John 7:1 “After these things Jesus walked in Galilee: for he would not walk in Jewry, because the Jews sought to kill him.”
In the Aramaic Bible the word Jews is Yihudaya (Judean) which references the people who lived in the land of Yuhuda (Judah). The Greek is just a transliteration of the Aramaic word Ioudaia for Judah and Ioudaioi (Judean). The Aramaic word means to celebrate and praise. The word in Hebrew is Yuhudah which means pretty much the same thing but also carries an element of thanksgiving. Both come from the same Semitic root yudah which means to release or throw. In modern terms it means, let er rip. This is the throwing out or releasing of praises, celebration and thanksgivings.
When I was teaching in a Bible College I was amazed at how many students did not understand the basic geographical make-up of the land of Israel during the time of Christ, let alone its history. Yet, this is very important to understanding what is going on in the New Testament particularly in passages such as John 7:1.
Jesus did not walk among the Jewry (Judeans) because the Jews (judahs) sought to kill him. The reason why the Jews sought to kill Jesus was that while in Judah he healed a blind man on the Sabbath which was not really against Mosaic law but it was against Oral Tradition which was considered just as authoritative as the Mosaic law among many Judean Jews. It is sort of like dancing and smoking is said to be sinful among the fundamentalist Christians although the Bible does not directly forbid it. We just infer it from the Bible and it has become such a tradition, that if we see someone smoking we fundamentalist (I grew up in a fundamentalist tradition) would almost automatically question the person’s salvation. I mean smoking is much more sinful than overeating or eating junk food, right? Of course when this tradition started we did not know that the saturated fats and trans fats were just as deadly as smoking.
Anyways, I am digressing, back to the point in question. How did the word Jews come about, is it ethnic or geographic? In a racial sense the Hebrews were the descendants of the twelve sons of Abraham. Scholars are still debating whether the term Hebrew itself is ethnic or geographic. The Hebrews never called themselves Jews until the time of the Babylonian Captivity (586 BC) because up until that time the word Jew was a word derived from one of the sons of Jacob named Judah.
After the reign of Solomon the kingdom of Israel had a civil war and split into two nations, the Northern Kingdom of Israel consisting of ten of the twelve tribes or descendants of the sons of Abraham and the Southern Kingdom of Judah consisting of the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin. The Northern Kingdom was taken into captivity by the Assyrians in 722. The capital city of the Northern Kingdom was Samaria. Only about 28,000 people were taken into captivity so there were many who were left behind. Eventually, gentile settlers from Mesopotamia and Syria migrated into the Northern or Samarian district of Israel and intermarried with the Hebrews who lived there. The Southern Kingdom of Judah fell to the Babylonians about 136 years later. That would be the time difference between now and the civil war in the United States. We are speaking of a whole new generation of people who grow up believing the Northern ten tribes were evil and godless people because God judge them with captivity while the Southern Kingdom remained. They even pointed to the fact that the reason God did not judge the Southern Kingdom was because they had the temple of God in Jerusalem. God would not destroy a nation that had His temple. But in 722 BC the people of Judah sadly leaned the truth.
Anyways, the remnants of the various tribes or descendants of the twelve sons of Abraham were identified by their religious beliefs and were referred to as Jews because the temple was their center of worship and located in Judah. During the time of rebuilding the temple and the restoration of Israel the term Jews, as a reference to their religion, gradually began to replace the name of their race as Hebrews.
During the time of Jesus the Judeans settled in the Southern portion of the land of Israel where the temple was built. Another group of Jews were the Samaritans who had intermarried with Gentiles during the captivity period and abandoned the old Hebrew faith in favor of a pagan faith. However, when wild animals started attacking the population they turned to the Jewish leaders who taught them their roots in the old Hebrew faith and the secrets which helped them maintain control over these animals (yiredu). However, their faith became a hybrid of other pagan religions and they built their own temple on Mt. Gerizim. This prompted hatred of the Judeans to the Samaritans as well as the question of the Samaritan woman at the well as to where the proper place of worship was.
The Samaritans were located in the central portion of Israel known as Samaria. The dispute between the Judeans and Samaritans were both religious and political much like the Muslim factions of the Shiites and Sunnis. There was a third faction which was located in Northern Galilee which was the region of Dan and Nafthali. This is where Jesus settled and grew up, most likely after his family had fled to Egypt after his birth in Judah and then returned to the Northern portion of Israel known as Galilee as it was most likely safer. The disciples also came from Galilee except Judas who it is said, hailed from Judah. Galilee, like Samaria was a mixed race of Persians, Assyrians and Babylonians who intermarried and formed a great melting pot. Although they were members of the Jewish religion they were held in suspect because of their mixed heritage although the heritages of many in Judeans were highly questionable. The Galileans Jewish faith was like that of the Evangelicals to the Fundamentalist today. The Evangelicals are not as strict in their traditions when it comes to attending movies, drinking, dressing up in their meetin’ duds on Sundays and other little things that they call legalism. The Galileans did not wash their hands before meals, fast, or follow the strict observance of the Sabbath. They were, nonetheless, Jews just as the Evangelicals and Fundamentalist are still Christians.
You know what, in the strictest sense, we Christians are also Jews. Not in an ethnical sense but in a broad religious sense. Not only because we worship the same God Jehovah but that the name Jew (Yahudah) which means one who praises, celebrates and offers thanksgivings to God. That fits us as well as the Jews. Jesus transcended all the doctrinal differences between the Nation of Israel from the pagan faith of Samaria, the strict faith of the Judeans and the more easy going faith of the Galileans to teach that they worshipped the same God who loved them regardless of their religious affiliation. That Christian taking a puff on his cigarette is just as much loved by God as you are. Our tendency, however, is to criticize him just as the Judeans wanted to kill Jesus for healing on the Sabbath, yet Jesus only embraced them all with His love.
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