q388 [4QpsEzekd], 4Q391 [4QpsEzeke]). Scroll information is from DSSSE. For this view, see Elior, Three Temples, 165–200. On angelic worship in other characteristically similar Qumran texts, see E. Chazon, “Lowly to Lofty: The Hodayot’s Use of Liturgical Traditions to Shape Sectarian Identity and Religious Experience,” RevQ 101 (2013): 3–19 (11–15); E. Chazon, “Liturgical Function of the Cave 1 Hodayot Collection,” in Qumran Cave 1 Revisited: Proceedings of the Sixth IOQS, Ljubljana 2007, ed. D.K. Falk, S. Metso, and E. Tigchelaar, STDJ 91 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 137–48; Angel, Eschatological Priesthood, 132–45; P. Alexander, The Mystical Texts: Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice and Related Manuscripts (London: T&T Clark, 2006), 85–90, 101–110. Fletcher-Louis offers a significant critique of this view in All the Glory of Adam, 281–93, where he emphasizes that Songs of Sabbath Sacrifice is devoted to the subject of humanity’s engagement with, and even metamorphosis into, the angelic divine, rather than angelic priests. Furthermore, I must note here that, while there are significant scholarly debates regarding the sectarian nature of the document and whether one should see the Songs as an inherently polemical text, engaged in critique of Jerusalem-based Hasmonean priest-kings, the strong priestly bent of the Songs and its depiction of service in the idealized sanctuary before the divine chariot throne is indeed difficult to divorce from the concurrent sociopolitical and religious strife evident amongst priestly groups in Judea during the mid- to late-2nd century BCE. However, I certainly do not wish to overemphasize this conflict among groups, especially to the point of asserting that the Songs is evidence that the Yaḥad–Essene network in general or the Qumran group specifically ‘rejected’ the earthly temple and its service (see above). Klawans’s caution against such an interpretation is well taken here (Klawans, Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple, 134–38).

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texts from the Second Temple period (e.g., 1 En. 14:11–12, 18–19;56 61:10; 71:7;57 Dan 7:9–14;58 2 Cor 5:1) all the way to the Hekhalot literature of Late Antiquity (e.g., 3 Enoch).59 It is even quite comparable, though certainly not identical, to some of the visionary experiences recounted among Greco-Roman cult associations, especially among the so-called ‘Mysteries.’ The third way the Yaḥad–Essene association seems to have re-envisioned their temple experience involves the construal of humans as sanctuary space. 1QS 8 gives us a good glimpse of this idea.60 Here, rules are prescribed for the 56

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On the heavenly temple in the Book of Watchers (1 En. 1–36), see M. Himmelfarb, A Kingdom Priests: Ancestry and Merit in Ancient Judaism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 20. See Halperin, Faces of the Chariot, 80 n. 15 on relevant text-critical issues for 1 En. 14:19–20. Note that the “wheels” of 1 En. 61:10 and 71:7 – the “Ophannin” – are an angelic category here, alongside Seraphin and Cherubin. Also, see B. Reynolds, The Apocalyptic Son of Man in the Gospel of John, WUNT 2.249 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 42–43 on critical issues regarding the relationship of 1 En. 37–69 and 70–71. A temple context may seem less apparent for Daniel’s Merkavah episode than the Enochic ones, but Crispin Fletcher-Louis has made the compelling argument that the “one like a son of man” in Daniel 7 would have been understood in the late Second Temple period as a high priestly-royal figure, perhaps fashioned in affirmation of the Hasmonean priestkings of the late Hellenistic period, and that Daniel’s portrayal of the son of man as “coming on the clouds of heaven … evokes the Day of Atonement when the high priest enters God’s presence surrounded by clouds of incense” (cf. Lev 16:13). See C. Fletcher-Louis, “Jesus as the High Priestly Messiah: Part 2,” JSHJ 5.1 (2007): 57–79 (here 58–59). This is an idea that Fletcher-Louis has developed in a number of his publications. For support of the notion of an eschatological Yom Kippur with similar accompanying priestly figures in ancient Judaism, see A. Orlov, Dark Mirrors: Azazel and Satanael in Early Jewish Demonology (Albany: SUNY Press, 2011), 27–46. One of the earliest and clearest examples of a priestly interpretation of the Danielic son of man comes from Rev. 1:13–16, where John the Seer presents Jesus as the son of man clothed in a “long robe” (ποδήρης), a characteristic feature of the high priest’s clothing (see Exod 25:7; 28:4, 31; 29:5; 35:9; Zech 3:4; Wis 18:24; Sir 46:8; Ep. Arist. 96). See also Reynolds, Son of Man, 82, 85; Halperin, Faces of the Chariot, 526 n. (a). On Merkavah and the Hekhalot literature, see Elior, Three Temples, 232–65. The literature discussing the human sanctuary strategy in the Scrolls is large. Just a few examples are listed here. One of the earliest studies, which attempted to relate the idea in the Scrolls to similar ideas the New Testament, was B. Gärtner, The Temple and the Community in Qumran and the New Testament: A Comparative Study in the Qumran Texts and the New Testament, SNTSMS 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965). In this vein, see also G. Klinzing, Die Umdeutung des Kultus in der Qumrangemeinde und im Neuen Testament, SUNT 7 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1971). More recent treatments are: M.A. Knibb, M.A. The Qumran Community, CCWJCW 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); L. Schiffman, The Eschatological Community of the Dead Sea Scrolls (SBLMS; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989); Schiffman, “Community without

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“Council of the Community,” which was apparently composed of just fifteen people – twelve men and three priests (line 1). The men of this Council were to be “perfect in everything that has been revealed from all the law” (lines 1–2),61 and were entrusted “to atone [‫ ]לרצת עוון‬for sin by doing justice and undergoing trials” (lines 3–4). In 1QS 8:5–7, the Council is called “an everlasting plantation, a holy house [‫ ]בית קודש‬for Israel and the foundation of the holy of holies for Aaron [‫]קודש קודשים לאחרון‬, true witnesses for the judgment and chosen by the will (of God) to atone for the land [‫ ]לכפר בעד חארץ‬and to render the wicked their retribution.” Although the phrases “a holy house for Israel” and “the foundation of the holy of holies for Aaron” are applied to the whole “Community” in other places in the Serekh (e.g., 9:6), in 8:5–7 a distinction is made between the Council’s function as sacred space for “Israel” and its function as sacred space for “Aaron.” In my view, the most likely explanation for this distinction is that the text intends to link the twelve men of the Council to the “holy house for Israel” and the three priests of the Council to the “foundation of the holy of holies for Aaron.” That is, the twelve men represent the twelve tribes of “Israel” and figuratively function as the temple’s Court of Israel, or perhaps Holy Place, within a re-envisioned human temple. The Council’s inner circle of three priests functions as a high priesthood (“Aaron”), serving in a metaphorical holy of holies (‫ ;קודש קודשים‬cf. Exod. 26:33) to make sacrificial

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Temple: The Qumran Community’s Withdrawal from the Jerusalem Temple,” in Gemeinde ohne Tempel: Zur Substituierung und Transformation des Jerusalemer Tempels und seines Kults im Alten Testament, antiken Judentum und frühen Christentum, ed. B. Ego, A. Lange, and P. Pilhofer, WUNT 118 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999), 267–84; N. Hacham, “Exile and Self-Identity in the Qumran Sect and in Hellenistic Judaism,” in New Perspectives on Old Texts: Proceedings of the Tenth International Symposium of the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature, 9–11 January 2005, ed. E. Chazon and B. Halpern-Amaru, STDJ 88 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 2–22; E. Regev, “Temple and Righteousness in Qumran and Early Christianity: Tracing the Social Difference between Two Movements,” in Text, Thought, and Practice in Qumran and Early Christianity, ed. R. Clements and D.R. Schwartz, STDJ 84 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 63–88; Martínez, “New Jerusalem,” 285–86; P. Swarup, The Self-Understanding of the Dead Sea Scrolls Community: An Eternal Planting, A House of Holiness, LSTS 59 (London: T&T Clark, 2006); T. Wardle, The Jerusalem Temple and Early Christian Identity, WUNT 2.291 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010); A. Hogeterp, Paul and God’s Temple: A Historical Interpretation of Cultic Imagery in the Corinthian Correspondence (Leuven: Peeters, 2006), who provides a fine critical overview of the potential problems in using terms such as ‘spiritualisation’ or ‘substitution’ with regard to the scrolls’ attitude toward the Jerusalem temple. See also my contributions on the topic in W.V. Cirafesi, “The Priestly Portrait of Jesus in the Gospel of John in the Light of 1QS, 1QSa, 1QSb,” JGRChJ 8 (2011–2012): 83–105; Cirafesi, “Temple Attitudes.” Texts and translations noted here are from the DSSSE.

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atonement for “Israel” and the “land” through faithful obedience to Torah (1QS 8:3, 8–11) and at the same time to render God’s retribution on the wicked. The Yaḥad–Essene association in general and the Qumran group specifically were no doubt of a priestly-oriented-type identity. But, as noted in chapter 2, because the association appears to have lacked access to and influence within the Judean system of public institutions, there is a discernible diasporic quality to its mode of identity formation. It is this diasporic quality that led the group to establish its own institutional network of association synagogues and its different strategies of re-envisioning the temple sanctuary while the group awaited its eschatological rise to political power. These factors lead to the suggestion that we place the Yaḥad–Essene association in the middle of our priestly-oriented – diasporic spectrum of Jewish ethnos-identity. Jewish Associations outside the Land of Israel 2.2.3 Jewish synagogues of the public political type could only exist in places in which Jews had control of public administration, that is, in the land of Israel.62 Thus, outside the land, in the geographical diaspora, the sources render evidence only of association-type synagogues. Runesson and Richardson have supported this assertion by comparing the archaeological remains of synagogues in locations such as Delos, Ostia, and Stobi to remains of association architecture in the same or nearby contexts.63 Scholars such as John Kloppenborg, Philip Harland, and Richard Ascough (among others) have shown from the papyrological and inscriptional data, that Jewish synagogues throughout the Mediterranean diaspora are best described organizationally along the lines of the Greco-Roman associations, which drew their membership from diverse social networks, whether ethnic, neighborhood, occupational, or cultic deity connections.64 An important point for us to mention here is that, while ethnicity could (and did) sometimes play an important role as a kind of social 62 63 64

Runesson, “Synagogues without Rabbis or Christians?” 164. Richardson, “Architectural Case,” 90–117; A Runesson, “Synagogues without Rabbis or Christians?,” 159–72. See literature cited in footnote 8. However, see Lee Levine’s criticism of the ‘voluntary association’ view in “The First Century Synagogue: New Perspectives,” SvTK 77 (2001): 22–29 (27–28). Levine argues that membership in synagogues was not ‘voluntary’ for Jews, since living without the legal protection provided by the Jewish community would leave Jews legally and civically vulnerable. This criticism, however, assumes that the synagogue abroad was, at its core, an ethnic institution with ethnicity as its defining criterion for membership, a point that it difficult to sustain. Further, as Runesson notes, “Judicially, individual Jews would still retain their civic rights since these rights were connected with the ethnic status of the individual” (i.e., not the institution). See Runesson, Origins, 456.

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network from which a Jewish association could recruit members, it does not appear to have been an exclusive criterion in all or even most cases. Just as Asians could, and did, participate in cult associations devoted to the worship of Isis, a native Egyptian deity, so non-Jews could (and did) participate in ‘synagogues’ devoted to the worship of YHWH, the native Judean deity.65 In other words, the factors determining participation in synagogues outside the land of Israel were ultimately cultural and regional, rather than ethnic and political.66 Sources give some indication of the kind of activities that possibly took place in association synagogues abroad. According to a decree preserved by Josephus (Ant. 14:213–16) from Gaius Caesar to Jews either on Delos Island or the city of Parium (off the coast of Troas), Jews were allowed to assemble (their group is called θιάσοι) to eat communal meals,67 collect money, perform sacred rituals (Prayer? Sacrifices?),68 and feast according to their native customs and 65

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This seems to be analogous to what we see happening in the Pauline ekklēsia communities. See especially Harland, Associations, Synagogues, and Congregations, 33–41 for thorough documentation of participation by members of different ethnē in cultic associations devoted to a particular ethnic deity, especially participation of non-Jews in Jewish associations devoted to YHWH worship; and, more recently, R. Last, The Pauline Church and the Corinthian Ekklēsia: Greco-Roman Associations in Comparative Context, SNTSMS 164 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). We could also add, as Last has recently argued and demonstrated from papyrological and inscriptional sources, that Jews abroad participated in non-Jewish association ‘synagogues’ (especially craft guilds) as well, which tended also to have a cultic element to them. See Last, “Other Synagogues.” This, of course, does not mean that association synagogues abroad were apolitical. For example, Harland notes based upon evidence from Josephus, that “one or more synagogues in Asia had followed common custom among communities and associations by passing an honorary decree for the emperor, as well as a Roman official” (Associations, Synagogues, and Congregations, 192). In other words, association synagogues could participate in the common civic conventions of the Greco-Roman world. Thus, associations synagogues were not fundamentally political institutions in the sense that they had no formal political control in the way that the Greco-Roman courts and councils would have had, and that public synagogues would have had in the land of Israel. This is demonstrated, e.g., by the presence of triclinia at the Ostia synagogue and, as mentioned in CIJ 1.694, the Stobi synagogue (late 2nd or early 3rd century CE). See also Philo’s description of the meal practices of the Therapeutae (Contempl. 64–82), which Philo describes as a Jewish association particularly numerous in Alexandria. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue, 164 et passim, suggests that, if the term προσευχή used to refer to the place of Jewish gathering is any indicator, we might assume that prayer was one of these activities. Cf. Runesson, Origins, 429–36, who argues that προσευχή was first used to denote institutions more akin to Jewish temples than ‘synagogues,’ but that eventually by the time of the 1st century, these Jewish temples abroad, called προσευχαί, had been highly influenced by the development of ‘synagogues’ in the land of Israel.

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laws.69 Reading and exposition of Torah70 and ritual washings71 were probably also among these activities. But how did such associations relate, socially and conceptually, to the Jerusalem temple sanctuary and the public political sphere in the land? There is not a lot of explicit evidence on this. In my view, we must assume that the national cult had various levels of importance within Jewish associations abroad, in some very great and in some very little if any. Runesson has argued that the Ostia synagogue was likely oriented toward Jerusalem (east–southeast) in its earliest phase, which is best explained as an “aesthetic-ideological act expressing the close relation between the Jews of the Diaspora and in the homeland”; that is, the building’s orientation was “religiously motivated.”72 The synagogue at Delos, oriented eastward, might also be an example of “sacred orientation,” although, since it seems to have been adapted into a synagogue in its second phase (mid-first century BCE), its 69 70

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For a discussion of this source, see ASSB nos. 93, 180. The edict also mentions that Jews in Rome had the right to assemble and practice their customs. For example, Philo, Contempl. 30–34 describes the central place of scripture reading and exposition in the ‘synagogue’ (σεμνεῖον) gatherings of the Therapeutae (for discussion of σεμνεῖον as a synagogue term, see Binder, Into the Temple Courts, 149–51, 468–71; Runesson, Origins, 455–58). In at least one place, Philo calls the Therapeutae a γένος (Contempl. 21), which could give the impression that membership in this group was predicated upon one’s birth. But, as the Yonge and LCL 363 translations indicate, Philo seems to have used it with the sense of ‘kind’ or ‘sort,’ that is, as a term simply for classifying a group of people with similar socio-religious views. Elsewhere Philo compares them with other cultic associations, especially the mystery cults (Contempl. 12). Tosefta Sukkah 4:6, an often-discussed passage by synagogue scholars, records a pre-70 tradition about a gigantic synagogue in Alexandria, and notes that a ḥazzan would read from the Torah scroll during gatherings. Another interesting point this passage makes is that “The people were not seated together, but the goldsmiths were by themselves, the blacksmiths by themselves, the embroiderers by themselves, so that when a poor man came in he joined his fellow tradesmen, and in this way was enabled to obtain a means of livelihood.” That is, according to this toseftan passage, this large building served a number of smaller occupational associations, which, in other sources, are themselves called ‘synagogues’ (Last, “Other Synagogues”). Therefore, the ‘great synagogue’ of Alexandria, if indeed this passage has a level of historicity to it, should probably be interpreted as the central gathering place of a network of associations that also likely met in disparate locations throughout the city. See Levine, The Ancient Synagogue, 91–96; Runesson, “Interaction,” 261 n. 44). A. Runesson, “Water and Worship: Ostia and the Ritual Bath in the Diaspora Synagogue,” in The Synagogue of Ancient Ostia and the Jews of Rome: Interdisciplinary Studies, ed. B. Olsson, SSIR 4.57 (Stockholm: P. Astroms, 2001), 115–29. A. Runesson, “The Synagogue at Ancient Ostia: The Building and Its History from the First to Fifth Century,” in The Synagogue of Ancient Ostia and the Jews of Rome, ed. B. Olsson, D. Mitternacht, and O. Brandt (Paul Åströms Förlag: Stockholm, 2001), 29–99 (37–40, quote on p. 40).

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eastern orientation is better described as dependent on the orientation of the previous structure.73 Philo’s description of the association of the Therapeutae in De Vita Contemplativa at times seems to suggest that the group perceived their pursuit of wisdom and virtue as a sort of re-envisioned temple-experience. Their philosophy, Philo says, aimed toward a “vision of the Existent” (11), and their gatherings involved the offering of prayers (66–67, although there is not even a hint that these prayers are in anyway ‘sacrificial’ or the like) and the singing of hymns “suitable for processions or in libations and at the altars” (80).74 The most interesting thing he says, however, is that, after the singing of hymns: [T]he young men bring in the tables mentioned a little above on which is set the truly purified meal of leavened bread seasoned with salt mixed with hyssop, out of reverence for the holy table enshrined in the sacred vestibule of the temple [δι᾿ αἰδῶ τῆς ἀνακειμένης ἐν τῷ ἁγίῳ προνάῳ ἱερᾶς τραπέζης] on which lie loaves and salt without condiments, the loaves unleavened and the salt unmixed. For it was (82) meet that the simplest and purest food should be assigned to the highest caste, namely the priests, as a reward for their ministry, and that the others while aspiring to similar privileges should abstain from seeking the same as they and allow their superiors to retain their precedence. (Contempl. 81–82; LCL 363, 163–165)

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See discussion in Binder, Into the Temple Courts, 306–17. Regarding the contentious issue of identifying the building on Delos as a synagogue, M. Trümper, “The Oldest Original Synagogue Building in the Diaspora: The Delos Synagogue Reconsidered,” Hesperia 73.4 (2004): 513–98, has argued in favor of such an identification already in its first phase (before 88 BCE). Her 85pp. study is, so far, the most comprehensive. On the other side of the debate is L. Matassa, “Unravelling the Myth of the Synagogue on Delos,” BAIAS 25 (2007): 81–115, who objects to identifying this building as a synagogue at all. Binder (cited above) represents a third view, in which the Delos building was a cultic hall of “pagan” association in its first phase, abandoned after the raid of Mithridates’s troops in 88 BCE, and then adapted into a synagogue shortly after. It is worth noting that Binder is quite cautious in his conclusion here and indicates the strong possibility that the building was indeed originally built as a synagogue (p. 314). Therefore, while I am not convinced by Matassa’s study, I do not wish to adjudicate firmly on whether the building was a synagogue in its first or second phase, but rather wish to keep the matter somewhat open. Translations from LCL 363.

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The communal meal of the Therapeutae, according to Philo, was performed out of reverence for the showbread table (δι᾿ αἰδῶ) and in emulation of the simplicity and purity of the priestly meal. While there is no indication that the group sought to replace or substitute for the table in Jerusalem specifically or the Jerusalem cult in general, it does seem to have applied the categories of temple and priesthood as metaphors for its collective self-understanding. Philo elsewhere uses these (and other similar) categories as metaphors in his own philosophical discourse. For him, the individual soul can be “the house of God” (Somn. 1:149), the Jewish people as a whole can be priests of the entire world (Spec. 2:162–75), and the high priest can be thought of as, not a man, but as God’s λόγος θεῖος, his Divine Word, who clothes his “body” with the cosmos, that is, with “earth and air and water and fire” (Fug. 108–112).75 It is, however, at least possible that what he recounts concerning the pattern of religion of the Therapeutae has some historical contact with how some other Jewish associations abroad may have interpreted their relation to the Jerusalem sanctuary, even while it stood.76 The relationship of Jewish association synagogues abroad to public politics in the land of Israel is difficult to determine with much specificity. One thing we can say is that at least some Jewish groups were granted civic rights by the Romans to send funds in support of the economy of their national cult in Jerusalem.77 For example, in Ant. 16:162–65, Josephus recounts a decree of Caesar Augustus (ca 12 BCE), in which the emperor reinforces the right of the Jews of Asia to send “sacred monies” (τὰ ἱερὰ χρήματα) to Jerusalem. In it, according to Josephus, the emperor asserts that “if anyone is caught stealing their [the Jews’] sacred books or their sacred monies from a synagogue [τὰ ἱερὰ χρήματα ἔκ τε σαββατείου] or an ark (of the Law), he shall be regarded as sacrilegious, and his property shall be confiscated to the public treasury of the Romans” (trans. LCL 410, 67).78 75 76

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J. Leonhardt-Balzer, “Priests and Priesthood in Philo.” Recourse to some New Testament texts provides some support here, if we allow for the idea that early Christ-groups were organized in ways analogous to Greco-Roman and Jewish associations. See, e.g., 1 Cor 3:16–17; 2 Cor 6:14–7:1; Eph 2:20–22; 1 Tim 3:15; 1 Peter 2:3–6; Heb 12:18–24, which are all addressed in Gärtner’s comparison of the Qumran and New Testament material (see note above). On this Harland, Associations, Synagogues, Congregations, 192. On σαββατείον as a synagogue term, see ASSB no. 120. See also Philo, Leg. 315, where Philo recounts a similar letter from Caesar to Gaius Norbanus Flaccus, proconsul to the magistrates of the Ephesians, in which he notes that the Jews “make it a rule of meeting together and subscribing money [συναγομένους χρήματα φέρειν] which they send to Jerusalem” (trans. LCL 379, 159).

