Scholars in biblical studies and related disciplines have long taken for granted that “Israel” is synonymous with “the Jews” (that is, οἱἸουδαῖοι and cognates), denoting the same people in the Second Temple period.196 Peter Tomson, for example, opens his article on the two terms by calling them “alternative appellations,” as though their equivalence were an established fact.197 This assumption is so strong as to be taken for granted even in a large-scale study of the three terms like Graham Harvey’s The True Israel,198 an example of the principle that one does
196 Böhm, “Wer gehörte in hellenistisch-römischer Zeit zu 'Israel'?," 181: “In der neutestamentlichen Exegese wird weithin davon ausgegangen, dass das in den Evangelien, in der Apostelgeschichte und in den Paulusbriefen erwähnte empirische Gottesvolk "Israel" und die zu ihm gehörenden "Israeliten" in hellenistisch-römischer Zeit identisch waren mit dem "Judentum," auch wenn dieses in der Zeit des Zweiten Tempels als ausgesprochen
vielschichtig beschrieben werden muss.” This equivalence is not limited to New Testament scholarship, however, as studies of the Hebrew Bible and early Judaism also often similarly assume the equivalence of the terms. E.g., Niels Peter Lemche, “The Understanding of Community in the Old Testament and in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Qumran between the Old and New Testaments, eds. Frederick H. Cryer and Thomas L. Thompson, JSOTSup 290 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1998), 181–193 (188): “Biblical Israel is founded on the Torah … presented to the Jews [sic] by God on Mount Sinai.” “According to the Deuteronomistic History … the Israelites of pre-exilic times were not really Jews [sic], as they almost never fulfilled the requirement of the Covenant and the Law” (189). See also Slenczka, “Frage nach der Identität Israels," 474–76; Pamela Barmash, “At the Nexus of History and Memory: The Ten Lost Tribes,” AJSR 29, no. 2 (2005): 207–236 (233); Louis H. Feldman, “The Concept of Exile in Josephus,” in Scott, Exile, 145–172 (162); Alexander A. Di Lella, “Wisdom of Ben Sira,” ABD 6 (1992): 931-944 (937); Jonathan A. Goldstein, “How the Authors of 1 and 2 Maccabees Treated the 'Messianic' Promises,” in Judaisms and their Messiahs at the Turn of the Christian Era, eds. Jacob Neusner, William Scott Green, and Ernest S. Frerichs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 69–96 (69, 84); Lowe, "Who Were the ΙΟΥΔΑΙΟΙ?," 103; Renée Bloch, “Israélite, juif, hébreu,” CS 5 (1951): 11–31 (17–21).
197 Tomson, "Names," 120.
198 “[Ἑβραῖος] was already an accepted gentilic synonymous with ἰσραήλ or ἰουδαῖος” (Harvey, True Israel, 117, cf. also p. 40).
not get answers to questions one does not ask.199 For most scholars, the specific nuances of each term and their relationship to one another has been defined by Karl Kuhn’s seminal 1938 article in Gerhard Kittel’s Theologisches Wörterbuch, which became especially influential after its English publication in 1966.200 After first explaining that after the collapse of the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE the two terms are essentially coextensive and describe the same people,201 Kuhn states,
לארשי is the name which the people uses for itself, whereas םידוהי-Ἰουδαῖοι is the non-Jewish name for it. Thus לארשי always emphasises the religious aspect, namely, that ‘we are God’s chosen people,’ whereas Ἰουδαῖος may acquire on the lips of non-Jews a disrespectful and even contemptuous sound, though this is not usual, since Ἰουδαῖος is used quite freely without any disparagement. This is shown by the fact that the Judaism of the diaspora, especially Hellenistic Judaism, finds no difficulty in adopting this non-Jewish usage, employing οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι of itself and reserving Ἰσραήλ for special religious use, primarily in prayers and biblical or liturgical expressions.202
Thus for Kuhn, the primary distinction between the terms is that “Israel” is an “insider term” preferred by the people themselves and refers refers to the Ἰουδαῖοι in their religious aspect, while Ἰουδαῖος is a political term for the people typically used by outsiders (“non- Israelites”) and sometimes carries a nuance of disrespect or contempt.
