A lot of people ( wrongly) support the belief that the Gospel of John was written in order to support anti-Semitic views and to break with the Old Testament in order to lay the foundation of a new doctrine, i.e Christianity.
Nazi Germany propaganda minister Goebbels even went that far to use the Gospel of John to destroy the Jews and annihilate them from the face of the earth.
There is nothing more Hebrew than John's testimony.
In truth, most people don't possess the keys to decipher the Gospel of John. Why is it so? It is because most people don't have proper knowledge of the cultural context of Israel in the 1st Century and at least some basics in Hebrew language to unlock the meaning of the text that is in front of their eyes.
Some people might object that the Gospel of John was written in Greek. Yes, it was written in Greek ( at least the original versions we currently possess are written in Greek and aimed at a larger audience). However, one has to consider that John's thought is hebraic. Even in the Greek text, the Hebraisms of John are visible.
Knowledge is the key: the Gospel of John was written by Hebrew brains and I am going to prove it.
Relying on a English translation of a document that is genuinely Jewish can lead to the biggest misinterpretations. Yeshua's first followers were all Jewish and most disciples came from a Jewish cultural, Torah-observant context during the 1st two Centuries.
The estrangement from the Jewish community that occured with the Council of Nicea in 321 also separated people from the original concepts and symbols the first disciples were familiar with.
If you don't have the courage to learn Hebrew, it is essential that you understand the verses of the Gospels in the cultural context they actually belong to. Otherwise, you will completely miss the point.
Because the son of Zebedee used to fish in Galilee, some people automatically assume that he was ignorant and uneducated. They believe that he could not have written the fourth Gospel. This comes mostly from a huge ignorance of the people of the Torah. Each Jewish child is being instructed in the knowledge of Torah.
John, Chapter 18, verses 15 and 16 inform us that Yochanan (John) was known from the high priest and that he was the one to let Shim'on Kepha (Peter) in. This details clearly indicates that John came and went to the Temple regularly, which also implies that he was able to read and to write.
The similarity in structure between John 1 and Sefer Bereshit
Sefer Bereshit, Genesis begins this way:
בְּרֵאשִׁית, בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים, אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם, וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ
which reads: "Bereshit bara Elohim at hashamayim veet haaretz."
In the Beginning Elohim created Heavens and earth.
The first verse of John begins in the same way as "Bereshit", Genesis does. It reads: "Bereshit hayah hadavar vehadavar hayah et haElohim vehu hadavar hayah Elohim". In the Beginning was the Word and the Word was with Elohim and the Word was Elohim"
| בְּרֵאשִׁית הָיָה הַדָּבָר וְהַדָּבָר הָיָה אֶת־הָאֱלֹהִים וְהוּא הַדָּבָר הָיָה אֱלֹהִים׃ |
As you can verify it by yourself, the similarity between Bereshit and John 1 leaves no doubt about the Jewishness of its author. This doesn't emanate from Greek, but from Hebrew thinking. Once translated back in Hebrew, the sentence also sounds like Hebrew. I mean, it is not Greek that is rendered in Hebrew. It is a very original Hebrew thought that emerges from John's feather here!
When John states " the Jews", who is he addressing to?
I have been asking myself this question for years. A Jew wouldn't speak of his own folks as "the Jews". This wouldn't make sense.
In the same way, imagine a German person speaking about his folks as "the Germans" and systematically excluding himself as a German. He would be laughed at, wouldn't he?
But what if the same German man spoke about the German inhabitants of Saarland in opposition to the inhabitants of Baden Württemberg? That would make more sense, wouldn't it?
- The truth is, most people have forgotten that Yehudim ( the Jews) also means the Judeans ( the inhabitants of the land of Judah). Studying the Delitzsch Hebrew Gospels allowed me to understand that John was often opposing the Yehudim ( Judeans) to the Glilim ( Galileans).
- Secondly when John means Yehudim as "the Jews", one must understand that he points at the religious establisment of the Temple ( leading priests, scholars, scribes, Pharisees)
- One must also understand in context when Yeshua is blaming the Pharisees, he is introducing a rabbinic discussion about Torah. In no way our Messiah's intent is to slate Torah and Jewish customs, but rather points at the Pharisees' hypocrisy in applying them.
Finally, I'd advise anybody who thinks that John had some anti-semitic views to study his Gospel in context.
Copyright© by Isabelle Esling
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