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Interestingly, elsewhere Josephus mentions that it was not only Jews who were contributing the “sacred monies” that led to the great sum of wealth in the Jerusalem temple but also non-Jews, “those who worship God” (καὶ σεβομένων τὸν θεόν; Ant. 14:110), were contributing as well. This, to me, might suggest that Josephus here has the monetary activity of multi-ethnic Jewish associations in mind. In any case, the sending of “sacred monies” to Jerusalem seems to be the main way some Jewish associations abroad could participate, however much at arm’s length, in the socio-religious and political arena of the homeland. This sort of socio-economic connection to Judaism’s national cult prevents us from describing such associations abroad as completely non-integrated, as we did with the Yaḥad–Essene group. Nevertheless, (1) the inability to be involved in the civic administration and priestly politics of the ethnos, (2) tighter integration within the Greco-Roman political system, and (3) the natural need to negotiate one’s relationship to the temple sanctuary differently than Jews living in the land, support describing Jewish identity within association settings abroad as ‘diasporic’ in nature. 2.3 Summary We can summarize the preceding discussion of temple and synagogue in ancient Judaism as follows: 1. Just like the national cults of other ethnē, the Jewish one in Jerusalem functioned not only as sanctuary space but also, and perhaps just as importantly, as public space. As such, it was the nation’s socio-religious center, a place of civic administration, commerce, and politics. Thus, while its sanctuary housed the nation’s god and his sacrificial cult, its courts operated as the city’s public assembly ‘synagogue.’ 2. The Jewish national cult must be understood within an overarching system of public institutions in the land of Israel, working (while it stood) in tandem with the network of public synagogues that handled socioreligious activities in local villages throughout Judea and the Galilee. 3. Jews, both in the land and outside it, negotiated their ethnic identity in relationship to temple and public synagogue in a variety of ways. The institutional identity of ‘common’ Jews in the land was fundamentally priestly-oriented, shaped around the Jerusalem temple, the public synagogue, and the leadership of the Judean priesthood. While groups such as the Pharisees, Sadducees, ‘Zealots,’ and the earliest Jesus movement can be described as priestly-oriented since they were active and influential in Judean public institutions, they seem to have had an additional

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institutional identity marked by membership in an ‘unofficial’ association defined by a particular religio-political ideology. In contrast to them, associations like the Yaḥad–Essene group appear to have not been integrated at all within Judaism’s public institutions. Instead, they had their own synagogue gatherings and developed strategies for re-envisioning their relationship to and participation within the temple cult. While priestly in their values, they possessed a significant diasporic thread in their identity formation. 4. Jews outside the land of Israel also organized themselves as associations, often being multi-ethnic and having no official political power with their contexts abroad. There is some evidence that these, too, developed strategies to negotiate their relationship to the national cult, strategies that, at least in the case of Philo’s Therapeutae and Christ-groups mentioned in the New Testament, have close ideological contact with those of the Yaḥad–Essene association. These strategies do not appear to constitute a respective group’s ‘break’ or ‘departure’ from the Jewish ethnos but rather reinforce the diverse ideological and institutional resources that were at a group’s or individual’s disposal for negotiating this element of their ethnic identity. This rather extended discussion of Jewish institutions is important for us as we turn our sights to the role of the national cult in John’s Gospel. It has led us to the conclusion that, not only was it a functionally varied institution with relations to other institutions (i.e., synagogue), but also that to re-envision it somehow, especially its cultic elements, does not appear to have meant introducing something new or rejecting it altogether. The Jerusalem temple courts and the public synagogue were home to great ideological diversity, political competition, and not a little conflict, just as we see in accounts of public meetings in Greco-Roman public institutions. The ‘losers’ in these competitive contexts could be driven out of the public assembly or even threatened with death (e.g., Xenophon, Hell. 2:52–56; Dio Chrysostom, Or. 7; cf. Luke 4:16–31), but never do we get the sense that Jews or Greeks in these situations either broke with or were forced to break with their ethnic identity. In other words, as we saw above, participation in the politics of the Jerusalem temple or the public synagogue is not unequivocally equal to “Jewishness,” and, conversely, conflict with or separation from public institutions does not mean separation from the Jewish ethnos. In the terms used in the current study, what it meant was movement away from a priestly-oriented type of identity formation to a diasporic one.

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National Cult, Public Assemblies, and Jewish Associations in John’s Gospel

With the above as an institutional-identity context, we now turn our sights to the portrayal of the national cult in John. The last twenty years of scholarship has seen a noticeable spike in interest regarding the role of the temple in John’s theological outlook and social context.79 I do not wish to repeat that scholarship here in its totality. Indeed, these studies have done a lot of the exegetical heavy lifting that makes it possible now to re-evaluate, criticize, and advance beyond the fruits of their research. Thus, the following section moves in three major steps. First, we will consider the topic of John and the Jewish national cult with reference to the temple as sanctuary space. Our time here will be brief, since the topic has a well-worn scholarly path, but two points will be of particular interest: (a) that John employs strategies concerning the Jewish national cult that render multiple ways of re-envisioning sanctuary space; and (b) that, when put in comparative perspective, these strategies suggest we need to question whether John really does employ a temple “replacement” (or displacement/expropriation) motif, as so much previous scholarship has contended.80 Second, we will consider, in light of the comparative material above, an underdeveloped aspect of scholarship on John and temple: the role of the temple as public space, which is arguably just as important for the Gospel’s 79

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On John and the temple, beyond important contributions in the commentary literature, see, e.g., U. Busse, “Die Tempelmetaphorik al sein Beispel von implizitem Rekurs auf die biblische Tradition im Johannesevangelium,” in The Scriptures in the Gospels, ed. C.M. Tuckett, BETL 131 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1997), 395–428; Lieu, “Temple and Synagogue in John”; M. Coloe, God Dwells with Us: Temple Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2001); A. Kerr, The Temple of Jesus’ Body: The Temple Theme in the Gospel of John, JSNTSup 220 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002); K.S. Fuglseth, Johannine Sectarianism in Perspective: A Sociological, Historical, and Comparative Analysis of Temple and Social Relationships in the Gospel of John, Philo, and Qumran, NovTSup 119 (Leiden: Brill, 2005); S.T. Um, The Theme of Temple Christology in John’s Gospel, LNTS 312 (London: T&T Clark, 2006); A.J. Köstenberger, “The Destruction of the Second Temple and the Composition of the Fourth Gospel,” in Challenging Perspectives on the Gospel of John, ed. J. Lierman, WUNT 2.219 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 69–108; J. Frey, “Temple and Identity in Early Christianity and in the Johannine Community: Reflections on the ‘Parting of the Ways,” in Was 70 CE a Watershed in Jewish History? 447–507; and, although a bit idiosyncratic in her methodology, M. Barker, King of the Jews: Temple Theology in the Gospel of John (London: SPCK, 2014). Fuglseth insightfully points out that replacement theories of various kinds have undergirded almost all past approaches to John and temple (Johannine Sectarianism, 136–43). A major thrust of Fuglseth’s book is the commendable pursuit of a more nuanced theory of ‘replacement.’

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narrative world as its role as sanctuary space. Third, and intertwined with the second, the Gospel’s focus on the temple as a public institution will lead us to the role of “synagogues” in John. We will attempt to reconceive both of these spaces in John’s Gospel, naturalizing them as the arenas in which Jewish associations competed for influence within the public assembly, rather than as loci for an ethnic separation between Jews and those who no longer considered themselves to be Jewish. 3.1 Strategies of Re-envisioning Sanctuary Space in John John does not have a monolithic view of the temple sanctuary. There is, of course, the material sanctuary, the one made with brick and mortar, which according to Jesus’s opponents took forty-six years to build (John 2:20). Like others in antiquity who expressed fidelity to their national cults and ethnic deities, the Johannine Jesus calls this place his “father’s house” (John 2:16), and he accuses those buying and selling nearby in the outer court of defiling it.81 The temple sanctuary as a “place” (τόπος) of cultic worship is also the primary dividing point between Jews and Samaritans (4:20), and later in the Gospel some chief priests and Pharisees express fear over losing it to the Romans, along with the entire Jewish ethnos (11:48). While the material sanctuary stands quietly in the background of large portions of the Johannine narrative, it is not John’s main focus. The temple in John is primarily a re-envisioned temple. By far the most often discussed element of this re-imagination is the Gospel’s presentation of Jesus’s body as sanctuary space. While John 1:14, with its assertion that the Logos “became flesh and 81

Although I think Hakola’s characterization of Jesus’s actions in the temple as standing in the “best Jewish traditions,” which reflects Jesus as “more Jewish than his Jewish contemporaries who profaned the temple” is unhelpful, I agree with his comment that “The view that the profanation of the cult leads to God’s punishment is well attested in the scriptures. According to John, Jesus’ contemporaries are thus guilty of the same crime their forefathers have been punished for many times.” See R. Hakola, Identity Matters: John, the Jews, and Jewishness, NovTSup 118 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 95. However, Hakola goes on to say on the same page, that “Jesus’ devout criticism of the temple and the insistence on his exemplary Jewishness have an important but limited role in the gospel; they aim to justify the displacement of the Jewish cult by faith in Jesus.” I do not quite see the logic in Hakola’s argument. If Jesus is being an ‘exemplary Jew’ in the tradition of the biblical prophets, why must this also mean that Jesus is “displacing” the Jewish cult, reflecting an audience’s alienation from its Jewish heritage that takes for granted that the temple has been abolished (see pp. 109–110)? It makes more sense, in my view, to see a ‘zealous’ Jesus here as seeking to restore or reform the temple, with the Johannine narrator explicitly countering any potential criticism that Jesus was condemning the temple, by clarifying that Jesus’s destruction saying was not referring to the Jerusalem temple in the first place; it was referring to his body, which would be destroyed and raise again (2:21–22).

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tabernacled [ἐσκήνωσεν] among us,” might play a part in this strategy,82 the most important text is John 2:21. This verse is the narrator’s explanation of the enigmatic saying of Jesus in 2:19, spoken in response to his opponents’ demand for a sign to authenticate his action in the temple courts: “Destroy this temple [ναός] and in three days I will raise it up.” Since, to Jesus’s opponents, the saying is unintelligible, the narrator clarifies for the reader in v. 21 to what, precisely, Jesus was referring: “But he was speaking about the temple [ναός] of his body.” While there is no doubt that John intends to link Jesus’s human body to sanctuary space, the implications of it in light of the temple saying in 2:19 are more challenging to ascertain. The majority position in scholarship seems to be that 2:19 represents the Johannine Jesus’s pronouncement of judgment on the temple cult, a retrospective allusion to its destruction in 70 CE, which John interprets as divine punishment of the Jews for rejecting Jesus.83 In this view, John 2:21 is seen as the Fourth Gospel’s way of claiming that the now-destroyed material temple has been rejected and replaced by the “new” temple of Jesus’s body.84 Whatever the saying’s value as a piece of historical tradition, on the level of John’s narrative presentation, Jesus’s words in 2:19 are clearly not meant as judgment on the Jerusalem temple; John actually goes out of its way in v. 21–22 to ensure that the reader understands this.85 Jesus’s Judean opponents have misunderstood the saying (as is common for them),86 which was, in fact, meant as a metaphorical foreshadowing of Jesus’s bodily death and resurrection, not the temple’s destruction. Similar to Matthew and Mark, which depict 82 83 84

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On temple/tabernacle imagery in John 1:14–18 (and bibliography), see Cirafesi, “Temple Attitudes,” 331–333, although I have substantially revised my thinking on this passage and the terminology I use. For a survey of such scholarship, see G. Rojas-Flores, “From John 2.19 to Mark 15.29: The History of a Misunderstanding,” NTS 56 (2010): 22–43. Kerr, The Temple of Jesus’ Body, has been influential in recent formulations of this position. A major part of his replacement theory rests on the assumption that John was written after Jews and Christians, Synagogue and Church, had to a large degree already separated (see, e.g., pp. 19–25, 30). For him, then, the temple of Jesus’s body represents a distinctly ‘Christian’ response to the destruction of the temple in the face of Judaism (p. 34). See also Hakola, Identity Matters, 94–95; B. Thettayil, In Spirit and Truth: An Exegetical Study of John 4:19–26 and a Theological Investigation of the Replacement Theme in the Fourth Gospel, CBTE 46 (Leuven: Peeters, 2007); H. Attridge, “The Temple and Jesus the High Priest in the New Testament,” in Jesus and Temple, 222–27. On John 2:19 relationship to the historical tradition of the logion, see Rojas-Flores, “From John 2.19 to Mark 15.29”; and P. Fredriksen, “The Historical Jesus, the Scene in the Temple, and the Gospel of John,” in John, Jesus, and History. Vol 1: Critical Appraisals of Critical Views, ed. P.N. Anderson, F. Just, T. Thatcher (Atlanta: SBL, 2007), 249–76. D.A. Carson, “Understanding Misunderstandings in the Fourth Gospel,” TynBul 33 (1982): 59–91.

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false witnesses stating that Jesus had spoken against the temple (Matt 26:61// Mark 14:58), John is concerned with defending Jesus from such an accusation. What is more, unlike the Synoptics (Matt 24:1–2//Mark 13:1–2//Luke 21:5–6), in John there is no statement of the temple’s future cataclysmic doom.87 In other words, the destruction of the material temple is, narratively, not in view in 2:18–22; rather, it is the fate of Jesus’s body. As an alternative interpretation, in 2:14–17  – a scene which perhaps alludes to the refining of the temple and the sons of Levi in Mal 3:1–4 (cf. Pss Sol 17:30–32)88  – Jesus is remembered by his disciples as having taken the priestly role of cleansing his father’s defiled temple in an act of pious “zeal” (John 2:17//Ps 69:9), with “zeal” here evoking a defining feature of priestly figures remembered throughout Israelite and Jewish history.89 John 2:13–22 could 87 88

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Lieu, “Temple and Synagogue in John,” 63–64. B.G. Schuchard draws attention to the possible parallel between LXX Mal 3:3 (“and he will pour them out as gold and silver,” departing from the MT) and John 2:15 (“and he poured out the money of the money-changers”). See his Scripture within Scripture: The Interrelationship of Form and Function in the Explicit Old Testament Citations in the Gospel of John (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991), 25 n. 40. Malachi 2:4–7, reflecting on the permanent priesthood of Levi, anticipates a day when an ideal, eschatological priestly figure will be sent by Israel’s god to turn the way of the people back to the YHWH, and refine the temple cult and its sacrifices so that the proper worship might once again take place (3:1–4). Three things point to this: (1) Mal 2:4–7 is likely Malachi’s reflection upon God’s covenant made to Phinehas, Aaron’s grandson, in Num 25:11–13. Evidence for this is in the presence of a ‫“( ברית‬covenant”) that brings ‫“( שלום‬peace”), and the idea that Levi (i.e., a priest) ‫“( השיב‬turned”) and atoned for the sins of many Israelites. (2) Mal 2:7 calls the priest ‫“( מלאך יהוה צבאות‬the messenger of the LORD of Hosts”). (3) It is thus likely that the messenger of Mal 3:1–4 is a priestly figure sent by Israel’s god to purify the temple cult. This leads Richard Bauckham to conclude that the expectation of an eschatological High Priest was understood as a “Phinehas-Elijah” figure, which seems to appear in subsequent Jewish literature, such as Pseudo Philo’s Biblical Antiquities, and may be behind the ‘Elijah’ figure mentioned in John 1:21 (R. Bauckham, “Messianism according to the Gospel of John,” in Challenging Perspectives on the Gospel of John, ed. John Lierman, WUNT 2.219 [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006], 34–69 [37–38]). See G. Aran, “The Other Side of the Israelite Priesthood: A Sociological-Anthropological Perspective,” in Was 70 CE a Watershed in Jewish History? 43–58; J. Ripley, “Killing as Piety? Exploring Ideological Contexts Shaping the Gospel of John,” JBL 134.3 (2015): 605–35; and Lieu, “Temple and Synagogue in John,” 68, where she says: “So too, following the hint in 2.17, the Temple is the object of Jesus’ zeal, a term laden with significance in Jewish tradition where zeal often is associated with the Temple or with the maintenance of sole fidelity to God who alone is to be acknowledged there, and frequently does lead to death.” On the priestly aspects of Jesus and his mission in John, see J.P. Heil, “Jesus as the Unique High Priest in the Gospel of John,” CBQ 57 (1995): 729–45, which uses a narrative-critical methodology to extrapolate the High Priestly theme but does not locate it in its early Jewish context; H.K. Bond, “Discarding the Seamless Robe: The High Priesthood of Jesus in John’s Gospel,” in Israel’s God and Rebecca’s Children: Christology and Community in

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be framed, then, as a clash of priestly-oriented type ideologies, one geared toward reforming the national cult and the other toward defending its current institutional status quo.90 As the narrative progresses, the reader increasingly understands that what was metaphorically foreshadowed in 2:21 will come to fruition at Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection in John 19 and 20: the Johannine Jesus will ultimately lose his battle within the public assembly, but by his rising from the dead (2:22; 11:17–27; chapter 20), the Gospel ensures that an undefiled sanctuary, that is, Jesus’s body, will ultimately live on. I suggest that what we see in John 2:13–22 is the Johannine Jesus’s criticism of a defiled temple cult that he, nevertheless, zealously identifies with.91 The metaphorical construal by the narrator of Jesus’s individual body as sanctuary space is, therefore, part of this critique. But, as Kåre Sigvald Fuglseth has pointed out, such criticism should not be immediately equated with notions of “rejection” or some type of “replacement,” and even less with the idea that John here represents a departure from Judaism, as if these categories are selfevident in the narrative. Fuglseth is certainly right to observe that the language of “rejection,” “replacement,” “newness,” or Jesus as the “true temple” is entirely absent in the passage.92 There is nothing that resembles, for example,

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Early Judaism and Christianity, ed. D. Capes et al. (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2007), 183–94, which suggests that John possesses a high priestly christology, arguing this primarily through the “seamless robe” passage in John 19:23–24; Bauckham, “Messianism,” 36–39, which provides several interesting notes on the expectation of an eschatological priest in early Judaism and John’s potential interaction with that expectation; G. Brooke, “4QTestament of Levid (?) and the Messianic Servant High Priest,” in From John to Jesus: Essays on Jesus and New Testament Christology in Honour of Marinus de Jonge, ed. Martinus C. De Boer, JSNTSup 84 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 83–100 (esp. 98–99), although he only mentions John in passing; L.C. Boughton “The Priestly Perspective of the Johannine Trial Narratives,” RB 110 (2003): 517–51; and Attridge, “Temple,” 222–27, although I do not follow his replacement paradigm. For further discussion, see below. For my own contributions, see Cirafesi, “Priestly Portrait of Jesus”; Cirafesi, “Temple Attitudes”; Cirafesi, “Magdala,” forthcoming. For further discussion of the conflict between the Johannine Jesus and his opponents as a clash of priestly ideologies, see below. See Fuglseth, Johannine Sectarianism, 160. Even Hakola says, “In his zealous defense of the temple and its sanctity, Jesus stands in the best [?] Jewish traditions; as a matter of fact, he is presented as more Jewish than his Jewish contemporaries who profaned the temple” (p. 95), although Hakola oddly goes on to conclude on the same page: “Jesus’ devout criticism of the temple and the insistence on his exemplary Jewishness have an important but limited role in the gospel; they aim to justify the displacement of the Jewish cult by faith in Jesus.” Fuglseth, Johannine Sectarianism, 184. The quotation of Jesus as the “true temple” given above is from D.A. Carson, The Gospel according to John (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 224.

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the Matthean Jesus’s claim that “something greater than the temple is here” (Matt 12:6).93 Even if the sanctuary metaphor in John 2:21 is meant to develop the theme of Jesus’s divine identity – and this is not necessarily a given in the text94  – recent scholarship has shown that John’s “high christology” works well within certain segments of the theo-political world of Judaism not only in Second Temple period but also into Late Antiquity.95 What is more, the Johannine Jesus continues to make the temple the central location of his activity throughout the Gospel. As Lieu remarks, “That Jesus should thereafter [i.e., after the ‘cleansing’ episode] continue to focus his presence on the Temple is no surprise – as it would be if we were to accept an interpretation that suggests that Jesus is rejecting the Temple.”96 In my view, it is thus a mistake to take John’s criticism of the temple and its proffering of re-envisioned sanctuary space as tantamount to its rejection, replacement, or expropriation and thus as representative of a “Christian” response to the temple’s demise in 70 CE. As evidenced from Philo, but especially from the Scrolls (sources that Fuglseth also address), the strategic combination of a (priestly) critique of a defiled temple and a metaphorical construal of a human sanctuary would not have been seen as anything other than a viable form of what I have called diasporic Jewish identity in the 1st century. The same conclusion holds true for John’s strategy in 4:20–26.97 This passage envisions a time when, as the Johannine Jesus says to the Samaritan woman, 93

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Although see A. Runesson, Divine Wrath and Salvation in Matthew: The Narrative World of the First Gospel (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2016), 150, where he observes that even Matthew does not assert Jesus’s person as that which is greater than the temple but rather the eschatological events taking place around him via the power of the spirit. One may recall that in Somn. 1:149, Philo gives the exhortation for the “soul” in every person to be “the house of God,” without giving any indication that every soul that hearkens to this has a ‘divine identity’ on par with the God of Israel, as some Johannine scholars have suggested for John 2:21. Of course, there are differences between Philo and John – one has the philosophical focus on the soul, the other a focus on Jesus’s material body. Nevertheless, the overarching ideological strategy – God can dwell within an individual – appears quite similar. See, e.g., D. Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); J. McGrath, The Only True God: Early Christian Monotheism in its Jewish Context (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2009); and the essays in B. Reynolds and G. Boccaccini, eds., Reading the Gospel of John’s Christology as Jewish Messianism: Royal, Prophetic, and Divine Messiahs, AJEC 106 (Leiden: Brill, 2018). Lieu, “Temple and Synagogue in John,” 63–64, 66 (quotation from p. 66). Lieu is highly critical of replacement/rejection theories regarding John and temple. For a thorough review of past approaches to this passage, pointing out common replacement theories, see Fuglseth, Johannine Sectarianism, 176–84. For a comprehensive interpretation of the passage from a thoroughgoing replacement perspective, see Thettayil, In Spirit and Truth.

