Watch Your Language!
“Political language – and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists – is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
In response to my piece “Judaizing Christians: Yesterday and Today,” I received some angry correspondence from a guy who, in his reaction against judaizing, repeated the same fallacy as the judaizing Christians.
He replied with two comments - because he clearly ran out of space and had to break it up. Thus it really isn’t a comment, but rather a blogpost of his own. And that’s fine. Blogs are free. But we don’t have to publish other people’s blogposts at Gottesdienst
However, there are a couple of points that he raised that I think are value-added, so I’m addressing them here.
His first objection was my use of the term “Bible-believing Jews” to describe the Pharisees. His argument is not wrong in isolation. He posits that the Pharisees were not “Bible believing” because they rejected Jesus - who said, “If you believed Moses you would believe Me” (John 5:46).
And that is correct - as an isolated statement.However, in the context of my statement, it is not correct. I was comparing the Pharisees to the Sadducees. The latter rejected most of the canon of the Old Testament, only acknowledging the Torah (some scholars do dispute this). They were the theological liberals of their day that did not read the scriptures literally, hence their lack of belief in angels and the resurrection and afterlife. By contrast, the Pharisees accepted the entire Old Testament as canonical, and believed in such biblical teachings as angels and the resurrection and afterlife. The Pharisees’ misreading of Scripture regarding their legalism, their bad hamartiology (understanding of sin) and Christology (understanding of the Messiah) were not because they did not believe the Bible, but because their hermeneutic was off. And while they included rabbinical writings and traditions as authoritative sources, they did not reject entire books of Scripture like the Sadducees.Which was my point.My interlocutor makes a point that I do agree with - and I don’t know where he would get the idea that I wouldn’t. He argues that Judaism and Islam both worship a different god than do Christians. Of course. We worship the Trinity. We worship Jesus. This is repugnant to both Jews and Muslims - a point that I thought I made clearly in my presentation. We can add Jehovah’s Witnesses (neo-Arians), Universalists, Mormons, and non-Trinitarian Pentecostalists to the same list. They worship a different god.
But the point that I find fascinating is his playing of games with language - much like the judaizing Christians do by changing the name “Jesus” into a Hebrew variation “Yeshua.” As I pointed out, judaizing Christians are not taking into account the fact that we speak English, and the name “Yeshua” for the Son of God never appears in the Bible. My interlocutor, ironically, does the same thing. He argues that we should make a distinction between Israelites and Hebrews and Judeans versus “Jews.” He argues that such non-Gentile believers in God’s promises and in Jesus as Messiah are not Jews, but rather Judeans (or Israelites or Hebrews). And so John the Baptist was a “Bible-believing Judean,” the apostles were “Bible-believing Judeans/Israelites/Hebrews,” as was Nicodemus - whereas the Pharisees were Jews. He says that “Daniel was a Hebrew Judean” (not a Jew), and “Ruth was a Moabite Hebrew who became an Israelite” (not a Jew) by conversion. “Judas Maccabeus as a Hebrew surrounded by Jews.” In other words, Jews are “bad guys” and Judeans are “good guys.”
The problem is that his theory is all wrong, and can be easily disproven.
Notice that he used the biblical terms “Moabite” and “Israelite.” This is because those nationalities were named after their ancestral progenitor. Moabites are descendants of Moab. Israelites are descendants of Israel (Jacob). Edomites are descendants of Edom (Esau). Ishmaelites are descendants of Ishmael.
The descendants of Jacob are called by several names. Usually they are called “Israelites.” In Exodus, they are called “Hebrews” (whether they obeyed Moses or engaged in rebellion). After the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel, the Israelite nation was diminished to just two tribes: Judah and Benjamin, and so the nation was then also called Judah. In 2 Kings (25:25) and Ezra (4:12, 23, 5:1, 5, 6:7,8, and 14), another word is used to describe members of this nation. In Hebrew, it is יְּהוּדִים (Yehudim), singular יְהוּדִי (Yehudi). This is, of course, related to the word “Judah” (Hebrew: יְהיּד). This word is translated into Greek as Ιουδαίους (Youdaious), or singular: Ἰουδαῖος (Youdaios) in the Septuagint, and appears as such in the New Testament. This word comes into Latin as “Judaeus.”English translations render this word as “Jew” - which my interlocutor believes should be translated as Judean when it refers to Bible-believers, and “Jew" when it refers to non-Bible believers. The problem is, the Bible makes no such distinction. The issue is how to render this word into English when it appears in the Old and New Testaments. We could simply get rid of all references to the word “Jew” and retranslate it as “Judean.” But that doesn’t really change anything, since the word appears in the same form in both testaments. So Jesus would simply become the “King of the Judeans” and would often cross swords with "the Judeans” instead of “the Jews. Again, Scripture does not distinguish between Bible-believing Moabites like Ruth vs. Pagan Moabites like almost everyone else. We don’t refer to Romans who joined the church as something other than the same word for the Romans who remained in Paganism.
But it does raise a good question. What happened to the D? Why do we speak of Jews and not Judeans in English?
Well, in German, a Jew is a Jude (as he is in Swedish). In Latin, again, the word is Judaeus. I don’t speak Spanish, but the word seems to be Judio. But in English, we have lost the D. Well, English has been a mix between Anglo-Saxon (Germanic) and French (Latinate) since the days of the Norman Conquest in the late 11th century. It seems that the word Jew made its appearance in English in the 13th century. It comes from the French derivative of Latin that also lost the letter D: Juif.
So there you have it. Jews are called Jews because of the biblical word Yehudi, Youdaios, Judaeus, etc. But in English, our French forebears got rid of the D sound. It was like that when we got here. That’s it. And even then, the D is not completely gone: we have the words Judaism and judaize. There is still enough German left in our language to push the French aside on occasion.
So whether we refer to them as Jews, Judeans, Israelites, or Hebrews - it all refers to the same nationality . Some of them believed in Christ, most didn’t. Some Gentile Pagans believed in Christ, most didn’t - though in time, Paganism did give way to Christianity in the post-Constantinian Roman world.
Sadly, people wish to use language to manipulate us on all sides. It is the fallen nature that George Orwell understood when he wrote 1984, and demonstrated how language is manipulated to push an agenda.
We must let God be God, and let His Word remain His Word - free from political linguistic corruption. For “the Word of the Lord remains forever” (1 Pet 1:25). So watch your language, especially when it concerns the Holy Scriptures.