The distinction between the usage of “Palestinian Judaism,” and “Hellenistic Judaism” was fundamental to Kuhn’s reconstruction. On the basis of 1 Maccabees and Rabbinic literature,
199 Harvey’s study seeks to “understand the different appreciations of the nature of ‘Israel’ [in ancient Judaism and early Christianity]” (True Israel, 2) and explore competing claims to the title of “true Israel,” not establish a clear sense of the interrelationship between the three terms.
200 Karl Georg Kuhn, “Ἰσραήλ, Ἰουδαῖος, Ἑβραῖος in Jewish Literature after the OT,” TDNT 3:359–369; ET of “Ἰσραήλ, Ἰουδαῖος, Ἑβραῖος in der nach-alttestamentlichen jüdischen Literatur,” TWNT 3:360–370.
201 Kuhn, TDNT 3:359.
202 Kuhn, TDNT 3:360, 360. Although he here concedes such a use is “not usual,” he later refers to “the common Ἰουδαῖος, which may often be used in a derogatory or even contemptuous sense … the depreciatory element that clings so easily to Ἰουδαῖος” (367–68).
Kuhn argues that “Palestinian Judaism” prefers the term “Israel” and uses Ἰουδαῖος only when reporting the speech of “non-Jews,” in diplomatic or official documents, or as an accommodation to outsider or diaspora usage of the term.203 Walter Gutbrod’s companion article on the use of the terms in the New Testament likewise argues that the Synoptic Gospels conform to this allegedly Palestinian pattern, explaining the exceptions as copyist glosses or as addressed to the non- Jewish audience of the Gospels.204
In contrast, Kuhn and Gutbrod see Ἰουδαῖος as the default self-referential label in the diaspora as “Hellenistic Jews” accommodated to the outsider nomenclature used by their neighbors. Thus Philo’s preference for Ἰουδαῖος is a reflection of his status as a diaspora Jew, while Josephus (as well as John and Acts) can be explained as accommodating to “a usage which is fitting when addressing non-Jews.”205 Diaspora Jews did, however, still use Israel “in prayers and biblical or liturgical expressions” due to that term’s connections to Scripture and the
covenant.206 Such a divide between Palestinian and Hellenistic Judaism is no longer feasible in post-Hengel scholarship, however, as “Palestinian Judaism” is now understood to have been
203 Kuhn is followed here by a host of others, most notably Malcolm F. Lowe, “ΙΟΥΔΑΙΟΙ of the Apocrypha: A Fresh Approach to the Gospels of James, Pseudo-Thomas, Peter, and Nicodemus,” NovT 23, no. 1 (1981): 56–90 (56); "Who Were the ΙΟΥΔΑΙΟΙ?," 104–07. See also Horst Kuhli, “Ἰουδαῖος,” EDNT 2:193–97 (194). Remarkably, Zeitlin, "Hebrew, Jew and Israel," 368–371, comes to exactly the opposite conclusion, arguing that Judaean/Jew was the typical term used by inhabitants of Judaea, while “the Jews in other countries, Babylonia, Syria, and Antioch, however, did not call themselves Jews. They were called Israelis and Hebrews” (370). Zeitlin argues that
Jew/Judaean/Judaism take on a religious sense, while “the name Israel or Hebrew never became associated with the religion” (376), thus making “Israel” the best option for the name of the modern state (377–79). Zeitlin’s argument is obviously influenced by modern terminology and concerns, but the same was true of Kuhn, as will be
demonstrated below. In any case, Zeitlin’s argument, which features several salient points despite his modern concerns, have been largely ignored while Kuhn’s paradigm has dominated the field.
204 Gutbrod, TDNT 3:376–78. Lowe, "ΙΟΥΔΑΙΟΙ of the Apocrypha," 59, similarly argues that the earliest
apocryphal gospels’ use of Israel is suggestive of especially early dates before this “Palestinian” usage had died out. 205 Gutbrod, TDNT 3:377.