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“neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the father,” but rather when “true worshippers will worship the father in spirit and truth.”98 It is certainly possible to read 4:22–24 through the historical lens of the events of 67 and 70 CE, the respective years in which the Romans razed Mt. Gerizim and demolished Jerusalem along with its sanctuary.99 If read from this perspective, worship “in spirit and truth” (ἐν πνεύματι καὶ ἀληθείᾳ)  – however one interprets the syntax and semantics of the phrase (see below)100 – does not necessarily express the idea that Jewish and Samaritan temple worship has, in the Johannine view, been rejected or permanently “displaced.”101 As Fuglseth notes, “[a] spiritual understanding [of worship] may lead to alternative practices, but not necessarily, and the hope for new temple buildings by the author cannot be dismissed on such a ground.”102 Worship “in spirit and truth,” rather, operates as part of John’s reterritorializing strategy to make possible and legitimize the worship of Israel’s god, who, in this reading, now lacks a “landed” national cult in both ethno-religious traditions (see also chapter 5).103 Although distinct in its historical impetus, this type of strategy coincides 98

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Lieu, “Temple and Synagogue in John,” 67 is skeptical that the temple is in view in this passage. She says: “In ch. 4 the question of the right place of worship centres not on the Temple but on ‘neither Jerusalem nor this mountain’ (4.20–1). Jerusalem is not a metonym for the Temple: Luke clearly distinguishes between the two, and so, as already noted in his careful references to the Temple, does John.” Lieu is certainly right, that ‘Jerusalem’ is not a metonym for the temple, but she overlooks the point that ὁ τόπος, used in 4:20, most certainly is (John 11:48; Acts 6:13–14). On τόπος as a temple term, see ASSB no. 113. R. Pummer, The Samaritans: A Profile (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), 64–66. For helpful surveys of the problems and potential solutions, see Fuglseth, Johannine Sectarianism, 179–83; E.W. Mburu, Qumran and the Origins of Johannine Symbolism, JCTS 8 (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 48–52, although note that her study largely operates within a Christian replacement paradigm. So Kerr, The Temple of Jesus’ Body, 167, where he says: “Worship will no longer be centered in a place, but in Spirit and truth.” However, John does not say that worship will no longer (οὐκέτι) take place at these material sites; it simply states that a time (ὥρα) is coming when it will not happen. See also Mburu, Johannine Symbolism, 51: “This phrase therefore emphatically affirms that temple worship, both in Jerusalem and Samaria, is to be displaced by worship inspired by the Spirit.” Fuglseth, Johannine Sectarianism, 183. It is worth recalling, although it is perhaps stating the obvious, that the Johannine Jesus in this passage is not advocating for the worship of other gods or even a de-Judaized version of the god of Israel. If the Johannine Jesus was advocating for a break from Jewishness or Samaritanness, then we would expect to see him advocating worship of ethnic gods other than the one both Jews and Samaritans could claim as their own. This is clearly not the case. He advocates, rather, a ‘utopian’ (see below) vision of the “true worship” of Israel’s god. In other words, John presents the reader with a fundamentally diasporic technique for the worship of the ethnic deity. Contrast this view with Hakola, Identity Matters, 109, where he suggests that 4:20–22 presents a Jesus who is “ambivalent” in his attitude

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with broader ethno-religious developments taking place in the Greco-Roman period. For example, Egyptian worshippers of Isis in Asia and Asian worshippers of Cybele in Greece also came to lack national centers within the context of their native ethnic land, and, therefore, developed diasporic mechanisms for devotion to the gods.104 Such mechanisms involved, as J.Z. Smith notes, heavenly journeys to a transcendent god, the achieving of visions, and the experiencing of epiphanies.105 Reading John 4:20–26 as retrospective reflection on the events of 67 and 70 CE is not, however, the only way to understand the passage. For one, although 67 CE seems to have been the date for a major clash between Samaritans and Romans on Mt. Gerizim, the Samaritan temple had been destroyed long ago, nearly 200 years prior by John Hyrcanus (ca. 112/111 BCE) in his religio-political campaign to integrate the Samaritans into, not exclude them from, the Jerusalem-centric Hasmonean state.106 In other words, temple worship had not been taking place on Mt. Gerizim already for some time, and the Samaritan woman acknowledges this in 4:20.107 Rather than drawing a simple we/you contrast concerning active places of worship to distinguish her ethno-religious heritage from Jesus’s – saying something like: “We worship on this mountain, but you worship in Jerusalem”  – the woman draws upon the collective memories of her ancestral past: “Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, and you say it is necessary to worship in Jerusalem.” As she speaks to a Jewish prophet (4:9, 19), the woman, then, very well may have stories of Hyrcanus’s violent conquest of Gerizim in her mind. Jesus, however, quells her anxiety, explaining that, in fact, both Jews and Samaritans currently lack adequate places to worship the divine father, the father whom Jesus assumes

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toward “a central feature of Jewishness, worship in the Jerusalem temple.” That is, as I read Hakola, he understands Jesus’s downplaying of worship in Jerusalem as a downplaying of Jewishness in general. On this concept of maintenance of Jewish identity without national centers of worship, see the essays in B. Ego, A. Lange, and P. Pilhofer, eds., Gemeinde ohne Tempel: Zur Substituierung und Transformation des Jerusalemer Tempels und seines Kults in Alten Testament, antikes Judentum und frühen Christentum, WUNT 118 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999). J.Z. Smith, “Hellenistic Religions,” The New Encyclopedia Britannica, Macropedia vol. 18, 15th ed., ed. P.W. Goetz (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica Inc., 1986), 925. See the recent research on this topic by J. Bourgel, “The Destruction of the Samaritan Temple by John Hyrcanus: A Reconsideration,” JBL 135.3 (2016): 499–517. This is not to overlook the fact that Samaritans did (and still do) perform animal sacrifices on Mt. Gerizim without their temple. However, these sacrifices, at least today, are performed only on Pesach, which, while requiring the sacrifice of lambs, does not require a temple. In contrast, Samaritans do not offer sacrifices on Yom Kippur, since Yom Kippur sacrifices require the sanctuary.

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he and the woman both share. Samaritans might worship what they do not know (4:22) – perhaps a reference to their shorter Bibles, their rejection of the house of David, or their lack of a temple sanctuary to house their ethnic deity – but Jews, even though they are the mechanism and the beginning of salvation, worship in a sanctuary now defiled, as the reader knows from earlier in the narrative (2:13–22). For an ethno-religious ‘zealot’ like the Johannine Jesus, there is not much difference between a defiled temple and a destroyed temple, which makes reading 4:20–26 exclusively as post-70 reflection possible but not required. In this respect, Jörg Frey is right to observe that the significance of 70 CE has been overblown by Johannine scholars: the real difference-maker in John’s attitude toward the temple is not General Titus and the Roman army but rather the mission of Jesus.108 The solution Jesus gives to the plight of both of these ethno-religious siblings is not a “new” temple but rather the task of becoming “true worshippers” (ἀληθινοὶ προσκυνηταί) who worship “in spirit and truth.” The jury is still out on the precise meaning of these phrases, but we may presume, from the comments above, that “true worship” implies cultic activity that is both undefiled (for Jews) and predicated upon knowledge (for Samaritans). And if we follow scholars who have suggested that πνεύματι καὶ ἀληθείᾳ is a hendiadys, a stylistic variant of the more common Johannine phrase “spirit of truth” (John 14:17; 15:26; 16:13; 1 John 4:6),109 then John here envisions the eschatological spirit as the means by which the Samaritan woman can “know” what she worships (i.e., “truth”) and do so without defilement.110 In other words, similarly to John 7:37–39, where the Johannine Jesus likewise offers the gift of “living water” (there explicitly identified as spirit immersion) by alluding to Ezekiel 47 and Zechariah 14, here in 4:20–26 John re-envisions in typical “already-not yet” language (ἀλλὰ ἔρχεται ὥρα καὶ νῦν ἐστιν) cultic worship at an eschatological “hour.” But Jesus demonstrates no obvious antagonism toward the temple, and,

108 Frey, “Temple and Identity,” 447–508, although I part ways with Frey on his theory that John’s use of the temple theme reflects an “already ongoing separation between the local synagogue and the emerging Christian communities in the Mediterranean Diaspora” (p. 507). 109 E.g., Fuglseth, Johannine Sectarianism, 180, 184; C.S. Keener, The Gospel of John: A Commentary (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2003), 1:618; both of whom agree with R.E. Brown, John, 1:180. 110 An illuminating comparative text is 1QS 4:21–22: “He [God] will sprinkle over him the spirit of truth [‫ ]רוח אמת‬like lustral water (in order to cleanse him) from all the abhorrences of deceit and (from) the defilement of the unclean spirit, in order to instruct the upright ones with knowledge of the Most High, and to make understand the wisdom of the sons of heaven to those of perfect behaviour” (DSSSE, p. 79). For another criticism concerning the pollution of the temple and its sacrificial also, see T. Moses 5.

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as Lieu mentions, “[T]here is no indication that Jesus establishes a new temple or that such is constituted by the community.”111 While 7:37–39 may indicate that, there, Jesus has an eschatological human temple in mind, one composed of those who become loyal to him and, like the end-time temple envisaged by the prophets, experience “living water” metaphorically flowing forth from their bellies, such is indeed left unsaid in 4:20–26. However, even if a human temple (or in Lieu’s formulation, a “community” temple) is in view in 4:20–26, it would not be altogether unlike some of the material we saw above from Philo and especially the Scrolls. Thus, contra Kerr, John here is not presenting “a radical revision of Judaism”;112 it is presenting an expression of Judaism, in diasporic form. As we saw with non-integrated associations like the Yaḥad– Essenes and the Theraputae, and as we can imagine was the case more broadly with Jewish associations throughout the Mediterranean, Jews were compelled, as all diasporic ethno-religions in Greco-Roman antiquity were, to develop techniques that allowed alternative access to their ethnic deity.113 That is, they were forced – whether for ideological or historical reasons  – to rethink and reinterpret their relationship with, and the manner of access to, their ancestral cult, whether by discursively constructing “utopian” models of a human sanctuary, a heavenly temple, or the concept of a “true worshipper” who worships “by the spirit of truth.”114 A last strategy one can discern involves John’s construal of an otherworldly sanctuary along with Jesus’s otherworldly priesthood. As T.J. Farmer has recently pointed out, much like Philo’s description of the high priest as the manifestation of the god’s “divine word” (θεῖος λόγος) through whose wisdom the world was made (Fug. 108–112), the Johannine Prologue (esp. 1:1–5) depicts a cosmic temple in which the Logos acts as a priestly mediator between the Jewish god and his creation.115 In John 14:2–3, Jesus describes his father’s “house” (οἰκία) as a building with many rooms, but since it does not appear to exist on earth – Jesus must go away to prepare a “place” (τόπος; see note 98 111 112 113 114

Lieu, “Temple and Synagogue in John,” 66–67. Kerr, The Temple of Jesus’ Body, 167. Smith, Drudgery Divine, 121–43 (esp. 141–42 and n. 43). The analytical category of ‘utopia’ here is from Smith’s history of religions approach (for which, see note above). The category is, I think, helpful here, since, as Smith describes, it is not about the construction of ‘walls and bulwarks’ (he cites the language of Isa 26:1 here), that is, the use of brick and mortar to reinforce boundaries, often times using the language of imperialism and rigid social stratification (i.e., priestly-oriented Judaism), but rather the breaking out of walls through “acts of  … transcendence” (i.e., diasporic Judaism) (Smith, Drudgery Divine, 133). 115 T.J. Farmer, “Christ as Cosmic Priest: A Sociorhetorical Examination of the Crucifixion Scenes in the Gospel of John and Acts of John,” in Jesus and Mary Reimagined in Early Christian Literature, ed. V.K. Robbins and J.M. Potter (Atlanta: SBL, 2015), 223–52.

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above) for his disciples, and they can come only at a later time – some scholars have identified this “house” as the heavenly temple.116 The heavenly “house” of Israel’s god shows up particularly in Jewish apocalyptic texts, along with figures that seem to play priestly roles (e.g., 1 En. 14; 71; ALD 7:1; cf. also T. Levi 5:1).117 This, among other elements in John, has led some scholars to speak of the Gospel’s semblance to Jewish apocalyptic tradition.118 Further, Steven Bryan draws the interesting parallel between the “many rooms” mentioned in John 14:2 and the designation of rooms in the Temple Scroll (11QT 44:3–16) not just for the priests and Levites but also for the twelve tribes.119 This might suggest, then, that we should see not only a re-envisioned heavenly temple in John 14:2 but also a re-envisioned high priesthood just a few verses later in 14:6, in which Jesus is interpreted as an exclusive (οὐδείς) mediator between the people and the divine father.120 The above strategies of re-conceptualizing sanctuary space compel us to think of John’s Gospel in terms of a diasporic mode of Jewish identity. Nowhere does the Johannine Jesus indicate that he has rejected the temple’s sanctuary or that it had ceased to be his father’s house. Yet the Gospel does suggest that the sanctuary is in a state of defilement and that its priestly and priestly-oriented leaders lack the acumen to lead the people in “true worship.” Thus, the hopes and dreams encoded within the pages of the Gospel are not shaped around the 116 E.g., J. McCaffery, The House with Many Rooms: The Temple Theme of Jn. 14.2–3, AB 114 (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1988); E. Bammel, “The Farewell Discourse of the Evangelist John and its Jewish Heritage,” TynBul 44.1 (1993): 103–116 (109); Lieu, “Temple and Synagogue in John,” 67; Kerr, The Temple of Jesus’s Body, 275–78; S.M. Bryan, “The Eschatological Temple in John 14,” BBR 15.2 (2005): 187–98. 117 That Levi in ALD is a priestly figure is obvious. On Enoch as a priestly figure, although not of priestly descent, see Himmelfarb, A Kingdom Priests, 20. 118 See, e.g., J. Frey, Die johanneische Eschatologie, 3 vols., WUNT 96, 110, 117 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997, 1998, 2000), 3:134–53; C.H. Williams and C. Rowland, eds., John’s Gospel and Imitations of Apocalyptic (London: T&T Clark, 2013); and especially recently B. Reynolds, John among the Apocalypses: Jewish Apocalyptic and the “Apocalyptic” Gospel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020). 119 Bryan, “John 14,” 191. 120 John 14:6 uses the standard priestly language of ‘approaching’ with the phrase ἔρχεται πρός, which differs only in style from προσέρχομαι, used commonly in the Epistle to the Hebrews to refer to approaching or drawing near to the presence of God (4:16; 7:25; 10:1; 10:22; 11:6; 12:22). Noticeably, John does not use the ‘better, greater’ (κρείττων) language that Hebrews does to describe Jesus’s priestly ministry. Further, lest we think that John is somehow being ‘un-Jewish’ with its use of such exclusive language, we must remember that the world of (especially late) Second Temple period Judaism was full of mutually exclusive and competing claims to priesthood and thus mediation of the human–divine relationship (see chapter 2). John is thus not asserting a break with Jewish ethnicity in 14:6 but rather asserting an exclusively Jesus-oriented vision of it. See more on this below.

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politics of Jerusalem’s sacrificial cult as they are in texts such as 1 Maccabees, Jubilees, and the Bar Kokhba coins and letters, or amongst groups such as the Pharisees, Sadducees, and “Zealots.” John instead produces a diasporic expression of Jewish ethnic identity that works within contexts detached from the public affairs of “common Judaism.” This mode of identity conflicts with the ideology of priestly-oriented Jewish groups in the homeland but runs in a similar vein as others, especially those like the Yaḥad–Essene group, Philo, and even post-70 texts like Revelation and 2 and 3 Baruch, whose views of Jewishness are not predicated upon the existence or restoration of a material sanctuary.121 This encourages us to begin thinking about John as a textual world that facilitates and legitimizes a diasporic identity, not only with reference to sanctuary space, but also with reference to the kind of institutional setting and organizational structure it assumes for its readers. 3.2 The Temple and Public “Synagogue” Space in John As scholars like Lieu and Fuglseth have observed, one of the strongest pieces of evidence that speaks against John’s flat rejection or replacement of the temple is that it remains throughout the Gospel the central public spatial and institutional platform for the Johannine Jesus to carry out his work. But, while we should avoid drawing a distinction between the ‘sacred’ and the sociopolitical realms in antiquity (see above), the Jerusalem temple’s function as public space in John needs to be distinguished from its function as sanctuary space. That is to say, John places Jesus within various spatial-architectural features of the temple precincts that are public areas not necessarily bound up with notions of the divine dwelling or sacrificial cult (see further below). Not acknowledging this or under-appreciating the fundamental functional differences between the spaces can lead to skewed conclusions about John’s narrative aims with reference to Jesus and the temple. Our first task here is to remember that the Jerusalem temple complex had functions along the same lines as public synagogues throughout the land of Israel. Together temple and synagogue formed a complementary system of Jewish public institutions during the Second Temple period, institutions that can be described as priestly-oriented in nature. John’s narrative world seems to cohere with this point. John 18:20 renders a programmatic statement of sorts 121 On this, see especially J. Marshall, Parables of War: Reading John’s Jewish Apocalypse, ESCJ 10 (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2001); M. Himmelfarb, “The Parting of the Ways Reconsidered: Diversity in Judaism and Jewish–Christian Relations in the Roman Empire: ‘A Jewish Perspective’,” in Interwoven Destinies: Jews and Christians through the Ages, ed. E.J. Fisher (New York: Paulist, 1993), 55–56.

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of Jesus’s activity in the Fourth Gospel.122 There, the Johannine Jesus asserts, “I myself have spoken publicly [παρρησίᾳ] to the world. I myself always taught in a synagogue and in the temple courts [ἐν συναγωγῇ καὶ ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ], where all the Jews gather together, and I have spoken nothing in secret” (trans. mine). As Ryan has argued, the saying reflects the primary institutional platforms for Jesus’s aims in John, one operating at the local-official level (synagogue) and the other at the supralocal-official level of the Jewish national assembly (temple).123 The national assembly gathered during times of pilgrimage festivals, and this provides the main spatial-temporal setting for Jesus’s public teaching and engagement with the Jews in Jerusalem. The temple ‘cleansing’ incident in 2:13–22 clearly takes place in a commercial agora-like area with Pesach drawing near. The challenge of the “brothers” in 7:3–4, that Jesus should go public (παρρησίᾳ) with his work at Sukkot, frames a large portion of narrative, from 7:1–10:21. Within this segment, it is mentioned three times that Jesus was teaching in the temple courts (7:14, 28; 8:20). At 8:20, John gives the added detail that Jesus was teaching specifically in the temple’s γαζοφυλάκιον (treasury, treasury area), a public area near the Court of Women.124 And the immediately following pericope, 10:22–39, is set within ἡ στοὰ τοῦ Σολομῶνος (the Stoa of Solomon; 10:23), a colonnaded area which followed the line of the eastern ridge of the temple mount (cf. Acts 3:11; 5:12).125 It is within the setting of the temple’s public architecture that the Johannine Jesus has his most volatile discursive engagements with Judean and Jerusalemite Jews, including members of strongly integrated associations (Pharisees).126 For example, in John 7:15, Judean Jews marvel at Jesus’ scribal ability, since, although they assume he had not received the appropriate education, they acknowledge that he was nevertheless (according to John) able 122 Lieu, “Temple and Synagogue in John,” 51–52; B. Olsson, “‘All My Teaching Was Done in Synagogues …’ (John 18,20),” in Theology and Christology in the Fourth Gospel: Essays by the Members of the SNTS Johannine Writings Seminar, ed. Gilbert van Belle, J.G. van der Watt, and P.J. Martin (Leuven: Peeters, 2005), 203–24. 123 See Ryan, Role of the Synagogue, 269–70. 124 Josephus seems to say that the Jerusalem temple’s treasury rooms were near the colonnaded area (War 5:200). Other texts seem also to suggest the area was public (see also Mark 12:41–43; Luke 21:1–2; m. Shek. 6:5), though surely access to the treasury rooms themselves was restricted and probably regulated by priests (Matt 27:6, although Matthew uses the word κορβανᾶς) or people appointed by them (LXX Neh 12:44). See the reconstruction of the architecture and design of this part of the temple confines given in Ritmeyer, “Imagining the Temple.” 125 Ritmeyer, “Imagining the Temple,” 33. 126 See chapter 3 in this volume.

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to teach their authoritative texts (πῶς οὗτος γράμματα οἶδεν μὴ μεμαθηκώς).127 Jesus here would have been seriously encroaching upon the territory of the scribal elite,128 especially priestly scribes, who, as mentioned earlier in this study, were entrusted with teaching the ancestral laws and judging the people. The Jerusalemites in 7:25–28 are curious about Jesus’s possible identity as Messiah and the striking fact that he is speaking publicly without resistance from officials (v. 26). This spawns legal action from the chief priests and the Pharisees in 7:30–32. More telling of the conflict within John 7–10, however, is John’s pervasive use of πιστεύω language within these public settings (19× in chs. 7–10). Horsley and Thatcher, and, even more recently, Teresa Morgan and Jason Ripley, have highlighted the religio-political nature of John’s use of πιστεύω. These scholars have, in particular, drawn attention to Josephus’s use of the πίστις word-group to indicate one’s political ‘fidelity,’ ‘loyalty,’ ‘persuasion,’ or one’s worthiness to be trusted regarding a particular course of political or even military action.129 In John 7:1–5, we see that even Jesus’s “brothers” had not become loyal to him and his messianic program (οὐδὲ γὰρ οἱ ἀδελφοὶ ἐπίστευον εἰς αὐτόν). By the time we arrive at the pericope that starts at 7:14, we see Jesus fully engaged in a public contest for the loyalty of the people, that is, the general crowd as well as more defined groups such as the chief priests and Judean Jews and the association of the Pharisees. At vv. 15, 20, 25–27, Jesus is met with resistance from the Judeans Jews and the crowd. In vv. 30–32, however, the political nature of Jesus’s teaching becomes apparent: while many from the crowd actually do become faithful to him, being persuaded of his messianic identity 127 C. Keith, “The Claim of John 7.15 and the Memory of Jesus’ Literacy,” NTS 56 (2009): 44–63. 128 This is the basic argument of C. Keith, Jesus against the Scribal Elite: The Origins of the Conflict (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014). 129 R. Horsley and T. Thatcher, John, Jesus, and the Renewal of Israel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), 140–41; T. Morgan, Roman Faith and Christian Faith: Pistis and Fides in the Early Roman Empire and Early Churches (Oxford University Press, 2015); Ripley, “Killing as Piety?” The most exhaustive study of Josephus’s use of the pistis word group is D.R. Lindsay, Josephus and Faith: Πίστις and Πιστεύειν as Faith Terminology in the Writings of Flavius Josephus and in the New Testament, AJEC 19 (Leiden: Brill, 1993). A good example is from Josephus, C. Ap. 2:184–88, where he says that Moses legislated priests in general to be administrators of the country’s public affairs, being entrusted (πεπιστευμένος) with extraordinary responsibilities such as teaching all the people Torah and acting as judges (δικασταί). While these men were worthy of such entrustment because they “exceeded others in the ability to persuade and in prudence of conduct,” absolute political rule (ἡγεμονία) was entrusted (πεπιστευκυία) to the high priest. The Greek of C. Ap. 2:185, 188 is: τοῖς ἱερεῦσι δὲ κοινῇ μὲν τὰ μέγιστα διοικεῖν ἐπιτρεπούσης, τῷ δὲ πάντων ἀρχιερεῖ πάλιν αὖ πεπιστευκυίας τὴν τῶν ἄλλων ἱερέων ἡγεμονίαν. (188) ἐξαίρετον δὲ τὴν ἐπιμέλειαν τῶν ἱερέων πεπιστευμένων….

