[B-Greek] John 8:31ff

Iver Larsen iver_larsen at sil.org
Sun Feb 8 11:40:14 EST 2004


[HH:]> You say that the people who speak in 8:33 are hOI FARISAIOI from
verse 13
> and who are traced by the pronominal references. You say that they are hOI
> IOUDAIOI of verse 22. I would agree that the ones who speak in verse 33
> probably include the Pharisees, but it is the kind of statement that an
> ignorant person, not necessarily a hostile one, would make, as
> you observe.
> And the term hOI IOUDAIOI has been used in v. 31 as a broad term. It is
> clear that hOI IOUDAIOI  can be a broad or narrow term, as the context
> requires (Narrow-John 7:1 "the Jews sought to kill Him"; Broad-7:2 "the
> Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand"). So I think the reader just
> has to understand that Jesus addresses the "Jews," a crowd of people that
> includes all sorts. Some of them believe, most of them are confused, and
> the Pharisees are hostile. If a comment comes out of the crowd that is
> hostile, one can assume it was the Pharisees that spoke it. But the whole
> crowd, as the Jews, can be said to be seeking to kill Jesus (v. 40), since
> the nation through its official representatives was seeking to do so.

This discourse takes place in one of the temple courts (court of the women)
so a number of ordinary Jews would be present. But the dialogue partners are
Jesus and a group of Pharisees who are hostile to him. That this group,
introduced in v. 13, is referred to as IOUDAIOI in v. 22 does not change the
reference, only adds that they represent the Jewish religious establishment.
When the word IOUDAIOI is used in this context it is used by metonymy (or
specifically synecdoche) to refer to those religious leaders.
I cannot see that v. 40 could imply that the whole crowd of Jews were
seeking to kill Jesus. The text says NUN DE ZHTEITE ME APOKTENAI. And since
Jesus is in a continuing and rather long verbal exchange with the Pharisees,
this must refer to the hostile Pharisaic leaders of the Jews. In this
exchange Jesus is not addressing the crowd as if he was teaching in
parables, but the Pharisaic leaders, although the crowd would be listening
in, presumably with some siding with Jesus, others with the Pharisees, and
most undecided and somewhat confused.

Which sense of IOUDAIOI is meant, is not signified only and conclusively by
the word itself, but by the other words that qualify the word, such as "the
feast of" in v. 2 and "those who had believed in him" in v. 31, or the
content of what the IOUDAIOI say or what is being said to them.

Iver Larsen




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