Hellenized from a very early period.207 Nevertheless, despite the fact that such a key foundation stone of Kuhn and Gutbrod’s hypothesis is no longer tenable, the TWNT insider/outsider model has proved so influential as to be baldly repeated, often without citation, in numerous subsequent studies.208
Tomson, for example, presupposes Kuhn’s model but drops the divide between Palestinian and Hellenistic Judaism initially fundamental to Kuhn’s theory. Thus for Tomson,
Ἰουδαῖος always refers to the Jews in relation to outside groups, occurring more frequently in “Hellenistic” Jewish texts because those texts tend to have an “outsider” Sitz im Leben and are written with an outsider context in mind.209 In contrast, whenever Israel is used, it “continues the concept of biblical Covenant history” in an insider context.210 Tomson is unclear as to why a
second term to distinguish Jews from outsiders was necessary—that is, why the term Israel apparently could not adequately distinguish Jews from outsiders. Nevertheless, Tomson rigorously applies the insider/outsider distinction between the two terms to the point of
207 John M. G. Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora: From Alexander to Trajan (323 BCE–117 CE) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 6. Cf. Tessa Rajak, The Jewish Dialogue with Greece and Rome: Studies in Cultural and Social Interaction, AGJU 48 (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 3–133; John J. Collins and Gregory E. Sterling, eds., Hellenism in the Land of Israel, CJAS 13 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001); Fergus Millar, The Roman Near East, 31 BC–AD 337 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995). Martin Hengel,
Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in their Encounter in Palestine during the Early Hellenistic Period, trans. John Bowden (London: SCM, 1974);
208 E.g., Bloch, "Israélite, juif, hébreu," 17–21; Lowe, "ΙΟΥΔΑΙΟΙ of the Apocrypha," 56–57; Cranfield, Romans, 460–61; Dunn, Romans 9–16, 526; James D. G. Dunn, “Who Did Paul Think He Was? A Study of Jewish–Christian Identity,” NTS 45, no. 2 (1999): 174–193 (187–88); Byrne, Romans, 287; Jewett, Romans, 562; Gadenz, Called from Jews and Gentiles, 64–67. I also approvingly cited the insider/outsider argument of Elliot, "Jesus the Israelite,” in “What Do the Gentiles Have to Do with 'All Israel'? A Fresh Look at Romans 11:25–27,” JBL 130, no. 2 (2011): 371–390 (378 n. 36), which I now recognize as an error.
209 Tomson, "Names," 135–36.
distinguishing sources within the Gospels based on whether they use “Israel” (inner-Jewish tradition) or Ἰουδαῖος (non- or anti-Jewish redaction).211
John Elliot agrees with Tomson in applying the insider/outsider hypothesis to the terminology of the earliest Jesus-movement (but with a few differences), pushing for an even more robust application of this insider/outsider distinction, insisting that scholars should no longer refer to “Jews” in this period but “Israelites,” as this was the preferred insider term. (As discussed above, Elliot also differs with Tomson in arguing that Ἰουδαῖος was a regional term denoting an “explicit or implied connection with Judaea,” and should thereby be translated with “Judaean” rather than “Jew.”)212 Elliot explains:
Incontrovertible evidence shows that ‘Israel’ and ‘Israelite’ were the self- designations preferred by compatriots of Jesus in the first century when addressing other ingroup members.… In the Diaspora, Israelites were called
Ἰουδαῖοι by outsiders based on the outsiders’ associating them with the land of
Ἰουδαία, Jerusalem and the Temple. Diaspora Israelites eventually accommodated to the nomenclature of the dominant culture in accepting and employing the name as self-designation when addressing outsiders and occasionally also fellow
insiders. Often, however, even in the Diaspora, as Paul demonstrates, preference for ‘Israel’ and ‘Israelite’ remained strong. The ingroup Israel, on its part, lumped together all non-Israelites as goiim, ethnê or Hellênes.
Tomson suggests that Paul uses “Israel” in his letters to invite his Gentile converts “to call the Jews by the cherished, inner-Jewish name of the Covenant People: Israel” and even to adopt this special name as their own.213 Elliot differs with Tomson on this point, suggesting that where Paul uses “Israel,” he is “Paul the insider addressing fellow Israelite insiders” rather than