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(ἐκ τοῦ ὄχλου δὲ πολλοὶ ἐπίστευσαν εἰς αὐτὸν; v. 31), the Pharisees and chiefpriests wish to arrest him (vv. 30, 32).130 Horsley and Thatcher are thus quite right in their assessment: “The implications in John’s story are that the people who became loyal to Jesus were withdrawing their loyalty to the high priestly rulers and, by implication, the Roman imperial order they represented.”131 This contest of loyalties in John 7 builds in the Johannine narrative toward a violent climax in both 8:31–59 and 10:22–39. Ripley argues that John’s presentation of Jesus’s conflict with the Ioudaioi reflects a concern for contemporary debates over the nature of Jewish piety and the role of religio-political violence within the context of Roman imperialism. John, Ripley suggests, is aware of two prominent expressions of ‘religious violence’ active within firstcentury Judaism, both of which John rejects via the non-violent sacrificial mission of Jesus. The first expression is found in Philo (e.g., Spec. 3:126–28), who affirms violence toward idolatrous Israelites only, without an accompanying call for violence against Rome (cf. John 11:47–50).132 The second is found in the Maccabean tradition (e.g., 1 Macc 3:5–6) and involves acts of violence toward both imperial overlords (the “lawless”) and perceived Israelite idolaters.133 Both of these forms, however, have their roots within traditions and models of priestly zeal, such as Levi, Phineas, and, of course, the Hasmonean priest-kings. Ripley suggests that the Judean Jews in John 8:31–59 stand in the second of these traditions, that is, the ideological tradition of violent zeal acted out against both Gentile oppressors and idolatrous Israelites. It is difficult to see how John envisions the Ioudaioi as bent toward violence with Rome, especially since in other places they appear quite willing to maintain the existing status quo (11:45–48; 19:12). Nevertheless, Ripley is right to observe that, for these Ioudaioi, Jesus presents an idolatrous threat worthy of execution (7:12, 19, 25, 47; 8:37, 40, 59; 10:30–34). John’s characterization of this violent priestly zeal is made abundantly clear in 16:2, in which the language of worship and sacrifice is used with reference to the killing of Jesus’s disciples (πᾶς ὁ ἀποκτείνας ὑμᾶς δόξῃ λατρείαν προσφέρειν τῷ θεῷ; cf. LXX Josh 22:27; 1 Chron 28:13). Jesus, on the other hand, presents a different, and non-violent, priestly politic with regard to one’s fidelity toward God and dealings with Rome, a politic based upon the truth of his “word” (e.g., 8:31–32), his unique ability as “son” to set slaves “free” 130 This connection between ‘belief’ and politics is particularly visible later on in John 11:47– 48, where the chief-priests and Pharisees directly link ‘belief’ in Jesus to the possibility of the Romans coming and taking away their “place and nation” (cf. Josephus, War 2:320–24). 131 Horsley and Thatcher, John, 141. 132 Ripley, “Killing as Piety,” 614–15. 133 Ripley, “Killing as Piety,” 613–14.

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(8:34–36), and his own (priestly) status as one bearing the glory of God (8:54; cf. 1:14) and meritoriously keeping God’s word (8:55). While some Ioudaioi had expressed loyalty to Jesus (8:30–31), by the end of the conflict they are ready to execute him publicly (8:59). Although Ripley does not address Jesus’s own ‘zeal’ in 2:14–17  – which very well could qualify as a ‘violent’ act  – his work establishes an ideological context to view 8:31–59 (and 10:22–39) as a conflict between priestly-oriented type Jews and Jesus over influence within the public assembly, as each presents a competing vision of piety and political fidelity to Israel’s god. In contrast to the Synoptics, John places Jesus’s teaching within a local synagogue context only once, in the Galilean village of Capernaum (6:59), but the nature of his activity there runs parallel to his activity in the public space of the Jerusalem temple courts. From John’s relative silence on the synagogue, Lieu suggests that one reason for John’s “reticence” might be due to its greater historical reliability on this point, since “other evidence [i.e., other than the Synoptics] for ubiquitous synagogues, at least as recognizable buildings, in pre-70 Palestine is lacking. John, in ‘ignoring’ the synagogues, is in fact reflecting the historical reality of Jesus’ ministry when they were not there to be noticed or ignored.”134 We must note two things here in response to Lieu’s idea. First, we must remember that Lieu was writing in 1999, around a time synagogue scholarship was experiencing an explosion in new archaeological evidence for pre-70 synagogues and their scholarly study. Although Lieu already had several sets of remains and a range of literary evidence at her disposal at that time,135 since 1999 important discoveries of pre-70 synagogues have been made at ‘Umm el-Umdan (2002) and Magdala (2010). Second, Lieu’s presentation is dependent on the now untenable theory of Howard Kee, who argued in the early and mid-1990s that there was no evidence of synagogues in the pre-70 period as formal public institutions that also were physical buildings.136 Writing in 1999 also meant that Lieu did not have access to recent and more popular scholarship on Capernaum,137 particularly Binder’s study, which has 134 Lieu, “Temple and Synagogue in John,” 64. 135 E.g., the remains at Gamla, Masada, Herodium, Kiryat Sefer, and the Theodotus Inscription. See ASSB for literary sources for synagogues. 136 See Kee, “Defining the First-Century Synagogue.” 137 There was available, however, the final report on the Franciscan site, which included the areas of the synagogue, the so-called ‘House of Peter,’ and the immediately surrounding village complex. The report was published in Italian in four volumes titled Cafarnao from 1972–1975 by the Franciscan Press (Jerusalem): V. Corbo, Gli edifice della città (vol. 1); S. Loffreda, La Ceramica (vol. 2); A. Spijkerman, Le Monete della Città (vol. 3); and E. Testa, I graffiti della casa di S. Pietro (vol. 4). Two decades later, S. Loffreda published a

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argued forcefully for the plausibility that the large black basalt pavement floor underneath the main hall of the great white limestone synagogue from the 5th or 6th century CE constitutes the remains of a 1st century public building, most likely a synagogue.138 Lieu herself is hesitant about using Kee’s view as a complete explanation of John’s “reticence” about the synagogue, but it must here be flatly rejected: John’s relative silence has nothing to do with there not being pre-70 synagogues in the land of Israel in the first place. It rather simply has to do with John’s unique focus on Jesus’s activity in Jerusalem within the public spatial confines of the national assembly in the temple courts. As Birger Olsson has argued, followed recently by Ryan, there is no real reason to doubt that ἐν συναγωγῇ in John 6:59 is meant as a reference to Jesus’s teaching within an assembly held in Capernaum’s public synagogue building.139 And what we see transpire in 6:25–71 accords well with what we know about activities held in such spaces. Peder Borgen argued over fifty years ago that Jesus’s ‘Bread of Life’ discourse was patterned after midrashic synagogue liturgy, a sermon involving the interpretative re-telling of a narrative from Torah (manna from heaven in Exod 16 and Num 11:4–9) and use of the prophets (Isa 53:14 cited in John 6:45).140 More recent synagogue scholarship has suggested that the village synagogue was the primary place of public Torah more popular book outlining the major finds from the excavations in English: Recovering Capharnaum, Studium Biblicum Franciscanum Guides 1 (Jerusalem: Franciscan, 1993). 138 Binder, Into the Temple Courts, 186–93. See also Levine, The Ancient Synagogue, 71, who is not as certain. For the chronology of the synagogue site, presenting a synthesis of various theories, see A. Runesson, “Architecture, Conflict, and Identity Formation: Jews and Christians in Capernaum from the First to the Sixth Century,” in Religion, Ethnicity, and Identity in Ancient Galilee, ed. J. Zangenberg, H.W. Attridge, and D.B. Martin, WUNT 210 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 231–57 (esp. 235–39). 139 Olsson, “All My Teaching,” 221–22; Ryan, Role of the Synagogue, 247. Both scholars rightly note that the lack of an article in a prepositional phrase is not surprising and does not undermine the translation of ἐν συναγωγῇ as “in the synagogue.” Additionally, although we are not given this spatial detail until 6:59, we can assume that, when the crowd goes “into Capernaum searching for Jesus” (εἰς Καφαρναὺμ ζητοῦντες τὸν Ἰησοῦν) in 6:24 and, in 6:25, “find him,” they have found him in the synagogue, since there no indication of any spatial transition between v. 25 and v. 59; indeed, there is no clear transition until 7:1. 140 See P. Borgen, Bread from Heaven: An Exegetical Study of the Concept of Manna in the Gospel of John and the Writings of Philo, NovTSup 10 (Leiden: Brill, 1965), 28–98. Also note that some interpreters have taken the phrases “works of God” in John 6:28 and “work of God” in Jesus’s response in v. 29 as a reference to God’s commandments, i.e., Torah. See, e.g., Paul N. Anderson, “John and Qumran: Discovery and Interpretation Over Sixty Years,” in John, Qumran, and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Sixty Years of Discovery and Debate, ed. M.L. Coloe and T. Thatcher, EJL 32 (Atlanta: SBL, 2011), 15–50 (41); Keener, John, 1:678; Ryan, Role of the Synagogue, 249. Evidence of this association is found in, e.g., CD 2:14–15; Bar 2:9–10. From John’s perspective, then, doing Torah means becoming loyal to Jesus.

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reading, which could involve back and forth dispute over the politics of interpretation, as suggested by, among other things, the communal architecture of our extant building remains.141 John 6:25–71 coheres with this general picture. As he does in Jerusalem’s temple courts, the Johannine Jesus here publicly teaches traditional material from the ancestral law to a “crowd” (ὄχλος), this time of Galilean Jews from Capernaum, and orients his interpretation around self-claims about his identity as the “sent one” from heaven (e.g., 6:29, 41) and son of man (6:27, 53, 62; see below). As we saw above in the temple courts passages, there is concentrated use in the Capernaum episode of the language of “fidelity” (6:29, 30, 35, 36, 40, 47, 64, 69).142 That the politics of “faith” are at stake in 6:25–71 is indicated in the preceding episode of the miraculous feeding (vv. 1–15), which clearly held political implications for the people who, in v. 15, wish to make Jesus king as a result of the “sign.” Although the Johannine Jesus refuses this attempt at spontaneous coronation, he continues in vv. 25–71 his attempt at persuading the Capernaum public to accept his teaching, using the metaphors of “eating” and “drinking” his flesh and blood to refer to “coming” and “becoming loyal” to him.143 This call for fidelity to Jesus would have had significant implications for – or posed serious challenges to – the politics of priestly-oriented type Jews. Indeed, it is precisely this call of the Johannine Jesus, shaped around his interpretation of the ancestral law, that generates much of the dispute that transpires in the Capernaum synagogue.

141 Runesson, Origins; Olsson, “All My Teaching,” 221; Ryan, Role of the Synagogue; J. Ryan, “The Socio-Political Context of Public Synagogue Debates in the Second-Temple Period,” The Synagogue in Ancient Palestine, forthcoming. 142 An interesting comparative text comes from Josephus’s conflict in the Tiberias synagogue (προσευχή, prayer hall) with Jesus son of Gamala, a Galilean leader of a group of rebels. This Jesus, who Josephus says had attempted to kill him at one point but who had apparently become “faithful” to him in Vita 110, competes for the political fidelity of the people of Tiberias over against Josephus and in favor of Jonathan and his group of brigands in Vita 276–81. Whereas Josephus had urged the people to abandon their zeal for rebellion against the Romans, Jesus and Jonathan had fanned this zeal into flame. This passage demonstrates not only the political function of public “synagogue” space, an aspect which is tied closely to what we generally know about first-century synagogue architecture, but also the kind of political activities that could take place there. Note also Ripley’s statement regarding Josephus’s use of πίστις language in Vita 110: “Here especially the political implications of this ‘faith’ commitment are apparent, for in the broader context of the passage Josephus is exhorting people to abandon revolutionary zeal and follow his particular political course of action (see Vita 17, 167, 262, 370–372)…” (“Killing as Piety?,” 622 n. 45). 143 Ryan, Role of the Synagogue, 259–60.

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The Ioudaioi in 6:41, 52 seem to be a discrete group of Jews within the wider Galilean ‘crowd.’ It is they, not the crowd as a whole, who respond particularly poorly to Jesus’s teaching and call to loyalty. The narrative is divided into three roughly equal parts, with Jesus’s interlocutors shifting in each – 6:22–40: the ‘crowd’; 6:41–59: the Ioudaioi; 6:60–71: the disciples. With regard to the ‘crowd’ in vv. 22–40, this group is sometimes characterized negatively in the scholarly literature due to its eagerness for a sign (v. 30, 34), Jesus’s assertion that it still lacks “faith” (v. 36), and the general assumption that the crowd should be equated with the Ioudaioi.144 But the crowd could just as well be characterized positively: searching for a sign, as Johns and Miller have shown, is not a negative concept in the Fourth Gospel, but rather one that should naturally lead to desirable results.145 And Jesus’s assertion of the crowd’s lack of fidelity could also function as part of a positive and genuine exhortation to “come to him,” since whoever does come to him, he says, “he will by no means cast out” (v. 37). This reading of the ‘crowd’ would cohere with what John says elsewhere about the welcome Jesus received among the Galileans (4:45). Jesus’s interaction with the Ioudaioi (6:40–59) is fundamentally different.146 Their response is to “grumble” and “fight,” taking utter offense at Jesus’s claims, while Jesus himself intensifies the rhetoric with threats of death if they do not become loyal to him (v. 49, 53, 58). After a positive engagement with the Galilean crowd and a negative interaction with the Ioudaioi, the third and final section of the narrative (vv. 60–71) turns to Jesus’s disciples, who offer him a mixed response. Some of them imitate the Ioudaioi by “grumbling” (v. 61); those who decide to stay with Jesus are his twelve Galilean disciples (see below). But because the result of the Capernaum episode is that Jesus stayed in the Galilee and “did not want to

144 E.g., see Lieu, “Temple and Synagogue in John,” 65 n. 53; Keener, John, 1:221 n. 451; Hakola, Identity Matters, 15–16, 160–62. The wish to identify the Galilean crowd with ‘the Jews’ is strengthened by the observation that both groups are described as unbelieving in the narrative (e.g., 6:36, 41). This leads Keener to suggest that John’s use of Ioudaioi in 6:41, 52 is his way of ironically (and pejoratively) asserting that those who were originally Galileans had fallen into the pattern of disbelief of ‘the Jews’ (Keener, John, 1:221 n. 451). 145 Johns and Miller 1994, 519–35 (531–32). See also, Ryan, Role of the Synagogue, 248, where he says the crowd “denotes the common people of the Capernaum assembly. We should note that they are not hostile to Jesus, nor are they predisposed against his propositions.” 146 This appears to be the case also in John 7:10–36, where among several groups mentioned (‘crowd,’ Ioudaioi, ‘Jerusalemites,’ ‘Pharisees’), the Ioudaioi seem to operate as a distinct one. Whereas the ‘crowd’ and ‘Jerusalemites’ have mixed reactions to Jesus, some accepting and some rejecting, the Ioudaioi and Pharisees (who perhaps together are the ‘rulers’ mentioned in 7:26) are clearly opposed to Jesus.

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walk about in Judea because the Ioudaioi were seeking to kill him” (7:1),147 it seems quite plausible to infer that John envisions these Ioudaioi in 6:41, 52 as having returned to Judea and becoming influential in the effort to put Jesus to death. Thus, in my view, in 6:22–71 we see a distinct group of priestlyoriented type Judean Jews attempting to influence a crowd of Galileans against Jesus in Capernaum’s synagogue by publicly disputing his claims. The identification of the Ioudaioi in John 6:41, 52 as priestly-oriented type Judeans becomes stronger when we consider the counter strategy that John employs in Jesus’s synagogue discourse, especially with regard to the three “son of man” sayings (6:27, 53, 62).148 Having just provided enough bread to feed five thousand people with twelve baskets worth of left-overs (6:13), Jesus exhorts the crowd, now present within the Capernaum synagogue (vv. 24–25), to seek life-giving food that he, as son of man, will give. In the last part of v. 27, the motivation for seeking such food from Jesus is given: “For God the Father has sealed (ἐσφράγισεν) him.” Interpretations of the ‘sealing’ in this passage typically invoke the use of seals on documents or letters, which, in the ancient world, implied the sender’s authentication of the document’s contents.149 However, a different understanding of John’s use of the term, here within a synagogue setting, may arise if we contextualize the saying by looking to a feature we see in some early synagogue decorative programs: the rosette. As I have argued elsewhere, the rosette in Jewish art – found in architecturally prominent places in several pre-70 synagogues and their immediate contexts (lintels at Gamla and Kiryat Sefer; on the decorated stone and two mosaics in Magdala) – was naturally associated with the temple cult and priesthood during the late Second Temple period, not least because of the description of Aaron’s high priestly crown as “a rosette of gold” in texts like Exod 28:36 and Sir 45:12 MS B.150 Interestingly, both of these texts take care to note that the words “holy to YHWH” were to be inscribed on the rosette-like crown “like the engraving of a seal,” with the LXX of both texts using the nominal form σφράγις. 147 This of course assumes that John 7 rightly follows John 6 rather than any theory of displacement. 148 Of all the New Testament Gospel material, these are the only “son of man” sayings uttered in a synagogue setting. I am here not very concerned with whether “son of man” was a title or not in Second Temple Judaism, or whether Jews in this period were on the look-out for him. I am more concerned with John’s characterization of Jesus here and with other Jewish figures of whom the language of “son of man” is used. 149 E.g., Keener, John, 1:677; B. Reynolds, The Apocalyptic Son of Man in the Gospel of John, WUNT 2.249 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 150–51. 150 See especially Binder, “The Mystery of the Magdala Stone,” in A City Set on a Hill: Essays in Honor of James F. Strange (Mountain Home, AZ: BorderStone Press, 2014), 17–48; and Cirafesi, “Magdala,” forthcoming.

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Furthermore, the language of “sealing” is used in two other places in Exod 28, both of which refer to the sealing of the high priestly garments with engraving of the names of the twelve tribes (vv. 11, 21). Therefore, one could say that to be crowned with the high priestly rosette and don the high priestly garments meant, in effect, to be “sealed” by YHWH as his holy one.151 Reading the “son of man” saying in John 6:27 against this priestly background and within the broader material-cultural context of synagogue art also sheds light on Peter’s declaration of Jesus’s messianic identity in 6:69, a declaration he makes while he and the twelve are most certainly envisioned as still being inside the synagogue.152 In quite different terms than in the Synoptics, here Peter confirms the loyalty (πεπιστεύκαμεν) of the twelve to Jesus’s mission, stating plainly: “You are the holy one of God” (σὺ εἶ ὁ ἅγιος τοῦ θεοῦ). The terminology closely resembles the ἁγίασμα κυρίου of LXX Exod 28:36 (cf. Sir 45:12), but it is even more like the Greek translation of ALD 10:11, a text in which Levi, self-evidently a priestly figure, is not only called “beloved of your father” (cf. John 3:35; 5:20) but also “the holy one of the Lord Most High” (ἅγιος κυρίου ὑψίστου).153 Fletcher-Louis has argued that, while God is Israel’s Holy One and angels are called “holy ones,” “the only precedent for the singular ‘the Holy One of God’ is Aaron.”154 In Numbers 16, Korah and his rebellious company are said to ‘grumble’ (διαγογγύζετε; 16:11) against Aaron because of Aaron’s special status as high priest over the assembly of Israel. Moses asserts that God will settle the dispute in the morning by choosing “who is his” and thus who will be “the holy one” (16:5–7).155 The dispute in Numbers 16, then, is basically over Aaron’s legitimacy and over who has the right to the title of “God’s holy 151 The interpretation given here of a priestly son of man figure coincides with earlier work by scholars such as C. Fletcher-Louis and J. Angel. 152 R.E. Brown, The Community of the Beloved Disciple: The Life, Loves, and Hates of an Individual Church in New Testament Times (New York: Paulist, 1979), 73ff, interprets the transition between 6:59 and 6:60 as Jesus having left the synagogue, uttering vv. 60–70 outside it. Brown then interprets the disciples who ‘turned back’ (v. 66) as going back to the synagogue, which allegorically represents certain false disciples who have gone back to Judaism. However, there is no indication whatsoever in the text that a transition outside the synagogue is indicated in v. 60, which suggests Peter’s confession takes place within the synagogue. Using Brown’s hermeneutics against him, this would suggest Peter’s christological confession within a central Jewish public institution is meant to represent, from John’s perspective, the pinnacle of Jewishness. 153 There is no Aramaic extant at this point in the text. For the text, see J.C. Greenfield, M.E. Stone, and E. Eshel, The Aramaic Levi Document: Edition, Translation, Commentary, SVTP 19 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 90. 154 C. Fletcher-Louis, “Jesus as the High Priestly Messiah: Part 2,” JSHJ 5.1 (2007): 63–64. 155 In a retelling of this tradition in Ps 106:16–17, Aaron is explicitly identified as “the holy one of YHWH.”

