Illiberal Christianity

EXPLAINING JOHN 4:22

John 4:22 is a verse which is often cited by those who seek to undermine our faith by continuing to propagate false ahistorical assertions regarding Christs positions, and its usually accompanied by a multitude of strawmans, and lacks a proper etymological and historical context to substantiate it, so here in this post I'll be explaining the usage of the term "Jew" in this verse in sufficient depth:

For context, it is necessary to first understand the historical and cultural environment in which Jesus' Tribe (Judahites), lived in during his time. Judaea, once a unified ethno-religious state, underwent dramatic demographic and political changes, beginning with the assimilation policies of the Hasmonean dynasty. One notable example is the forced conversion of the Idumeans (Edomites) by John Hyrcanus, circa 125 BCE. The act, including circumcision and adherence to Israelite laws, brought Idumeans into the fold of Judaean society. This violated a long-standing tradition that emphasized lineage and cultural purity (the one drop policy, see Deuteronomy 23:2) at the heart of Israelite tribal identity.
(https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-edomites)

Up until these times, Judaea was a homogenous ethno-state, in which the term "Judaea" primarily referred to the land inhabited by the tribe of Judah, and served to reference solely the Judahites and their descendants. Within such a framework, it conformed to the structure of the greater Israelite confederation wherein each tribe had a distinct identity tied to its ancestral lands. By the 1st century CE, however, Judaea had become an ethnically diverse and cosmopolitan society. The Idumean integration, along with the strategic standing of the region under Roman rule, brought in a wave of diverse populations and ideas, and completely dismantled the ethno-religious cohesion of an area once indeed so defined.

These tensions were further exacerbated by the reign of King Herod, an Idumean by ancestry from 37–4 BCE. Herod's policies, including massive building projects and allegiance to Rome, further marginalized the traditional Judaean elite. For many native Judaeans, his reign represented a symbolic marker of their waning influence; the multicultural character of Herod's court standing as a sign of their community's ethnic replacement. Understanding this context is crucial in understanding the tensions Jesus and his contemporaries had to navigate.

The Gospel of John is perhaps one linguistic lens into these complexities. One thing that is crucial to this analysis is understanding the Etyomology of the term "Ἰουδαῖος" (Ioudaios) as it is used in John 4:22 in its original greek translation. Historically speaking, the term Ioudaios referred to the homeland of the Judahite people and served as an ethno-national term, and its usage as a rootless cosmopolitan national identity did not come until the time of Jesus. Yet, in the ministry of Jesus and his teachings, there is a powerful cultural and theological link to the Judahites-that is, the descendants of the tribe of Judah

To put this into better understanding, we can use an analogy as an example: Consider America: if demographic changes continue to persist and reduced ethnic Americans (European Americans) to a minority in their homeland, would the term "America" no longer connote the American people's history and culture? Of course not, saying otherwise would be positing that a nations native population loses jurisdiction over their home country when they begin to get ethnically replaced, and by default, a lot of europeans would no longer have a valid claim over their country by this logic.
In 1st-century Judaea, too, the connection between the land and its native Judahite population persisted, despite the demographic and political changes.