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one.” Jesus, as seen above, is the object of grumbling from the Ioudaioi and even some of his “disciples” (vv. 41, 43, 61), and his legitimacy as “the bread that came down from heaven” is called into severe question because of his human origins in 6:42. In light of Lieu’s suggestion, that the desert grumbling narrative of Numbers 14 – in which the whole “assembly of Israel” is involved – stands behind the Johannine narrative,156 which itself is set within a synagogue, it would not be a significant jump to extend the scriptural context of John 6 to include Numbers 16, a text that also involves the whole congregation of Israel. Thus, Peter’s declaration of Jesus as God’s holy one functions to legitimize Jesus’s identity as the bread of life but, perhaps even more so, his right to be the high priestly ‘sealed son of man’ who bears the name of YHWH in the midst of the assembly of all the people. The “son of man” saying in 6:53 should probably be read in connection with v. 51, where John makes it explicit (1) that Jesus himself is the “living bread” that has descended from heaven in son-of-man-like fashion and produces eternal life, and (2) that this bread Jesus gives is his “flesh.” If, as Borgen suggested long ago, the manna-giving episode of Exodus 16 forms the discursive backdrop of the Johannine passage, then we should perhaps understand “living bread” in v. 51 as an allusion to Exod 16:32–33, in which ‘eternal’ manna was gathered up and placed by Aaron in the Holy of Holies as a perpetual reminder to Israel of how God fed them in the wilderness.157 This manna stood in direct contrast to the manna that perished on a daily basis. John appears to build on this idea by asserting that Jesus, as priestly son of man, does not give manna of the perishable type but rather the type that was to endure for generations as a testimony to Israel. The important point to highlight here is that the saying in vv. 51–53 is framed by the priestly metaphors of cultic sacrifice and intercession: the bread the son of man will offer is his flesh “in behalf of the life of the world” (ὑπὲρ τῆς τοῦ κόσμου ζωῆς). The final ‘son of man’ saying uttered within the Capernaum synagogue (6:62) features the ascending-descending motif (although no ‘descending’ is explicitly mentioned in v. 62; but cf. 3:13; 6:33, 38, 50, 51, 58): “Therefore, what if you should see the son of man ascending to where he was before?” This motif in John as a whole is especially reminiscent of the Enochic apocalyptic tradition (e.g., 1 En. 14:8–20; 71:5–12),158 which has led scholars such as Borgen 156 Lieu, “Temple and Synagogue in John,” 65–66. 157 Borgen, Bread from Heaven. 158 See especially the essays by J. Charlesworth, F. Maloney, and B. Reynolds in D.L. Bock and J.H. Charlesworth, eds., The Parables of Enoch: A Paradigm Shift, JCTS 11 (London: T&T Clark, 2013). Note particularly Reynolds’s careful work in his Apocalyptic Son of Man. While, to me, we are on solid footing associating the Johannine son of man with

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and, more recently, J.J. Kanagaraj to locate the Johannine motif within the early stages of Merkavah mysticism that developed in the Second Temple period well before the Hekhalot literature of the later rabbinic era.159 Although there is no mention of visionary thrones or wheels in the Johannine account (although see John 12:41), the Merkavah tradition’s concern with the ascension of a (priestly) son of man or other type of theophanic figure and privileged visionary access to God’s inner sanctuary are characteristics of the Johannine son of man. John 6:46, for example, asserts that not just anyone but rather “he is who is from God is the only one who has seen the father” (cf. 1:18; 14:9). Jesus’s exclusive privilege as son of man who both ascends and descends from heaven and is vested with divine authority, is scattered throughout John 6 (6:33, 38, 41–42, 50–51, 58, 62) and, although not in a synagogue setting, is clearly reflected also in 3:13: “No one has ascended into heaven except the one who has descended from heaven, the son of man.” Similar to Enoch, we see in John a priestly son of man who is given special access to the divine dwelling in order to perform his work of intercession on behalf of the world (6:51). John’s counter strategy to the concerns of priestly-oriented type Judeans within the Capernaum assembly is a re-envisioning of the category of priesthood and a shaping of it around Jesus as a ‘son of man’ figure. It works similarly to other diasporic expressions of Jewishness, especially as seen in some apocalyptic traditions, in which priesthood is construed metaphorically within a framework of heavenly ascent and involves figures without an explicitly priestly pedigree. The important point to make here is that the Johannine Jesus’s reworking of a central category to Judaism in the homeland takes place within the institutional context of public synagogue debate, with the debate the similar figure in Parables, at least on a conceptual basis, it is important to note here that I am not doing so to the exclusion of other relevant literature such as the figure(s) in Ezekiel and Daniel. Gary T. Manning Jr.’s work indicates the likelihood that, while the traditions certainly evince differences, 1 Enoch’s depiction of the son of man figure and this figure’s vision of the divine throne draws upon and combines multiple biblical traditions, most obviously Ezekiel and Daniel. See G.T. Manning, Echoes of Prophet: The Use of Ezekiel in the Gospel of John and in Literature from the Second Temple Period, JSNTSup 270 (London: T&T Clark, 2004), 85. 159 Borgen, Bread from Heaven, 2–3; J.J. Kanagaraj, ‘Mysticism’ in the Gospel of John: An Inquiry into its Background, JSNTSup 158 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press 1998). Important here is Elior’s thesis in The Three Temples, that visions of the divine Merkavah where fundamentally tied to priesthood and priestly-oriented groups in early Judaism. See, however, Reynolds, Apocalyptic Son of Man, 17–18, where he draws a distinction between ‘apocalyptic’ and ‘Merkavah mysticism.’ For Reynolds, while Merkavah mysticism may have developed out of apocalyptic, “this does not mean that Merkaba mysticism was present in the first century” (18). He thus concludes that John’s ‘son of man’ must be firmly placed within the context of apocalyptic thought active in the first century rather than within Merkavah mysticism.

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itself taking a hostile turn, as the narrative leads to the Judean Jews’ seeking to kill Jesus (7:1). 3.3 John and Aposynagōgos (9:22; 12:42; 16:2) We are now in a position to consider one of the most divisive issues in contemporary Johannine scholarship: John’s synagogue expulsion passages and their implications for reconstructing the Gospel’s relationship to Judaism. In this section, we must consider how the most influential methodological approaches to the question of John and Judaism have understood ancient synagogues and used the concept of “the synagogue” as an analytical category. The goal here is not to engage directly debates over matters such as the ‘Johannine community’ hypothesis or the historicity of the aposynagōgos passages.160 Rather, it is to highlight and then problematize the point that, in Johannine scholarship, “the synagogue” has for a long time been a synecdoche for “Judaism” as a whole, resulting in the equation of aposynagōgos in 9:22; 12:42; and 16:2 with separation from Judaism. Aposynagōgos and ‘Synagogue’ in the Methodological Tradition of J. Louis Martyn and Raymond Brown The most important aspect of J. Louis Martyn’s approach to the synagogue, and John’s Gospel in general, is his two-level reading strategy, first set out in the 1968 edition of his History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel. The first level in this strategy refers to John’s recounting of the earliest traditions about the life and ministry of Jesus as primarily reflected in its shared material with the Synoptics, while the second level refers to those places in the Fourth Gospel where John has apparently handled these traditions in drastically different ways, thus displaying a concern for the contemporary situation of its community. Central to Martyn’s description of this community is its conflict with the synagogue. This comes through supremely in his treatment of the healing of the blind man in John 9 and his and his parents’ ensuing confrontation with the Ioudaioi, whom Martyn understands as some unidentified authoritative body within Judaism. For Martyn, the conflict between the Ioudaioi and the blind man does not reflect the situation in Jesus’s day but rather allegorically 3.3.1

160 For selective history of research on the Johannine community hypothesis (and my own take on the debate), starting with the first edition of J.L. Martyn’s classic History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel (New York: Harper & Row, 1968) up to the year 2014, see W.V. Cirafesi, “The Johannine Community Hypothesis (1968–Present): Past and Present Approaches and New Way Forward,” CBR 12.2 (2014): 173–93; Cirafesi, “The ‘Johannine Community’ in (More) Current Research: A Critical Appraisal of Recent Methods and Models,” Neot 48.2 (2014): 341–64.

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depicts the days of the Yavnean rabbis in the late 1st century, who had begun to view the Jesus movement as a distinct rival and had developed a formal method of expulsion from the synagogue. The key Johannine term for Martyn’s interpretation of aposynagōgos in 9:22 is actually not the Greek term ἀποσυνάγωγος  – although, of course, it too is important – but rather the term συντίθημι, meaning ‘to agree, or reach a decision.’ Martyn suggests that συντίθημι is a technical term for John, and that what the Ioudaioi here are ‘agreeing upon’ is the implementation of a formal rule or ordination intended to separate the two rivals, that is, ‘Jews’ from ‘Christians,’ the ‘synagogue’ from the ‘church,’ something already accomplished when John’s Gospel is written. For Martyn, the closest historical referent for this kind of formal decision to separate believers in Jesus from mainstream Judaism is the Talmudic Birkat HaMinim, or Curse against the Heretics, part of the Eighteen Benedictions of the rabbinic Standing Prayer. The tradition of this curse, Martyn argues, can be traced all the way back to the 80s CE. While the Curse itself never mentions expulsion from the synagogue, it is nevertheless clear that Martyn sees John’s use of aposynagōgos and the rabbinic Curse as analogous activities, with the former as an allegory for the latter. As far as I can tell, Martyn does not draw upon any scholarship on ancient synagogues for his historical reconstruction, whether back in the 1960s and 70s when the first two editions of his book were published, or in 2003 when the third and final edition was released. This is particularly interesting to point out, since it was in the late 1990s and early 2000s that synagogue studies experienced its most recent upsurge and saw the publication of several important monographs and articles. In any case, in short, Martyn’s conception of the ‘synagogue’ in John is as follows: 1. It is fundamentally a post-70 institution thoroughly under the formal control of the early rabbis, who themselves were actively and successfully consolidating Jewish social and religious identity around Torah after the destruction of the temple.161 And, 2. ‘Synagogue’ is evidently a synecdoche for “Judaism” as a whole in contradistinction to ‘Christianity’ and the ‘Church.’ For example, Part 1 of the book is titled “A Synagogue–Church Drama”; and the title of chapter 2 is: “He is excluded from the synagogue and enters the church.” That is, a singular institution called ‘the synagogue’ is apparently a stand-in for a singular religious entity called ‘Judaism,’ and, thus, being “put out of the

161 Martyn, History and Theology3, 58.

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synagogue” is interpreted as equivalent to being severed from “the household of Judaism.”162 In 1979 Raymond Brown published his The Community of the Beloved Disciple, which was intended to build upon his historical reconstruction of Johannine Christianity put forth with less development in his two-volume Anchor Bible commentary (1966, 1970). While he expresses, in my view, an admirable level of skepticism regarding his own reconstruction,163 Brown retains the primary goal of offering a comprehensive history of the life of the community by adopting the kind of multiple-level reading of the Gospel first presented by Julius Wellhausen and Rudolf Bultmann before him, and developed by his contemporary, J. Louis Martyn. Brown posits four distinct phases in the community’s development, suggesting that the Gospel was edited to meet new goals as the life-situation of the community changed. It was sometime between the first two phases, ca. 90 CE, when the community was formally expelled from the synagogue by means of the mechanism of Birkat HaMinim, although tensions between the community and the synagogue had apparently been developing in a considerably earlier period. While Brown’s hypothesis is remarkably detailed, his conception and use of the term ‘synagogue’ is decidedly vague. It is a Jewish institution, which, while Jesus operated within it,164 John and his community wished to break away from it; and the Pharisees in the pre-70 period and the rabbis in the post-70 period are its leaders.165 But most of Brown’s some 38 references to the ‘synagogue’ seem to imply that he understands it, very much like Martyn, as a general stand-in for the concepts of ‘Jews’ and ‘Judaism,’ and thus in contradistinction to ‘Christianity’ and the ‘church.’ For example, in his interpretation of the hired hands in John 10:12 he says: “The hirelings are shepherds of the sheep, which means leaders of Christian groups, perhaps of Jewish Christian churches. They have not distanced their flocks sufficiently from ‘the Jews’ who are trying to take them away (i.e., back to the synagogue), for they have not really accepted the Johannine thesis that Judaism had been replaced by Christianity.”166 162 163 164 165 166

Martyn, History and Theology3, 53. See, e.g., Community of the Beloved Disciple, 7. Community of the Beloved Disciple, 73. Community of the Beloved Disciple, 78. Community of the Beloved Disciple, 78. It is important to note that the basic approach of Martyn’s and Brown’s conception and use of ‘synagogue’ as a synecdoche for “Judaism” lives on in various ways in contemporary Johannine scholarship. See, for example, J. Beutler, Judaism and the Jews in the Gospel of John, Subsidia Biblica 30 (Rome: Editrice Pontifico Istituto Biblico, 2006), 28–30; and, most recently of his works, J. Frey, “Toward Reconfiguring Our Views on the ‘Parting of the Ways’: Ephesus as a Test Case,” in John and

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3.3.2

Aposynagōgos and ‘Synagogue’ in the Social Scientific and Rhetorical Traditions Already in the 1970s, with the publication of Wayne Meeks’ JBL article “Man from Heaven,” but certainly more so in the 1980s and early 90s, a general dissatisfaction emerged within Johannine scholarship with the attempt of the Martyn-Brown hypothesis to identify John’s aposynagōgos passages specifically with the rabbinic Birkat ha-Minim. While still holding on tightly to the Martyn-Brown two-level reading strategy, the application of methods from the fields of sociology, sociolinguistics and rhetoric, and cultural anthropology led to a wave of concern, still very active today, for how John’s use of language and cultural symbols functions to shape community identity rather than ‘real’ community history. From this angle, John’s aposynagōgos passages are even further disconnected from any kind of Johannine aim at history writing; they reflect events neither in Jesus’s own day nor a real time or situation in the history of a later Johannine community. Rather they reflect the traumatic experience of this community’s separating from its socio-cultural and religious parent and the need to forge its new ‘Christian’ identity over and against its former Jewish one. But what of the category of ‘synagogue’ specifically in this tradition? Just a few examples are needed. In Meeks’s socio-anthropological framework, the ‘synagogue’ has a function within John’s symbolic universe parallel to the ‘world,’ that is, the “world of Judaism”: through the use of such cultural symbolism, John encourages his community toward a strong and decisive, albeit traumatic, break with this ‘world’ and toward sectarian isolation.167 In the social scientific models of Bruce Malina (1985)168 and Jerome Neyrey (1988),169 published only three years apart, ‘synagogue’ is presented as the dominating cultural-religious power structure within the Johannine community’s ideology of anarchy (Malina) or revolt (Neyrey). And within the recent social identity, rhetorical, and empire-critical approaches of Raimo Hakola, Adele Reinhartz, and Warren Carter, respectively, the synagogue appears to be either a rhetorical tool,170 a Johannine construction of an ‘Other’ to create distance between the

167 168 169 170

Judaism: A Contested Relationship in Context, ed. R. Alan Culpepper and P.N. Anderson (Atlanta: SBL, 2017), 221–39. W. Meeks, “The Man from Heaven in Johannine Sectarianism,’ JBL 91 (1972): 44–72 (69). B. Malina, “The Gospel of John in Sociolinguistic Perspective” (Berkeley: Center for Hermeneutical Studies in Hellenistic and Modern Culture, 1985). J. Neyrey, An Ideology of Revolt: John’s Christology in Social-Science Perspective (Philadel­ phia: Fortress Press, 1988). So Reinhartz, “Forging a New Identity,” 130.

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community and mainstream Judaism,171 or a social tool to construct a “secure social identity,”172 regardless of what sort of dimensions are assigned to this community or whether it should be considered ‘real’ or ‘imagined.’ While scholarship in the social scientific and rhetorical tradition, in general, has worked hard to distance itself from the detailed and often quite speculative historical reconstructions that have marked studies in the Martyn-Brown trajectory, it is important to point out that social scientific and rhetorical models have themselves also been based upon certain historical assumptions. The most obvious one, of course, is that John’s Gospel can and should be read on a level that speaks to the existence of a ‘Johannine community,’173 no matter how this ‘community’ is defined. A second assumption, however, concerns the nature of the ‘synagogue.’ Similar to studies in the Martyn-Brown vein, the ‘synagogue’ in the social scientific and rhetorical tradition has most often been either a synecdoche for ‘Judaism,’ the mainstream power structure of post-70 Jewish society, or the effective ‘Other’ by means of which social boundaries are drawn up and the Johannine community self-defines. As Adele Reinhartz says: “In this reading, the expulsion passages are not a key to the history of the Johannine community but a tribute to the rhetorical skills of the gospel writer and the effect that he was trying to produce.”174 However, as far as I can tell, the majority of work in this trajectory has not done much to consider the world of synagogue studies in its conception and interpretation of ‘synagogue’ as an institutional category in John.175 171 So Carter, John and Empire, 26. 172 So Hakola, Reconsidering Johannine Christianity, 2 et passim. 173 A. Reinhartz, “Forging a New Identity: Johannine Rhetoric and the Audience of the Fourth Gospel,” in Paul, John, and Apocalyptic Eschatology: Studies in Honour of Martinus C. de Boer, ed. J. Krans et al., NovTSup 149 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 124. 174 Reinhartz, “Forging a New Identity,” 130. 175 W. Carter, John and Empire: Initial Explorations (London: Bloomsbury, 2008) cites a few studies in several footnotes (e.g., pp. 26, 32, 45), but its focus is clearly on developing the Roman political context for John as a whole. R. Hakola, Reconsidering Johannine Christianity: A Social Identity Approach (London: Routledge, 2015), on the other hand, cites more synagogue scholarship, although most, if not all, of it comes from work on Diaspora synagogues such as the ones at Ostia and Delos. Interestingly, however, neither scholar appears to draw upon such scholarship in order to interpret what actually might be going on in the Johannine synagogue passages themselves. Rather, both scholars, and quite admirably in my view, look to the evidence of the Mediterranean Diaspora primarily to garner contextual support either for the idea that, since such synagogue communities were typically well integrated with their broader Greco-Roman environment, the Johannine community was likely not sectarian (this is Hakola’s idea), or the idea that John’s synagogue community was couched firmly within the context of Roman political ideology (this is Carter’s).

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3.3.3 Reading Aposynagōgos within Judaism Whether we read the Johannine expulsion passages as reflecting events that happened in Jesus’s own day or as reflecting the experience of a ‘community’ (real or rhetorical) in the late first century, the picture presented earlier in this chapter of ancient synagogues as diverse institutions, with public and association types in both the pre-70 and post-70 periods, opens the door to revisit the tendency in Johannine scholarship to understand the category of “the synagogue” as a stand-in for “Judaism” as whole and, thus, aposynagōgos as separation from “Judaism.”176 Since, in Jewish antiquity, there was no singular static entity called “the synagogue,” surely not any more than there was a singular static entity called “Judaism,” might we challenge the idea that, for John, to be put out of one meant that a person had been put out of “the household of Judaism”?177 It is clear from the world inside John’s text – a world set entirely within the land of Israel – that the Gospel knows and makes use of the public-assembly type of “synagogue,” which functions as the central spatial platform for Jesus’s public activity.178 In John 6:22–71, Jesus teaches and disputes with an ὄχλος in the συναγωγή of Capernaum,179 and much of John 7–10 takes shape around Jesus teaching in the public gathering spaces of the temple courts; specifically noted are the treasury in 8:20 and the colonnade of Solomon in 10:23. In John 18:20, Jesus states his use of the public assembly explicitly: “I have spoken publicly to the world. I have always taught in a synagogue and in the temple courts, where all the Ἰουδαῖοι come together. I have said nothing in private.” If, on the pages of John, we encounter the “synagogue” as a public institution, then with regard to ἀποσυνάγωγος we are dealing with expulsion from a 176 For an excellent critical discussion of this issue, and the (Protestant) theological underpinnings of scholarship in this vein, see J. Lieu, “The Synagogue and the Separation of the Christians,” in The Ancient Synagogue, ed. Olsson and Zetterholm, 189–207. 177 Martyn, History and Theology, 53. 178 This point is made strongly by Bernier, Aposynagōgos, 27–76; and Ryan, The Role of the Synagogue, 265–75. Horsley, “Synagogues in Galilee,” 67–68, also makes this point – with which I fully agree – but it can no longer be maintained that John’s uses συναγωγή and ἀποσυνάγωγος only as references to informal assemblies. 179 Although we are not given this spatial detail until 6:59, we can assume that, when the crowd goes “into Capernaum searching for Jesus” (εἰς Καφαρναὺμ ζητοῦντες τὸν Ἰησοῦν) in 6:24 and, in 6:25, they “find him,” they have found him in the synagogue, since there no indication of any spatial transition between v. 25 and v. 59; such a transition does not occur until 7:1. On the probability that a synagogue building is included in John’s reference to Capernaum’s συναγωγή, see W.V. Cirafesi, “A First-Century Synagogue in Capernaum? Issues of Historical Method in the Interpretation of the Archaeological Data,” Judaïsme ancien – Ancient Judaism 8 (2021): forthcoming.

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public assembly, not disaffiliation from a voluntary association.180 Recall that these types of assemblies were the civic space for activities related to all kinds of legal disputes and political controversies, and that they had a high level of institutionalization.181 Public synagogues – just like Greco-Roman public institutions – were precisely the place one would expect to see hostility exercised among various groups, particularly among integrated associations competing for public influence within the assembly.182 It is not difficult to imagine, for example, officials such as ἀρχισυνάγωγοι, priests, and archons in Jerusalem and throughout Judea coming together, collaborating with members of other religio-political interest groups such as the Pharisees (i.e., integrated associations), and coming to a collective decision (συντίθημι) to oust from the assembly members of another group (i.e., Christ-confessors), as we see happen in John’s story of aposynagōgos.183 180 Pace J.S. Kloppenborg, “Disaffiliation in Associations and the ἀποσυναγωγός of John,” HvTSt 67 (2011): 159–74, followed by Hakola, Reconsidering Johannine Christianity, 97. 181 Cf. Sus 28; Josephus, Vita 276–81, 294–95. 182 I have argued this point more thoroughly and with references to Greek and Roman literature in Cirafesi, “Aposynagōgos, Jewishness, and the Battle for the Public Assembly: John’s Ethnography of the Synagogue in Light of Greco-Roman Public Institutions” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the SBL, Johannine Literature section, Denver, CO, 17–20 November). 183 Considering the political and contested nature of public synagogue life, I think, also problematizes a prominent storyline in Johannine scholarship that typically runs something like the following: since John’s aposynagōgos passages are retroactively ‘dogmatized,’ that is, they make synagogue expulsion mainly about religious belief in Jesus’ messianic identity, they likely represent a much later period in the community’s history or process of identity formation; this is because synagogues and other kinds of associations based their ‘disaffiliation’ practices on ‘deviant’ behavior that challenged group norms rather than on doctrinal differences. See, e.g., Kloppenborg, “ἀποσυναγωγός of John,” 159–74, followed by Hakola, Reconsidering Johannine Christianity. The problem I see with this reconstruction is that it draws a false disjunction. As Bernier, Aposynagōgos and more recently Ripley, “Killing as Piety?” have shown, John’s language of ‘public confession’ (ὁμολογέω; e.g., Josephus, Ant. 5:52), ‘fidelity’ (πιστεύω) and ‘Messiah’ (Χριστός, Μεσσίας) is not apolitical or non-behavioral theological dogma; in fact, it is thoroughly political and would have had political implications within 1st century Roman Judea, as John 11:47–53 and 19:12 clearly demonstrate. That public ‘confession’ of allegiance and fidelity to Jesus as Israel’s Messiah would have caused a political stir with implications for how he and his followers would be perceived within the already contested space of the public synagogue is, to me, quite historically plausible. While it has nothing to do with a ‘Messiah,’ Josephus, War 2:320–24 gives us interesting comparative material for John 11:47–53. In this passage, he describes the chief priests’ (failed) attempt to persuade the Judean multitude gathered in the temple courts to make peace with the Romans and resist the zealotry of certain rebels led by one named Florus. As a part of this effort of persuasion, Josephus says, the priests brought out all of the temple’s holy vessels and presented them before the people

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The world depicted inside John’s text as it concerns “synagogues” seems to have solid contact with the social-historical world outside John’s text. If John knows the institution of the public synagogue, then, in my view, it most likely assumes within its narrative that Jews who confessed Jesus as Messiah in such settings, and who were consequently expelled from public assemblies for it, were not severed from “Judaism” wholesale or ejected from the Jewish ethnos. Just as in the Greco-Roman world, in the public politics of Jewish antiquity there were winners and losers in the competition for public influence. Being a loser in the public assembly did not necessarily entail one’s willing or forced departure from Jewish ethnic identity. One would hardly say this about Josephus, who was ousted from and, indeed, nearly killed by members of a public assembly in Tiberias (Vita 277–305), or about the Yaḥad–Essene group, which refused to participate in official Judean political life. If we recall from chapter 2, according to at least some Jewish and Roman sources, breaking away from one’s ethnos would entail much more than being thrown out of the public assembly, which was not an uncommon experience in antiquity for speakers with political ambitions.184 In John’s narrative, those who are made aposynagōgos have not in any observable way, to use the language of Tacitus (Hist. 5:5), “despised” their own Jewishness nor are they de-Judaized by the Ioudaioi, having their people, laws, land, and cult stripped away from them. More often than outright defecting, Jewish groups disconnected from the public assembly were compelled, whether for ideological or geographical reasons, to develop alternative modes of being Jewish or expressing their Jewish identity in ways that were not ultimately shaped around the public institutions of the ethnos. That is, they were propelled toward diasporic patterns of religion. From this perspective, John does not appear to advocate a break between Jews and those who had somehow left their Jewishness behind to follow Jesus.185 Instead, the Gospel’s story of aposynagōgos reflects the negotiation of institutional identity, that is, a movement away from an identity shaped around political integration and competition for influence within the public assembly toward an identity shaped around non-integration, a lack of influence within as visual aids, begging them not to provoke the Roman authorities and thus lose their nation’s precious ornaments of worship. If indeed they would only act civilly toward their overlords, they would “gain their country and freedom from all further sufferings” (2:324, trans. Whiston; see also War 2:411–17; Ant. 9:153–55; 12:160–66). The implication of this priestly entreaty, of course, is that if the people do not act civilly, the Romans will, as a result, take away their country and place of worship. 184 For sources, see Cirafesi, “John’s Ethnography of the Synagogue.” 185 As presented, e.g., in J. Ashton, The Gospel of John and Christian Origins (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2014).

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the public/civic sphere, and thus the need to anchor one’s institutional identity in belonging to an association.186 Thus, from the analytical perspective of our identity spectrum, for John, the story of Jesus and synagogue expulsion facilitates and legitimizes a transition from a priestly-oriented type of Jewishness toward the characteristics of a diasporic type;187 from a history of religions perspective, such a transition entails movement not from one ethno-religion to another but from one expression of that ethno-religious identity to another expression. 4

Conclusion

In this chapter, I have attempted to show that, in its account of Jesus in both temple and synagogue space, John reflects the identity characteristics of what Jonathan Z. Smith calls ‘diasporic religion.’ That is, it facilitates an understanding of ethno-religious identity predicated upon alternative modes of access to the Jewish ancestral cult and disconnected from the priestly-oriented public assembly. In this sense, the argument of this chapter affirms the long-held scholarly impulse to see inside the world of John’s text some sort of separation or ‘parting of ways’ unfolding. But it challenges the idea that this ‘parting’ 186 John’s Gospel does not appear to have a deep concern for associations; the only (integrated) association we see in it is the Pharisees. However, if we allow for some sort of relationship between the Gospel and the Letters of John, the formation of a diasporic association of Christ-followers  – a group perhaps still largely composed of Jews (see 3 John 7)  – seems to be what we see happening, especially in 3 John 6–10. There, the nature of the assembly (ἐκκλησία) is clearly not public but rather membership-based and thus, we may infer, open to Christ-fearing non-Jews as well. For a helpful discussion of the place of the Letters of John within the Johannine tradition, see J. Lieu, The Theology of the Johannine Epistles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 98–110. That John’s Gospel has some or even quite a close relationship with the Letters is a position taken up particularly in some German scholarship, e.g., M. Hengel, Die johanneische Frage: Ein Lösungsversuch mit einem Beitrag zur Apokalypse v. J. Frey, WUNT 67 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1993), 155–58; U. Schnelle, Einleitung in das Neue Testament, 4th ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht), 484, 501–503; J. Frey, Die johanneische Eschatologie, vol. 3, WUNT 117 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), 53–55. Cf. J. Beutler, Die Johannesbriefe, RNT (Regensburg: Pustet, 2000), 18–20. 187 This suggestion generally coheres with earlier historical theories of scholars like W.C. van Unnik and J.A.T. Robinson, who suggested that the purpose of John (“that you might believe that the Christ is Jesus, the son of God”; 20:31) fits remarkably well within the same setting in which the Lucan Paul proclaimed a similar message in synagogues of the geographical diaspora (Acts 9:20, 22; 17:2, 3; 18:5, 28). W.C. van Unnik, “The Purpose of St. John’s Gospel,” Studia Evangelica 1 (1959): 382–411; J.A.T. Robinson, “The Destination and Purpose of St. John’s Gospel,” NTS 6 (1960): 117–31.

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should be conceived as between Judaism and something other than Judaism. According to the analytical model presented in this study, if this were the case, we would expect to see a compositional strategy in John that strips the Jewish god of his Jewishness, severs his connection to the Jewish ethnos, and rejects – not simply reinterprets  – the legitimacy of the temple cult. This sort of dejudaization program is precisely the strategy employed in some early Christian literature penned by Gentiles beginning in the second century onward; in such sources, “God” is emptied of his ethnic connection to the Jewish people, becoming a universal “high” god in some sources, and the Jerusalem temple is repudiated as an absurd place for such a god to have ever dwelt.188 But this type of strategy is not what we see happening in John. “God” remains the Jewish god, and his connection with the Jewish ethnos remains fundamentally intact; after all, the very death of Jesus was ὑπὲρ τοῦ ἔθνους (11:51). While an alternative sanctuary is envisioned in the body of Jesus as a means to participate metaphorically in the worship of the temple cult, the physical temple in Jerusalem remains, for Jesus, his father’s house (2:16). And, while Christ-confessors are tossed from the public assembly, when read in an ancient context, they become losers in a high-stakes political contest, not separatists or separated from Judaism. 188 See P. Fredriksen and O. Irshai, “Christian Anti-Judaism: Polemics and Polices,” in The Cambridge History of Judaism, vol. 4, ed. S.T. Katz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 977–1034 (977–84); and E. Regev, “The Early Church Fathers on Sacrifices and Temple: Rejection, Substitution, or Metaphor?,” JJMJS 7 (2020): 116–40 (esp. pp. 119–23).

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Conclusion 1

What This Study Did Argue

This study has argued that, when we consider how certain categories of Jewish ethnicity  – peoplehood, laws, land, and national cult  – were variously, even irreconcilably, negotiated, interpreted and preformed in antiquity, John can be read as a work “within Judaism,” that is, as an expression of a diasporic Jewish identity. There is certainly conflict built into John’s composition, perhaps even some type of separation at work, but I have argued that this conflict and separation can be read as occurring between different modes of interpreting Jewishness. In other words, John does not envision a parting of ways between Jews and those who consider themselves Jews no longer; there is no break intended between “Judaism” and something other than Judaism; there is no motion filed that Jewish “Christ-confessors” are to abandon the Jewish ethnos; and there is no exhortation that Gentiles who wish to “see” Jesus (7:35; 12:20) should cut themselves off from Judaizing behavior and shape their own independent identity in antagonistic relationship to Judaism as a whole and to all Jews. Rather, the conflict in John can be described analytically as one between a ‘priestly-oriented’ type of Jewishness and a ‘diasporic’ type, with Jewishness remaining the soteriological medium for non-Jews becoming Christ-followers and thus “children of god.” Chapter 2 two set out to accomplish three things. The first was to engage critically recent scholarship on “Judaism” and the categories of “religion” and ‘ethnicity,’ particularly in the work of Steve Mason, Brent Nongbri, Paula Fredriksen, Seth Schwartz, and Daniel Schwartz. I presented Jews of antiquity as constituting an ethnos centered around, like other ethnē, the ethnic ‘sites of meaning-making’ of people/kinship, laws, land, and national cult. However, I also suggested that “religion” can still be a useful category but only as a secondorder analytical one that is never considered in isolation from other social and political institutions in antiquity. Second, since anyone claiming the Ioudaios label was engaged in negotiation of their ethnic identity via the sites of meaning-making, we can envision a higher-level unity of Jews at the level of the ethnic group, which transcended divisions between lower-level groups. Thus, on the one hand, some of the sharpest conflicts we see in the Second Temple period come at lower sociological levels, that is, between groups who were most similar, whether competing over the same institutions (e.g., Pharisees

© Wally V. Cirafesi, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004462946_008

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and Sadducees) or sharing a similar cultic ideology (e.g., Qumran group and the Jerusalem-based priesthood). On the other hand, I argued that expressions of Judaism from ca. 200 BCE–200 CE generally fell on two sides of a spectrum of ethnic identity: priestly-oriented forms, shaped around direct participation in the public administration of the land of Israel led by the Judean priesthood; and diasporic forms, characterized by (conceptually or geographically) remote and metaphorically reimagined categories of Jewish ethnic identity. Third, we outlined an approach to the term Ioudaios that is, in general, disinterested in the issue of modern translation and draws a distinction between translation and meaning. While Ioudaios always refers to a member of the Jewish ethnos, where and how an author places a group of Ioudaioi on the spectrum of Jewish identity is a product of that author’s discursive activity. Chapter 3, devoted to John and the concept of ‘peoplehood,’ built a reading of John’s Ioudaioi that suggests that they are Jews who take the genealogical exclusionary approach to defining Jewishness and, by implication, membership in the covenant people of the Jewish god. By looking in particular at John 7:1– 10:21, I suggested that John does not attack Jewishness in general but specifically priestly-oriented approaches predicated upon genealogy. John instead takes a ‘cultural’ approach to peoplehood, that is, an approach shaped around beliefs and practices that can be adopted rather than one’s blood birth. We saw that, while John includes within its broader vision of peoplehood non-Jewish groups, as non-Jews – that is, Samaritans and Judaizing Greeks do not need to ‘convert’ and become Jews  – these identities are, nevertheless, mediated by and soteriologically dependent upon Jewishness: “salvation is by means of the Jews” (4:22) and the “other sheep” must be brought into the “fold” to establish “one flock” (10:16). While John rejects the Ioudaioi’s restrictive genealogical definition of covenant membership, the Gospel also uses the ethno-religious mechanism of “divine genealogy” to broaden the ethnic scope of the “children” who have the Jewish god as their father (τὰ τέκνα τοῦ θεοῦ), in contrast to the ambivalence of the equally ethnically broad category of “the world.” Chapter 4 argued that John’s narrative presents us with two competing approaches to the ancestral law and its laws. One approach is that of Judean Jews and their leadership, an interpretation of the law as the statutory constitution of the ethnos, with a hermeneutic ready to defend against religio-political threats of blasphemy (cf. 1 Maccabees or Jubilees). Within John’s narrative, the patterns of religion indicative of this approach are the use of capital punishment (John 5:18; 10:31; 19:7), emphasis on immersion for purification, and the temple-centric observance of appearance festivals. The other approach is that of the Johannine Jesus, although he himself engages, even participates,

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in priestly-oriented patterns of religion. He acknowledges the judicial requirement of the law of testimony (8:17), and he criticizes his opponents for seeking the death penalty for him, asserting that by doing so they are not practicing the law (7:19). Jesus is also ritually immersed and goes up to Jerusalem for Sukkot (7:10). However, John’s presentation of Jesus and the law clearly moves in the direction of the messianic (1:41, 45), the eschatological and cosmic (1:29 [36]; 7:37–39), and is inclined toward metaphorical reinterpretation. If in portions of Philo’s thought there is continuity between philosophy and the Mosaic law, in Johannine thought there is a similar but even tighter continuity between the law and Jesus, the law’s authoritative teacher. The major argument of this chapter was that John’s negotiation of the ancestral law and its laws reflects conflict and movement that nevertheless fit within the spectrum of Jewish identity. There is no evidence that John de-Judaizes the law or advocates for adherence to the laws of another ethnos. Chapter 5 argued that what scholars have sometimes interpreted as John’s departure, neglect, or ambivalence toward an important category of Jewishness – the land – is instead part of John’s strategy of moving from one expression of Jewishness to another. The concept of the ancestral land as a political entity controlled by Jews certainly appears on the pages of John’s Gospel but not on the lips of the Johannine Jesus. His task is consistently to move his interlocutors beyond the land’s borders and reorient them to the world to come. Jesus is the king of Israel, but at the same time his kingdom is not of this world; Jerusalem is home to his father’s house, but a time has come in which his father cannot be adequately worshipped there; and while his death atones for the land, it also triggers the eschatological regathering, but with unity in ethnic relations as the end goal. But this re-territorializing strategy is not a de-Judaizing one, nor should it be confused with ethnic defection, which, according to at least Tacitus and Philo, would involve disowning or forsaking one’s homeland and joining oneself to the ancestral land of another. In chapter 6, I attempted to show that, in its account of Jesus in both temple and synagogue space, John reflects the characteristics of what Jonathan Smith calls “diasporic religion.” That is, it facilitates and legitimizes for its market audience an understanding of ethno-religious identity predicated upon alternative modes of access to the Jewish ancestral cult and assumes a form of socio-religious organization disconnected from the priestly-oriented public assembly in the land of Israel. For John, the body of Jesus represents this alternative mode of access to the divine, and we can plausibly imagine that John’s narrative presupposes that those Christ-confessors who had been ousted from the public assembly would have organized themselves into a non-integrated

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voluntary association. The argument of this chapter affirmed the long-held scholarly impulse to see in John’s account a sort of separation or ‘parting of ways’ unfolding, whether during Jesus’s own life-time or around the turn of the 2nd century CE. But it has challenged the idea that this ‘parting’ should be conceived as between Judaism and something that is not Judaism. According to the model presented in this study, if this was the case, we would expect to see strategies in John, as we see in some early Gentile Christian authors, that de-Judaize the ethnic god and the temple cult and make the people of that god a new non-Jewish “Israelite race.” Rather, I have argued that what we see developed in John is an alternative vision of the ethnic category of god and national cult with alternative modes presented of worshiping the ethnic deity, which, of course for John, are fundamentally shaped around one’s loyalty to Jesus. 2

What This Study Did Not Argue

For clarity’s sake, it might be helpful now to supplement the above summary of arguments with just a few words about what, on a general level, I did not intend to argue in this study. First, lest the reader get the wrong impression from my focus on Jewish ethnicity, this study did not argue that ‘christology,’ typically conceived in Johannine scholarship as a ‘theological’ category, is unimportant for John. John is clearly preoccupied, obsessed even, with presenting a portrait of Jesus that puts him squarely within the realm of ancient Jewish conceptions of divinity. This is undebatable. What the study intended to show, however, is that ‘christology,’ John’s presentation of Jesus as Messiah, needs to be viewed fundamentally as an ethnic category that includes but intends to move beyond the domain of individual propositional belief. Of course, John wishes to persuade readers that Jesus is the divine Logos (1:14), the ascending and descending son of man (3:13), and one with the god of Israel (10:30). But John also emphasizes that, as an Ioudaios, Jesus’s identity is embedded within and his actions have implications for a particular ethnos (4:9; 11:51; 19:35). He is the Jewish Messiah, whose coming the Jewish ancestral law (as well as that of the Samaritans [4:25]) foretold (1:41, 45), and whose death has an atoning significance for the Jewish ethnos as well as other ethnic identities that are attached to it (10:16; 11:50–52). In other words, the identity and activity of the Johannine Jesus – as Logos, as Messiah, and as a human – is predicated upon his Jewish ethnicity. While the centrality of Jesus as the Jewish god’s divine son certainly distinguishes John as unique within the context of other early Jewish texts, it is only when one conceives of (1) John’s ‘christology’ as strictly a dogmatic category from the perspective of later Christian theology, and (2) ‘Jesus’ as a figure

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through the lens of later rabbinic criticism of Christianity, that adherence to John’s Jesus becomes incompatible with Jewishness.1 Second, reading John as a Jewish text does not mean it lacks features that cohere with a Hellenistic context. As discussed in the Introduction and at points throughout the study, the strong dichotomy between Hellenism/ Judaism in antiquity is a false one. Scholarship of the last forty years by the likes of Martin Hengel, Eric Gruen, Lee Levine, and Troels Engberg-Pedersen have put this observation on firm historical ground. Third, the study did not argue that John must have a Jewish audience to be “within Judaism.” While the study adopted the perspective of historical minimalism, refraining from judgment on the ethnic identities of John’s historical or implied audience, as well as on its authorship, I wish to note here that a “John within Judaism” perspective does not require that the Gospel have a soley Jewish (or Jewish Christ-following) audience market. As chapter 3 demonstrated, many ancient Jews, whether Christ-followers or not, were occupied with issuing instruction concerning how non-Jews could or should relate to the Jewish community. Our sources suggest that Jews invited – or could require – a range of possible Judaizing behaviors from Gentiles, from full ethnic “conversion” to general sympathy. Paul’s writings, as shown in some recent research from the “Paul within Judaism” School, are good examples of such Jewish instruction for Gentiles who were likely already in some way sympathetic to Judaism: while Paul stoutly opposes Gentile ethnic “conversion” through male circumcision, the “ritual demands” of his gospel, as Paula Fredriksen has argued, represent his effort to “Judaize the nations.”2 Paul’s, and perhaps also John’s, intent to include Gentiles in the covenant between the Jewish god and the Jewish people through Christ-adherence, and thus some level of Jewish practice and belief, is not a program of Jewish cultural and covenantal expropriation but rather a program of Gentile Judaization. I mention the analogy of Paul’s letters here not to suggest that he and the author of John were up to the same thing but to illustrate the point that the possibility – and it is, recall, only a possibility – of a Gentile audience for John does not mean that we must understand the Gospel to be in the business of expropriating Jewishness and disinheriting the Jewish people of their 1 As demonstrated in D. Boyarin, “The Gospel of the Memra: Jewish Binitarianism and the Prologue to John,” HTR 94.3 (2001): 243–84; and in the recent collection of essays, B. Reynolds and G. Boccaccini, eds., Reading the Gospel of John’s Christology as Jewish Messianism: Royal, Prophetic, and Divine Messiahs, AJEC 106 (Leiden: Brill, 2018). 2 On this point, see especially P. Fredriksen, “Judaizing the Nations: The Ritual Demands of Paul’s Gospel,” NTS 56.2 (2010): 232–52, presented more recently in her Paul: The Pagan’s Apostle (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017).

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covenant status.3 After all, John explicitly associates “salvation” with the Jewish people (John 4:22) and interprets the death of Jesus to be “in behalf of” the Jewish ethnos (11:51–52; 18:14, where λαός is used). What is the significance of this Johannine proclamation if, in the end, John’s believes that the Jewish people in toto have been “cast out of the covenant”?4 John certainly aims rhetorically to disassociate its readers from the type of Jewish identity expressed by the Ioudaioi. But I am not convinced by the view that, by way of this rhetoric, the Gospel intends to expropriate Jewishness from Jews and bestow it on Johannine believers, who, because they are not called Ioudaioi, “become Jew-ish without being Jewish,”5 even though there is no doubt that they are to be understood as Jews within the textual universe of the Gospel. Such an interpretation, to my mind, raises serious questions, and not because it necessitates a Gentile audience for John. As I argued in chapter 3, John 7:35 and 12:20 do hint at John’s interest in a Gentile mission. However, a mission aimed at Gentile inclusion, the position for which I argued, is fundamentally different than a mission aimed at Gentile usurpation of Jewish covenantal identity. In my opinion, to argue the latter successfully, more is required than the evidence of John 7:35/12:20 and Jesus’s general conflict with the Ioudaioi throughout the Gospel. In sum, a Gentile audience for John would not, in and of itself, render John “anti-Jewish” or outside Judaism but rather establish it as another “Jewish pattern of universalism.”6 3

What Next? How John Became ‘Christian’

For some readers, this study will be seen as, at best, incomplete, and at worst, insufficient, because it stops short of addressing the next logical question related to the topic of John and Judaism. Even if John should be read within a first-century context as a Jewish text, how do we explain the processes involved in its ‘becoming Christian,’ that is, its reception and use, perhaps as early as the mid-second century but certainly by the third century, within decidedly nonJewish Christian discourses? In this respect, Denise Buell’s call for the necessity of answering such a question in any study of “ethnic reasoning” in the New 3 As is argued throughout in A. Reinhartz, Cast Out of the Covenant: Jews and Anti-Judaism in the Gospel of John (Lanham, MD: Lexington/Fortress Academic, 2018). 4 I am, of course, alluding here to the main title of Reinhartz’s book, Cast Out of the Covenant. My comments, offered here in respectful disagreement, largely have her book in mind. 5 Reinhartz, Cast Out of the Covenant, 62. 6 To invoke the subtitle of Terence Donaldson’s book, Judaism and the Gentiles: Jewish Patterns of Universalism (to 135 CE) (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2007).

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Testament is heard loud and clear.7 My answer to this call, however, is rather simple: answering the question of how John became a non-Jewish ‘Christian’ text, part of the Christian canon of authoritative ‘scripture,’ and even a weapon used by Christians against Jews, demands its own book-length study, outfitted with its own research questions and reception-historical methodological framework. In other words, I support Buell’s claim; it is, indeed, work that needs to be done – just not in this book. What I suggested at the start of this study in the Introduction, so now I reaffirm in its conclusion: the study of John’s ‘Christianizing,’ including its use within Christian anti-Jewish rhetoric from antiquity to the present, resides in the realm of its reception rather than its inception history. While a text’s inception and reception are two sides of the same coin, they are indeed two sides, that is, two different angles from which to read a single text, in our case, John’s Gospel. The quest to understand John within an initial first-century Mediterranean environment is not only a legitimate scholarly task but also a necessary one, and one with important implications for how we today think about John’s intentions and the nature of the ancient discourses in which it participated. This certainly does not mean that we turn a blind eye or sweep under the proverbial rug John’s role in the centuries of pain and vicious ‘othering’ that its anti-Jewish readers have promulgated. But it does mean that, by using the best critical tools we currently have at our disposal, it is, in fact, possible to rethink our understanding of John not merely against the “background”

7 D.K. Buell, “Challenges and Strategies for Speaking about Ethnicity in the New Testament and New Testament Studies,” SEÅ 79 (2014): 33–51, where she says on pp. 38–39: “Nonetheless, even if the majority of the writings in the New Testament were composed and initially circulated as Jewish texts, this insight leaves suspended or unarticulated how this identification and the ethnic reasoning within these writings relates to later Christian collective self-understandings. In other words, understanding these texts as Jewish and the interpretation of, say, Paul’s arguments within an intra-Jewish context of debate, does not illuminate the afterlives and transformations of these Jewish writings into Christian ones. Paul’s letters are those of a “radical Jew” but they also become and function as Christian documents. It is not sufficient to consider ethnic reasoning in New Testament writings as a marker of their Jewishness, as I shall explain further in the next section. We must not simply interpret the writings contained in the New Testament in their first- or early second-century contexts; contrariwise, neither can we treat these writings simply as Christian scripture. We must also lift up the ways that they have been differently interpreted and enacted – with a view to the shifting claims about how and in what ways Christian belonging relates to other forms of collective belonging. Jewish texts such as Paul’s letters and the gospels become Christian ones in their reception and use. Moreover, ethnic reasoning forms part of the discourse of early Christian self-definition. We need an approach that can attend to how these texts can and have sustained shifting collective identifications.”

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of 1st century Judaism but as actually a part of its fluid and flexible fabric. This is what the current study has attempted to do. If, in the end, this study draws charges of doing “apologetics,” getting John “off the hook,” or transforming John into a politically correct document of the twenty-first century, I would suggest to the reader one final point. The idea presented in this book, that John is a Jewish text, engaged in constructing a kind of Jesus-oriented Jewish identity, will be perceived by at least some Jews and Christians today as not at all politically (or religiously) correct. Some modern Jews might not necessarily want John to be a Jewish text. Some modern Christians might find the idea difficult that John envisions a life lived Jewishly as a presupposition and prerequisite for salvation. My aim in this study, of course, has been neither to proffer a friendly reading of John to modern Jews nor alienate John from contemporary Christian communities. But it should be noted that, while my reading of John within Judaism might help address some of today’s problems, it will surely open us up to others. Nevertheless, ending a book like this with the prospect of such problems is, in fact, a fine place to start new discussions and work toward new ideas about John’s place, or perhaps better, places, both in antiquity and today.

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Index of Ancient Sources Hebrew Bible Genesis 134 n.21 1 1:1–5 134 12:1–3 86 15:27 92 15:30–32 92 15:33–34 92 17:12 91 17:9–14 86 2:2 173 21:8–14 105 28 210 Exodus 16 262 16:1–8 139 16:15 139 16:32–33 267 237 n.58 25:7 26:33 238 28 266 28:4 237 n.58 28:11 266 28:21 266 237 n.58 28:31 28:36 265 237 n.58 29:5 136 n.28 32–34 33:12–34:9 136 134–135 n.24 33:17–23 33:20–23 136 134–135 n.24 34:6 134–135 n.24 34:6–7 237 n.58 35:9 Leviticus 11–16 150 11–15 147 12:4 150–151 14:13 150–151 14:50 163 14:51 163 14:52 163

14:6 163 15 150, 152 15:11 153 15:13 163 15:16 150 15:31 150–151 237 n.58 16:13 19 155 n.89 19:18 140, 141 23 165 138, 144 24:16 Numbers 11:4–9 262 266, 267 16 16:5–7 266 16:11 266 19 147 19:17 163 25:11–13 249 n.88 25:7–13 56 28:9–10 172 35:30 144 Deuteronomy 187 n.10 1:21 187 n.10 1:8 3:18 187 n.10 187 n.10 3:28 6:4 105 165 n.121 10:6 16:1–17 165 138, 144 17:6 53 n.83 17:8–13 17:18 53 n.83, 99 n.83 21:6–7 153 160 n.109 21:6 26:3 86 n.42 26:5–10 170 30:4 100 165 n.121 30:6 31:9 53 n.83, 99 n.83 32:5–6 107 33:4 130 n.12

320

Index of Ancient Sources

Judges 19:21

160 n.109

1 Samuel 25:41

160 n.109

2 Samuel 2:6 8:17 10:2 11:8

134–135 n.24 55 n.91 134–135 n.24 160 n.109

1 Kings 207 n.82 5:5 225 8:12–26 225 63 n.122 8:27 2 Kings 207 n.82 221–222 n.1 17:26–17 24:10–17 188 Isaiah 1:10–20 213 255 n.114 26:1 42:6 61 n.115 49:6 61 n.115, 100 51:17 56–57 n.96 56–57 n.96 51:22–23 56–57 n.96 51:23 53:14 262 61 n.115 60:3 63:16 107 64:8 107 61 n.115 66:18 Jeremiah 2:13 163 165 n.121 4:4 7:1–15 213 65, 159, 163 17:13 114 n.134 23:1–8 56–57 n.96 25:15 114 n.134 31:1–10 41:7 100 44 188 Ezekiel 1:1 210 1:4–28 235

5:1–11 213 5:8–11 213 236 n.54 10:2 10:6 236 n.54 236 n.54 10:9 10:9–19 235 114 n.134 34:5–6 36:25 65 37:20–24 115 114 n.134 37:21–28 55 n.91 40:46 47 254 47:1–2 170 Joel 3:18 145 Zephaniah 2:11

214 n.106

Zechariah 237 n.58 3:4 14 254 14:7–8 174 14:8 163 170, 174 14:16–19 Malachi 1:6–2:9 213 214 n.106 1:11 2:4–7 249 n.88 2:7 249 n.88 3:1–4 249, 249 n.88 3:1–3 213 Psalms 24:4 153 160 n.109 25:6 30:17 134–135 n.24 134–135 n.24 33:5 134–135 n.24 33:18 56–57 n.96 60:3 69:9 249 160 n.109 72:13 75:8 56–57 n.96 78:24 139 139, 144 82:6 266 n.155 106:16–17 146:2 100

321

Index of Ancient Sources Proverbs 8 31:26 Job

21:20

Song of Songs 5:2

134 n.21 134–135 n.24 56–57 n.96 160 n.109

Daniel 144 n.51, 237 n.58 7 7:9–14 236–237 7:13–14 181–182 Ezra 222 n.3 1:1–7 1:2–4 188 1:3 74–75 117 n.143 1:5 2:59–63 89 3:1–4 169 117 n.143 3:12 7:9–10 127 99 n.83 7:11 7:25 127 67 n.135, 74 8:17 10:1–44 89 Nehemiah 7:61–65 89 8–9 225 8:1–2 127 99 n.83 8:7–12 8:14–18 169 9:1–2 127 99 n.83 13:13 13:23–27 89 1 Chronicles 24 53 n.84 24:3 55 n.91 28:13 260 2 Chronicles 17:7–9 53 n.83, 99 n.83 99 n.83 19:8–11 29:6–9 213

New Testament Matthew 3:13 155 5:35 212 5:43–44 140 n.39 8:4 133 12:6 251 12:8 182 15:21–28 201 111 n.119 18:15–20 140 n.39 19:19 19:7 133 21:45–46 231 141 n.46 22:36–39 22:39 140 n.39 22:4 133 88 n.49 23:15 24:1–2 249 88 n.49 25:31–46 26:61 248–249 258 n.124 27:6 Mark 1:9 155 1:44 133 2:26 172 2:28 182 149 n.70 7:1–23 141 n.45 7:1–13 7:1–4 48 n.67 7:10 133 149 n.70 7:15–23 10:3 133 141 n.46 12:29–34 12:31 140 n.39 12:41–43 258 n.124 13:1–2 249 14:58 248–249 Luke 2:1–2 258 n.124 3:21 155 227, 227 n.24, 245 4:16–31 223 n.7 4:16–30 5:14 133 6:5 182 140 n.39 6:27

322 Luke (cont.) 6:35 140 n.39 10:25–28 141 n.46 21:5–6 249 John 1:1–18 140 1:1–5 255 1:10 134 1:11 134 1:12 109, 120 n.151, 121, 122, 217 1:12–13 120, 217–218 n.122 1:13 120 n.151 1:14 134, 134–135 n.24, 184, 247, 260–261, 282 1:14–18 134 n.24, 136 n.28, 248 n.82 1:16 134, 134 n.24, 135, 135 n.26 1:16–17 132, 133–134 n.19 1:17–18 135, 136 1:17 133, 133 n.18, 133 n.19, 134, 134–135 n.24, 136, 136 n.27, 137 n.31 1:18 136, 136 n.30, 137, 183, 268 1:19–25 116 n.142 1:19 116, 116 n.141, 116 n.142, 117 n.143 1:24–25 116 n.142 1:24 116 n.142 1:25–34 155 1:28 209 n.90 1:29 167, 183, 216 n.115, 281 1:31–34 160 1:31–33 146 1:33 155, 162 1:36 167 1:41 41 n.43, 138, 183, 281, 282 1:43 209 1:45 138, 183, 281, 282 1:47 102, 217 1:49 207 1:50 207 1:51 210 n.92 2:1–11 155

Index of Ancient Sources 2:6

16 n.54, 96 n.76, 119, 142–143, 145, 146 n.58, 155, 156, 160 2:9 161–162 n.115 2:10 145 2:11 145, 155–156, 209 2:13–22 249–250, 254, 258 2:13 15 n.49, 96 n.76, 119, 166 2:14–17 175, 212, 249, 261 2:15 249 n.88 2:16 213, 247, 278 2:17 249, 249 n.89 2:18–22 249 2:18 117 2:19 248, 248 n.85 2:20 247 2:21–22 247 n.81, 248 2:21 214, 247–248, 250, 251, 251 n.94 2:22 138 n.34, 250 2:23 166 3:1–10 120 n.153 3:3–8 120 3:5–6 106 n.107, 120 3:11–15 211 3:22–26 155, 160 3:25–26 155 3:1 96 n.76 3:2 155 3:3 106 n.107, 120 n.151, 210–211 3:35 266 3:4 120 n.151 (2x) 120 n.151, 210–211 3:5 3:6 120 n.151 (2x) 3:7 120 n.151 3:8 120 n.151 3:13 267, 268, 282 3:16 125 3:25 48 n.67, 111 n.119, 146, 147 3:26 146 n.59 164 n.120, 210 4 4:1–42 78, 115, 142 4:1–2 155 164 n.120 4:4–26 4:4 210 4:9–10 126

Index of Ancient Sources 4:9

17 n.57, 95, 96, 96 n.76, 118 n.144, 163, 163 n.119, 253, 282 4:10–11 162 4:10–14 146 4:10 163 4:13–15 163–164 4:19 253 252 n.98 4:20–21 4:20–22 252 n.103 164, 213 4:20–24 251, 253, 254, 255 4:20–26 4:20 213, 247, 252 n.98, 253 96, 116, 119 n.149, 143, 4:22 253–254, 280, 284 4:22–24 252 4:23–24 164 135 n.25, 282 4:25 4:28 163 4:31–38 210 4:34 210 4:39–42 142 15, 125 4:42 4:44 205 4:45 264 4:50–51 210 145, 181 5:1–47 5:1–17 178 5:1–15 146 5:1–9 156 15 n.49, 96 n.76, 118 5:1 n.144, 119, 142–143, 166 41 n.43 5:2 5:3–4 157 n.100 157 n.100 5:7 5:8 176 175, 176 5:10–47 96 n.76, 176 5:10 157, 159 n.107 5:14 5:16 166, 176 138 n.35, 176, 181 5:17 5:17–30 183 5:17–47 181 5:18–47 138 138, 176, 177, 182, 280 5:18 181, 181 n.169, 182 5:19–30

323 5:20 266 138, 181 5:23 5:25–27 138 138, 138 n.34 5:39 5:44 139 5:45 139, 144 8 n.20, 138–139, 180 5:45–47 n.164 111–112 n.122 5:46–47 217–218 n.122 5:46 5:47 139 265 n.147, 267 6 211, 263 6:1–15 96 n.76, 119, 166, 211 6:4 n.96 6:13 265 6:14 125 209, 211, 263 6:15 6:22–40 264 96 n.76 6:22–59 212, 265, 274 6:22–71 262 n.139, 274 n.179 6:24 6:24–25 265 262 n.139, 274 n.179 6:25 262, 263 6:25–71 212, 263, 265, 266 6:27 112 n.124, 262 n.140 6:28 6:29 112 n.124, 262 n.140, 263 263, 264 6:30 6:31–32 139 6:31–58 140 139, 267, 268 6:33 6:34 264 139, 263 6:35 263, 264, 264 n.144 6:36 6:37 264 267, 268 6:38 6:40 263 6:40–59 264 118, 263, 264, 264 6:41 n.144, 265, 267 6:41–42 268 6:41–59 264 6:42 267 6:43 267 19, 139, 140, 262 6:45 6:46 268

324 John (cont.) 6:47 263 6:49 264 6:50 267 6:50–51 268 6:51 216 n.115, 267, 268 6:51–53 267 6:52 118, 264, 264 n.144, 265 6:53 263, 264, 265, 267 6:53–57 173–174 6:58 264, 267, 268 6:59 142, 261, 262, 262 n.139, 266 n.152, 274 n.179 6:60 266 n.152f 6:60–70 266 n.152 6:60–71 264 6:61 264, 267 212, 263, 265, 267, 6:62 268 6:64 263 6:66 266 n.152 6:69 175, 263, 266 7:1–10:21 97, 98, 258, 280 7:2–10:21 116, 126 7–10 259, 274 7–9 164 7 101 n.92, 181, 260, 265 n.147 7:1 118, 262 n.139, 265, 268–269, 274 n.179 7:1–5 259 7:1–2 118 n.144 7:2 96 n.76, 119, 166 7:3–4 258 7:7 125 182–183, 281 7:10 7:10–36 264 n.146 7:11 15 n.49 7:12 260 7:14–24 99 7:14 101 n.92, 142, 258, 259 7:15 99, 258, 259 7:17 101 n.92, 112 7:19–24 100, 101 n.92, 104, 142, 175, 176, 176–177 n.154

Index of Ancient Sources 7:19 7:20

99, 180, 182, 260, 281 96 n.76, 99–100, 115, 259 7:22–24 181 7:22 133 n.18, 139 n.36, 178 n.159 7:23 177, 178, 178 n.159, 179 7:25 260 7:25–28 259 7:25–27 259 7:26 98 n.81, 259, 264 n.146 7:28 98 n.81, 142, 258 7:30 260 7:30–32 259 7:32 260 7:34 100, 102 7:34–36 101 n.92 7:35 15, 78, 99, 100, 101, 101 n.90, 101 n.92, 102, 106, 113, 113 n.128, 114–115 n.135, 115 n.137, 116, 126, 142, 217 n.119, 217 n.121, 217 n.122, 279, 284 7:35–36 164 7:37–38 164 7:37–39 155, 162, 163, 164, 174, 183, 254, 255, 281 7:37 98 n.81 7:38 138 n.34, 146, 164 7:42 138 n.34 7:45–52 120 7:47 260 7:51 138 8 108 8:12 167, 174 8:17–18 144 8:17 138, 142, 182, 281 8:19–29 144 8:20 142, 258, 274 8:21 105 8:21–59 96 8:24 105 8:30–31 102, 261 8:30–59 102 8:31 96 n.76 8:31–58 108–109 n.114

325

Index of Ancient Sources 8:31–59 8:31–32

3 n.8, 260, 261 102, 103, 103 n.95, 105, 260 3 n.7 8:31–47 8:33 103 8:34–35 104–105 8:34–36 260–261 103 n.95, 104 8:34–38 103, 105, 260 8:37 19, 105, 105 n.104, 126 8:38 105, 109, 110 8:39–47 8:39–40 105, 106, 106 n.105 8:40 102–103, 105, 260 105, 105 n.104, 106, 8:41 106 n.106, 120 n.151, 121 8:42 107 8:42–43 108 2, 3 n.7, 105, 107, 108 8:44 8:46 105, 108 8:46–47 108 19, 126 8:47 100, 108, 115 8:48 8:54 260–261 108, 260–261 8:55 8:58 106–107 98 n.81, 260, 261 8:59 8:59–9:1 159 98 n.81 9–10 9 111 n.119, 116 n.142, 269 9:1–41 110 146, 156 9:1–7 120 n.151 9:1 9:2–3 159 110, 120 n.151 9:2 9:3 159 9:4–5 158 9:4 158 98 n.81, 158, 159, 160, 9:7 164 9:11 160 116 n.142, 175, 178 9:13–17 9:15 160 110 n.117, 111, 178 9:16 120 n.151 9:19 9:20 120 n.151

9:22

9, 10 n.31, 116–117 n.142, 117, 269, 270 9:24 111 9:24–34 111 111 n.122 9:28–29 9:29 111 9:30 112 9:31 19, 112, 113, 126 120 n.151 9:32 9:34 110, 111 n.119, 159 9:35–38 182 9:35–41 160 9:39–41 158, 160 9:41 110 n.117, 111 10:1–18 114 10:7–18 213 216 n.115 10:11 10:12 114, 271 216 n.115 10:15 10:16 100, 113, 114, 114 n.133, 115, 116, 122, 123, 219, 280, 282 10:17–18 116 10:19 115 10:21 158 10:22 166 15 n.49 10:22–23 10:22–39 174, 258, 260, 261 258, 274 10:23 175, 282 10:30 10:30–34 260 182, 280 10:31 138, 175 10:33 138 n.34, 142 10:34 10:34–36 139 10:34–38 144 138 n.34, 142, 175 10:35 10:36 174 218 n.125 11:1–46 11:4–16 209 11:17–27 250 96 n.76 11:19 11:27 125 11:31 96 n.76 96 n.76 11:45 11:45–48 260 11:45–54 117 11:47 231

326 John (cont.) 11:47–48 260 11:47–50 260 11:47–52 175 n.150, 214, 215 11:47–53 121, 122, 275 n.183 11:48 122, 215, 215 n.114, 247, 252 n.98 11:50–52 216 n.115, 282 11:50 215 11:51–52 116, 122, 175, 216, 217, 218, 218 n.126, 284 11:51 125, 215, 216 n.115, 282 11:52 114 n.133, 114 n.135, 121, 122, 122 n.163, 123, 172, 215, 216, 217, 217 n.122 11:54 118 n.144 11:55 96 n.76, 119, 166 12 15 12:1 15 n.49 12:9 96 n.76 12:11 96 n.76 12:12–15 212 12:13 207, 212 12:19 125 12:20–22 217 n.119 12:20 15, 78, 113, 113 n.128, 114 n.135, 115 n.137, 116, 126, 164, 279, 284 12:21 212 12:23–26 115 n.137 12:31 108, 125 12:38–41 114 n.135 12:41 268 12:42 9, 231 n.39, 269 12:46 125 12:47 125 13–17 96 n.76, 155 n.89 13 160 13:1 166 13:3–11 160 13:5 160 13:6 160 13:8 160 13:9–10 160 13:10–11 146, 161, 183 13:10 160, 161 13:11 161

Index of Ancient Sources 13:12 160 13:14 160 13:18 138 n.34 13:27 108 13:30 155 13:34 140 13:34–35 141 13:35 141 14:1–4 213 14:2 256 14:2–3 255 14:6 19, 256, 256 n.120 14:9 268 14:15–16 141 14:17 254 14:21 141 14:30 108, 125 15:3 146 15:12–13 141 15:12–15 141 15:13 216 n.115 15:18–19 125 15:25 138 n.34, 142, 144 15:26 254 16:2 9, 144, 260, 269 16:11 108, 125 16:13 254 16:21 120 n.151 (2x) 17:11–19 202 n.66 17:12 138 n.34 17:14 125 17:14–18 107, 108 17:15 107 n.110 17:18 125 17:20 114 n.132 18–20 96 n.76 18–19 117 18:14 216 n.115, 284 18:19 142 18:19–38 192 n.28 18:20 96 n.76, 118 n.144, 119 n.146, 125, 258, 274 18:31 138, 142 18:35 95, 96, 96 n.76, 125, 207, 215, 215 n.112 18:36 211 18:37 120 n.151 18:38 96 n.76

327

Index of Ancient Sources 19–20 250 19:6–7 138 19:7 117, 127, 138, 182, 280 19:10 207 19:12 138, 207, 260, 275 n.181 19:13 41 n.43 167, 173–174 19:14 41 n.43 19:17 19:20 41 n.43, 96 n.76 249–250 n.89 19:23–24 19:24 138 n.34 138 n.34 19:28 19:31 167 168 n.131 19:31–37 23 n.77, 282 19:35 138 n.34 19:36 138 n.34 19:37 96 n.76 19:38 96 n.76, 119 19:40 96 n.76, 119 19:42 277 n.187 20:31 41 n.43 20:16 20:9 138 n.34 21:1–3 213 21:11 155 Acts 3:11 258 55 n.91 4:1 5:12 258 55 n.91, 230 5:17 101 n.89 6:1 6:13–14 252 n.98 9:20 277 n.187 277 n.187 9:22 101 n.89 9:29 11:20 101 n.89 13:43 112 n.123 112 n.123 13:50 85, 101 n.92 14:1 15 88 n.49 15:5 47 n.65, 88 n.49, 230 15:21 227 120 n.151 16:1–3 16:14 112 n.123 112 n.123 17 101 n.92 17:1

17:2 277 n.187 277 n.187 17:3 17:4 101 n.92, 112 n.123 85, 101 n.92 18:4 18:5 277 n.187 18:28 277 n.187 67 n.135 19:14 22:3 37–38 n.30 37–38 n.30, 47 n.65 23:6 23:7–8 55 24:5 230 26:5 230 Romans 2:25–29 2:29 3:1–2 8:16 8:21 9:6–13 9:8

62 n.117 165 n.121 165 n.121 121 n.157 121 n.157 107 n.109 121 n.157

1 Corinthians 3:16–17 5:7 11:19

63 n.123, 243 n.76 168 n.131 230 n.36

2 Corinthians 5:1 236–237 63 n.123, 243 n.76 6:14–7:1 Galatians 1 1:13–14 2:14

36 n.26 37–38 n.30, 42 37–38 n.30

Ephesians 2:20–22

63 n.123, 243 n.76

Philippians 121 n.157 2:15 3:5 43 1 Timothy 3:15

63 n.123, 243 n.76

Philemon 3:5 43

328

Index of Ancient Sources

Hebrews 4:16 7:25 10:1 10:22 11:6 12:18–24 12:22

256 n.120 256 n.120 256 n.120 256 n.120 256 n.120 243 n.76 256 n.120

1 Peter 2:3–6

243 n.76

1 John 140 n.42 2:7–8 2:7 140 2:8 140 3:11 140 4:6 254 2 John 5

140, 140 n.42

3 John 6–10 7

277 n.186 277 n.186

Revelation 257 237 n.58 1:13–16 7:9 66 21:22 66 Philo De agricultura (Agr.) 65

62 n.120

De cherubim (Cher.) 180 n.167 86–90 87 181 95 154 De confusione linguarum (Conf.) 78 198 De vita contemplative (Contempl.) 11 242 241 n.70 12

241 n.70 21 241 n.70 30–34 64–82 240 n.67 66–67 242 80 242 81–82 242 De virtutibus (Virt.) 148 n.68 57 65 130, 183 83 n.28 102–104 32–33, 63, 86, 130 102–103 205 n.77 102 104 187 108 187 63, 130 179 189 82 Quaestiones et solutiones in Exodum (Quaest. Exod.) 44 n.53, 83 n.28, 85 2:2 Hypothetica (Hypoth.) 7:11–14

53 n.82, 173

De specialibus legibus (Spec.) 1:52 187 1:66 63 2:162–175 243 187 n.9 2:166 187, 187 n.9 2:170 3:126–128 260 53 n.83, 62 n.118 4:190–191 In Flaccum (Flacc.) 45–47 45–46

62, 72 197, 208 n.86, 214 n.105 197, 198 46 63, 130 50 116 170

De fuga et invention (Fug.) 40–43 154 80–81 154 62 n.118, 243, 255 108–112 112 154

329

Index of Ancient Sources Legatio ad Gaium (Legat.) 62 n.120 205 281–284 197 62 n.120 281 Legum allegoriae (Leg.) 1:5–6 173, 180 n.167 180 n.167 1:16 243 n.78 315 De somniis (Somn.) 63, 243, 251 n.94 1:149 2:250–251 63 De migratione Abrahami (Migr.) 56–59 63 De vita Mosis (Mos.) 1:278 197 2:232 197 De mutatione nominum (Mut.) 49 154 124 154 De opificio mundi (Opif.) 1–2 133 104 132 Quod omnis probus liber sit (Prob.) 19–20 103 19–21 103 19 103 21 103 233 n.45 75 68 n.140, 173 80–83 81 233 De praemiis et poenis (Praem.) 162 82 De specialibus legibus (Spec. Laws) 147 169 149 170

Josephus Contra Apionem (C. Ap.) 1:127 187 1:21 187 1:307 222 n.2 151 n.79 2:102–104 2:103–109 90 n.55 2:137–144 127 127 n.2 2:143 2:144 128 53 n.83 2:165 172, 173 2:175 2:175–88 172 53 n.83, 130–131 n.13, 2:184–88 172, 259 n.129 259 n.129 2:185 2:188 259 n.129 2:210 82, 106 n.107 Bellum judaicum (War) 82, 93, 93 n.68 1:3 2:1–5 212 2:13 169 157 n.100 2:21:6 2:117–118 193 2:124 233 68 n.140 2.128–132 2:129 233 150 n.71 2:129–132 2:138 48 n.67 228 n.29 2:280 260 n.130, 275 n.183 2:320–324 275–276 n.183 2:324 192 n.28 2:411 55, 231 2:411–416 275–276 n.183 2:411–417 37–38 n.30, 44 2:454 193 n.34 2:562–566 53 n.82 3:252 193 n.32 3:492–493 4:1–83 56 4:582 172 226 n.19 5:144 258 n.124 5:200 5:380 148 n.68 6:113–115 193 n.34

330 Bellum judaicum (War) (cont.) 6:291 53 n.82 226 n.19 6:354 7:320–336 57 n.98, 193 7:407–419 193 7.407–36 67 n.135, 67 n.136 7.430 67 n.136 Antiquitates judaicae (Ant.) 1:192 43 1.18 133 3:237 172 3:256 172 3.194–96 61 n.113 4:304 53 n.82 5:52 275 n.183 7:365 53 n.84, 172 9:153–155 275–276 n.183 11:109 151 n.79 12:106 148 n.68, 154 12:145 151 n.79 12:160–166 275–276 n.183 12:286 152–153 n.83, 190 12:316–25 171 12:324 171 n.140 13.62–73 67 n.135 13:171 230 13:254–258 190 13:297 55 13:299 54 13:318–319 88 n.49 13:395–97 190 88 n.49 13.257–58 13.288–298 55, 55 n.91, 231 14:55–76 191 14:73 191–192 14:77–79 191 112 n.123, 244 14.110 14:117 192 n.24 14:148 191–192 14:213–216 240 14:379 192 14:385 192 15:14 188 n.12 15:22 192 n.26 15:320 55 n.91 15:39–41 192 n.26 16:162–165 243 16:42–43 227

Index of Ancient Sources 16:43 173 17:200–205 212 18:9 56 18:18–22 68 n.140 18:19 233 18:23 56 18:23–25 193 19:332 91 19.332–34 90 83, 130 n.10 20:38–48 20:39 83 20:41 83 20:49 83 20:112 169 n.135 Vita (Life) 1 82 1–2 93 2 93 n.68 263 n.142 17 110 263 n.142 263 n.142 167 197 55 263 n.142 262 227, 263 n.142, 275 276–281 n.181 223 n.7 276–295 277–305 276 294–295 227, 275 n.181 370–372 263 n.142 Dead Sea Scrolls CD (Damascus Document) 1:1–2:1 204 2:14–15 112 n.124, 262 n.140 150 n.71, 151 n.75 10:10–11 19:33–35 163 146 n.60 19:34 CD a 1:15–16 203 CD b 20:22–23 4QMMT B 75–82

203 n.70 89, 89 n.51, 110 n.118, 159 n.106,

331

Index of Ancient Sources 4QCatenaa i, 8–9

204

4QFlor frag. 1, 1.21.2 234 108 Lines 8–9 4QLevib ar i 1, 7

163

4QpPsa 2:4–5 203 4QTohorota

150 n.71

Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice 4QShirShabba-f 68, 236 n.54 4QShirShabba 173 2, 5–6 69 4QShirShabbf (4Q405) Frags. 20ii-22, lines 1–11 236 20ii-22, 3 236 n.54 20ii-22, 7–8 236 n.54 11Q17 (ShirShabb) VII 236 4QPseudo-Ezekiel 4Q385 (4QpsEzeka) 236 n.54 4Q385C (4QpsEzekc) 236 n.54 4Q386 (4QpsEzekb) 236 n.54 4Q388 (4QpsEzekd) 236 n.54 4Q391 (4QpsEzeke) 236 n.54 4QToba-d ar

60 n.111

4QTobe

60 n.111

4Q174 frag. 1, 1.21.2 lines 2–3 lines 3–4

90 90

4Q174 Lines 3–4

110 n.118 106

4Q175 Lines 23–30

69

4Q285

203 n.68

4Q509 1 iii

175

4Q510 frag. 1 Lines 5–8

108

4Q511 [Shirb] frag. 44–62 106 Lines 2–4 Songs of the Maskil 4Q444 4Q510 4Q511

107 n.110 107 n.110 107 n.110

11QNew Jerusalem

234

11QTa (Temple Scroll) 29:8–10 234, 234 n.48 32 234 n.48 40:6 90 44:3–16 256 45:12–13 159, 110 n.118, 159 n.106 45:15–16 150 n.71, 151 n.75 45:16 146 n.60 51:15–16 203 n.68 56:12–13 203 n.68 11Q20 12:9

146 n.60

11QBerakhot

203 n.68

1QHa (Hodayot) 8:20 155 16:7 163 16:8 146 n.60 16:16 163 16:17 146 n.60 1QM (Melchizedek) 1:3 203, 204 1:4–5 203 10:1–8 203 n.68 45:16 163

332

Index of Ancient Sources

1QpHab (Habakkuk 213  Pesher) 1:13 108–109 n.114 2:17 203 8:1–17 108–109 n.114 12:6–10 203 1QS (Rule of the 232–233 n.43, 234 Community) 1:16–17 107 2:4–5 108 3:4–9 154 3:7 155 254 n.110 4:21–22 5:2–13 68 n.140 5:12–14 154 68 n.140 6:2–7 6:8–13 233 8 237 204, 239 8:3 8:5–10 204 8:5–7 238 8:6 69 8:8–11 239 9:6 238 1QSa (Rule of the Congregation) 2:3–10 159 n.106 2:5–7 110 n.118 2:11–22 155–156 1QSb (Rule of Blessing) 1:6 146 n.60 1Q34 i + ii

175

Shabbat 18:3 19:5

Pesaḥ 8:8 154 n.88 10 170 10:3 170 10:5 170 Shekalim (Shek.) 6:5

258 n.124

Yoma 3:2 8:6–7 8:6 8:9 7:1

151 n.75 178 n.158 177, 179 n.162 65, 154, 159, 163 53 n.82

Sukkah 4:9–10 158 4:9 169 5:6 53 n.84 Megillah 3:1–3

Peah 1:1 64 Orlah 3:9

200 n.60

Bikkurim 1:4

86 n.42

232 n.41

Yevamot 7:5 106 Nedarim 3:11 5:5 Gittin 1:2

Mishnah

178 n.160 92 n.63

178 n.159, 178 n.160, 179 n.161 232 n.41 200 n.60

Qiddushin 1:9 200 3:12 106 4:1 104 Baba Qamma 7:7

200 n.60

333

Index of Ancient Sources Makkot 3:12

232 n.41

Yadayim 4:6–7

Avodah Zarah 1:8

200 n.60

Midrash Tanakh

Pirkei Avot 64–65 n.129 1–5 1 137 133, 141 1:1 1:2 64 64–65 n.129 2:38 70, 83 3:11 64–65 n.129 3:18–19 202, 202 n.66 4:16–17 64–65 n.129 6 64–65 n.129 11:29

Ahare Mot 7 [Buber]

57 n.100

55 n.91

Pesiqta Rabbati 55 n.91 172b 2 171 Pss. 78:18

55 n.91

Seder Olam 11

58 n.102

Menachot 13:10

67 n.138

Arakhin 2:2

92 n.63

Tamid 1:1

Genesis Rabbah 11:10

180 n.167

151 n.75

Exodus Rabbah 30:9

180 n.167

Middot 151 n.75 1:6 151 n.75 1:9 2:6 170 151 n.75 5:3 Kelim 1:1 163 1:6 200 151 n.79 1:8 Parah 3:7

151 n.75

Miqva’ot (Miqw.) 1:8 163 8:1 200 158 n.104 6:8 Niddah 4:1 163

Midrash Rabbah

Tosefta Sheviit (Shev.) 4:10

200 n.62

Shabbat 1:16 15:16

176–177 n.154 178 n.160

Sukkah 3:3 170 55 n.91, 169 3:16 3:18 170 241 n.70 4:6 Avodah Zarah 4 201 Menachot 13:12–15

67 n.128

334

Index of Ancient Sources Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael

Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 17a 31a

176–177 n.154 141 n.46

Nezikin 18 (Exod. 22:20–23) 66 n.131, 106, 86, 92 n.63, 106

Sukkah 48b

55 n.91

Pisḥa 15 (Exod. 12:43–49) 87 n.47, 93 n.66, 154

Megillah 29a 202 Chagigah (Hag.) 15a

182 n.176

Yevamot 47b

86, 87 n.47

Ketubot 111a 201 Gittin (Git.) 6a

201 n.64

Baba Qamma 80a

201 n.64

Sanhedrin 38b 44a 56b 99a

70, 83 70, 83 85 70, 83

Palestinian Talmud Peah 16b Shabbat 1:4, 3c Shevuot (Shev.) 6:1

Baḥodesh 1 (Exodus 19:1–2) 5 (Exodus 20:2) 7 (Exodus 20:11) 10 (Exodus 20:20)

65, 130 65, 130, 144 n.51, 182 n.176 173 232 n.41

Shabbata 1 (Exodus 31:12–17)

178 n.158, 179 n.162

Sifre Deuteronomy §26 §51 §312 §329 §334 §345 §348

207 n.82 200 n.62 92 n.64 182 n.176 207 n.82 66, 130 n.12 207 n.82

Sifre Numbers §119

131 n.15, 152 n.80

LXX 107 n.111 108–109 n.114, 176–177 n.154 200 n.62

Avodah Zarah 8:4 85 3:11 86

Exodus 30:19–21 160 n.109 28:36 266 Leviticus 15:11–12 19:18

160 n.109 140, 141 n.44

Deuteronomy 28:25 100 Joshua 22:27

260

335

Index of Ancient Sources Malachi 3:3

249 n.88

Nehemiah 12:44

258 n.124

Sirach 38:24

99 n.83

Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal Literature

1:27 100 2:14–18 172 2:17 61 108–109 n.114 2:17–18 2:18 172, 216, 218 2:21 31, 42 6:1–6 128 8:1 31, 37–38 n.30, 42 37 n.30 8:2–4 8:4 175 n.149 175 n.149 9:28 10:1–8 171 175 n.149 10:4 175 n.149 10:34 175 n.149 10:35 175 n.149 10:36 175 n.149 12:14 175 n.149 13:11 31, 42 14:38 15:24 175 n.149 175 n.149 15:32

1 Maccabees 70, 70 n.144, 83, 128 1:11–15 44 n.52 1:13–15 1:15 43–44, 44 n.52, 128 1:28 54 152–153 n.83 1:51–58 1:52 54 2–4 54 152–153 n.83 2:1–14 2:7 54 2:24–26 56 2:27 190 2:40 54 2:46–47 43 2:54 56 2:56 54 3:5–6 260 171, 174, 175 4:36–60 4:38–61 190 4:42 174 4:43 174 4:45–46 174 4:47 174 4:47–51 174 4:52–54 174–175 5 190 13:41 190 13:43 190 14:6 190 99 n.83 14:41–42 54, 117–118 n.143 14:41

ALD (Aramaic Levi Document) 4QTLevia frag. 1, 1.10 107 n.110 4Q213a 107 n.110 1:2–3 128 n.4 1:3 128 n.4 2:5 (Greek) 146 n.60, 151 n.75, 160 n.109, 163 7:1 256 7:1–2 (Greek) 160 n.109 7:2 160 n.109 8:2 (Greek) 160 n.109 10:6 (Greek) 160 n.109 10:7 (Greek) 160 n.109 13:4 99 n.83 13:6 53 n.83 13:15 99 n.83

2 Maccabees 1:1 72, 73, 108–109 n.114 171–172, 175 1:18–2:18 1:24–29 172 61, 108–109 n.114 1:24–30

Artapanus Fragment 3:4 Fragment 3.21 Fragment 2.2 Fragment 1

4 Maccabees 4:19 128 37–38 n.30, 42 4:26 113 n.127 15:28

196 196 196 196

336

Index of Ancient Sources

Greek Esther 8:17 37–38 n.30, 44 8:41 44 Jubilees 1:8–15 129 1:10 222 n.2 1:12–14 191 1:25 107 1:29 64 6:12–13 191 8:13 64 n.127 8:19 225 10:3–6 107 n.110 12:19–20 107 n.110 15:11–34 43, 91 15:14 91 15:24–25 92 15:25–26 91 15:26 64 15:28–29 191 15:30–32 107 15:33 108 15:33–34 108 15:34 108 16:18 64 16:19–21 169 19:18 64 20:4 191 n.21 21:22 191 n.21 22:20–22 129 64, 66 23:24 30:14 235 n.52 235 n.52 31:15 32:1–9 169 191 n.21 36:9 191 n.21 50:5 Judith 113 n.127 11:17 149 n.69 12:7 14:10 86 Sirach 7:31 10:19–22 24

99 n.83 88 n.49 134 n.23

99 n.83 39:1–11 44–50 189 44:23 189–190 45:12 (MS B) 265, 266 45:17 53 n.82 45:23 56 46:8 237 n.58 Tobit 1:2 60 n.112 1:4 60 1:5–7 60 1:8 (G II ) 61–62 n.115 4:11 (G I ) 61, 64 13:8–9 (G I ) 60 13:11 61 14 61, 62 n.116 14:1–5 108–109 n.114, 172, 175 14:4 60, 198 n.53 14:4–5 216, 218 14:5–7 61 14:6 85, 93 Wisdom of Solomon 12:3–7 18:24

198 n.53 237 n.58

Psalms of Solomon 2:3 213 8:22–28 213 8:28 61, 100, 108–109 n.114, 216, 218 9:2 100 17:4 207 n.82 17:11 191 17:30–32 249 17:42 207 n.82 Testament of Abraham 3:7 (A) 3:9 (A) 4:6 6:6 (A)

160 n.109 160 n.109 113 n.127 160 n.109

Testament of Naphtali 8:3 61

337

Index of Ancient Sources Testament of Levi 5:1 256 5:1–3 66 53 n.83 8:17 13:2 99 n.83 18:6–9 66 Testament of Asher 7:2 100 Testament of Solomon 6:8

101 n.89

Testament of Dan 5

107, 108

Testament of Moses 5

254 n.110

Letter of Aristeas 61 n.114 83–99 96 237 n.58 128–69 130 147 130 304–306 154 148 n.68 305–306 Apocalypse of Abraham 29–31 66 4 Ezra 7:26–32 199 9:7–8 199 9:26–37 66 13:48 199 1 Enoch 99 n.83, 237 n.56 1–36 14 256 14:8–20 267 14:11–12 236–237 14:18–19 236–237 237 n.56 14:19–20 237 n.57 37–69 134 n.23 42:1–2 237 n.57 70–71 71 256

71:5–12 267 236–237, 237 n.57 61:10 71:7 236–237, 237 n.57 198 n.53 89:40 3 Enoch 237 12:5 Joseph and Aseneth 7:1 13:12 14:12 14:17 20:2 20:3 20:8

182 n.176 160 n.109 160 n.109 146 n.60, 154, 160 n.109 160 n.109 160 n.109 160 n.109 113 n.127

1 Esdras 5:52 172 Sibylline Oracles 3:591–93

148 n.68, 149 n.69

Epistle of Baruch 2:9–10

262 n.140

2 Baruch 257 1–9 199 199, 234 n.49 4 6:9 199 29:2 199 71:1 199 3 Baruch 257 Theodotus Frag. 4 1:7

37 n.30 208 n.88

Susanna (Sus.) 28

227, 275 n.181

5 Ezra

66 n.132

6 Ezra

66 n.132

338

Index of Ancient Sources

Ascension of Isaiah 66 n.132 Pseudo Philo Biblical Antiquities 249 n.88 Aristobulus 3:1 82 5:3 82 Greco-Roman Literature Plutarch Cicero 7:5

37–38 n.30, 84 n.32

Sol. 16:3 132 Quaes. Conv. 4:6 172 Cicero Laws 2:5 80 De Provinciis Consularibus 82 n.25 5:10 Tacitus Histories 5:2 187 82, 133, 172 5:4 33, 127, 205 n.77, 276 5:5 33 n.20 8:144:2 Juvenal Satires 14:96–106

33, 127

Dio Chrysostom Orations 7 223 n.7, 245 223 n.7 7:24–25 66:9 212

Cassius Dio Historia romana 67:14:1–2

33, 127

Apuleius Metamorphoses 11

34 n.21

Herodotus Histories 2:104 43 186 n.4 8:73 8:144:2 79 Pliny the Elder Naturalis historia 5:15 5:15:73

157 n.100 68 n.140

Pliny the Younger Epistulae 10:96 224–225 Thucydides Histories 1:130–132 127 186 n.4 6:2:2 7:63:3 79 n.11 8:92:2 132 Isocrates Panegyricus 50

79 n.11

Suetonius Domitian 12:2 82 Epictetus Discourses 1:9 2:5

125 n.175 125 n.176

Strabo Geographicus 10:4 133 10:4:6 186 n.4

339

Index of Ancient Sources 16:34 88 n.49 16:34–38 133 16:35–37 187 Diodorus Siculus Bibliotheca historica 40:3 133 Homer Iliad 24:302–306 153 Lucian On Sacrifices 13 153 Demosthenes Olynthiaca 3:25–26 Xenophon Hellenica 2:52–56

223 n.5

223 n.7, 245

Early Christian Literature Acts of Pilate 2:1 4:2 5:1 14:2 16:1

37–38 n.30 116 n.141 116 n.141 116 n.141(4x) 116 n.141

Epistle of Diognetus 6

202 n.66

Ignatius Epistle to the Magnesians 10:1 14 10:3 14 Epistle to the Philadelphians 6:1 14 Epistle of Barnabas 4:6–7 14 13:1–3 14

Justin 1 Apology 66

224 n.12

Dialogue with Trypho 161–162 n.115 14 47 14 Firmicus Maternus De errore profanarum religionum Mathesis (Err. Prof. rel.) 224 n.12 5:2 Tertullian De corona militis 15:3–4

224 n.12

Marc. 4:33 14 Praescr. 8 14 Origen Contra Celsum 6.22

224 n.12

Hom. Lev. 5:8

14 n.47

Sel. Exod. 12:46

14 n.47

John Chrysostom Adv. Jud. 1:4–5

37–38 n.30

Eusebius Hist. eccl. 93 n.68 3:9:1 6:14:7 205 Praep. Evang. 9:18 9:23 9:27

62 n.119 62 n.119 62 n.119

340

Index of Ancient Sources

Inscriptions and Papyri (According to Catalog Number) Aphrodisius 188

112 n.123

Avni and Greenhut 19

86 n.41

Bagatti and Milik 13 21 31

86 n.41 86 n.41 86 n.41

Caesarea Inscription 53 n.84 CIJ

1:690 1:694 1:537 2:1400 2:1402 21 68 202 222 256 462 523 576 1385 1390

129, 131 240 n.67 37–38 n.30, 42 90, 131 228, 230, 230 n.37, 231 n.38 86 n.41 86 n.41 86 n.41 86 n.41 86 n.41 86 n.41 86 n.41 86 n.41 86 n.41 86 n.41

Codex Parisinus Graecus 93 n.68 1425 Cyrus Cylinder Lines 9–12 Lines 30–34

221–222 n.1 221–222 n.1

FD (Fouilles de Delphes) III 83 n.26 2.247 Line 4 Trumpeting Place Inscription 172  (IAA 78–1439) IJO 1, BS 87

1, BS5 1, BS6 1, BS7 1, BS17 1, BS18 1, BS24

87 87 87, 112 n.123 87 87 87

JIWE 2.627 I 2.584 1.113

112 n.123 37–38 n.30, 42 112 n.123

Lifshitz 2

86 n.41

Lüderitz 12

86 n.41

SEG 32:809 32:810 40:590

49 n.72, 208 n.87 49 n.72, 208 n.87 223 n.7

SGDI II 2029 Line 4

83 n.26

P.Yadin 10 Lines 2–3

59 n.106

P.Yadin 54

194

P.Yadin 57

194

P.Yadin 61

194

P.Hev/Se 13 Lines 1–2

58, 58 n.104, 194

P.Mur. 20 Line 3

59 n.106

P. Crowley 30/Porten no. B19 189 n.14 Line 23–28 Line 1 67 n.135 Line 22 189 n.14 Line 28 189 n.14

341

Index of Ancient Sources P. Crowley 33/Porten no. B21 189 n.14

IHierapMir 23 85

P. Crowley 33/Porten no. B22 Lines 10–11 67 n.136, 189 n.14

IEph 1677 85