211 Tomson, "Names," 280–82. 212 Elliot, "Jesus the Israelite," 149.
trying to get outsiders to take his own inner-Jewish perspective.214 For example, in Romans 9, Paul is no longer addressing Gentiles but rather “aims at persuading Israelite [=Jewish] Christ followers to share his perspective and follow his lead.”215
David Miller rightly criticizes these suggestions,
Both explanations presuppose the insider–outsider distinction rather than
providing independent support for it; neither explanation has much to commend it on other grounds. Against Tomson, Paul’s claim to be ‘of the people of Israel’ (Phil. 3.5) and an ‘Israelite’ (2 Cor. 11.22) is a reason for boasting about his own status, not an observation about the covenant status of, or correct nomenclature for, Paul’s fellow Jews. Against Elliott, there is nothing in the context of Romans 9 that suggests Paul is now addressing fellow ‘Israelites’ instead of a mixed audience of Jews and non-Jews. And there are alternatives that do not require complex decisions about shifting perspectives and audiences. Perhaps, for example, ‘Israel’ is used in some contexts simply because of its covenantal connotations.216
David Goodblatt similarly recognizes that Kuhn’s distinction between Palestinian and Hellenistic Judaism no longer holds, but he nevertheless believes Kuhn’s model can be salvaged by replacing geographic categories with linguistic ones, explaining “I take [Kuhn] to mean that authors writing in Hebrew evidenced a clear preference for the ethnonym ‘Israel,’ while Jews writing in Greek tended to use Ioudaioi.”217 That is, those writing in “outsider” tongues
(including both Aramaic and Greek) prefer the “outsider” term Ἰουδαῖος while those writing in
214 Elliot, "Jesus the Israelite," 144.
215 Elliot, "Jesus the Israelite,” 145. Elliot does not explain how to make sense of the second-person address to Gentiles in Rom 11:17–25 in light of this claim.
216 Miller, "Meaning of Ioudaios," 105.
217 David Goodblatt, “'The Israelites who Reside in Judah' (Judith 4:1): On the Conflicted Identities of the Hasmonean State,” in Jewish Identities in Antiquity: Studies in Memory of Menahem Stern, eds. Lee I. Levine and Daniel R. Schwartz, TSAJ 130 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 74–89 (75). Goodblatt here reports the raw numbers, which initially appear to favor his case, but the numbers are not clean enough to speak for themselves (especially in texts that use both terms like 1 Maccabees and Ezra-Nehemiah). To get better explanations for how these terms are used, a closer look at each case is necessary—hence the need for the present project to clarify the relationship between these terms before examining Paul’s view of Israel.
the “insider” tongue of Hebrew use the insider term “Israel.”218 Goodblatt acknowledges that the Hebrew sections of Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah, and Esther all serve as counter-examples for this model, but he argues that these (despite their composition in Hebrew) can be explained as accommodating to “outsider” official Persian designations rather than the insider language that would otherwise be expected of Hebrew documents.219
But an even bigger problem for this argument is presented by an “anomaly” that Kuhn himself noted: official Hasmonean documents (as reported in 1 Maccabees) and coinage indicate that the Hasmonean state was officially called “Judah” and its people “Jews” (םידוהי/Ίουδαῖοι).220 This contrasts sharply with the first and second Jewish revolts against the Romans, each of which adopted “Israel” terminology.221 Goodblatt confesses his puzzlement on this point:
Whatever the reason, the Hasmoneans did not restore the state called “Israel.” Instead they created a “Greater Judah.” … Unfortunately, a convincing
explanation of Hasmonean usage still eludes me. Perhaps this reaffirmation of the anomaly’s existence will encourage others to investigate it further.222
218 Goodblatt’s argument was anticipated in this respect by Jehoshua M. Grintz, “Hebrew as the Spoken and Written Language in the Last Days of the Second Temple,” JBL 79, no. 1 (1960): 32–47 (34–35).
219 Goodblatt, “Israelites who Reside in Judah," 77. But as he later observes, “Certainly anything in Hebrew was written by, and only accessible to, insiders. Who else knew Hebrew?” (Goodblatt, “Israelites who Reside in Judah,” 87). That being the case, the existence of Hebrew texts (such as Daniel or Esther) that prefer Judah/Jew language is a serious blow to the insider/outsider paradigm. This is a bigger problem than Goodblatt or others seem to recognize. 220 Goodblatt, “Israelites who Reside in Judah,” 75–76, 79, 82–86; cf. David Goodblatt, “Varieties of Identity in Late Second Temple Judah (200 B.C.E.–135 C.E.),” in Jewish Identity and Politics between the Maccabees and Bar Kokhba: Groups, Normativity, and Rituals, ed. Benedikt Eckhardt (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 11–27 (14); Kuhn, TDNT
3:361. Kuhn argues that official state communications inherently assume an “outsider” context since it is in the context of other nations, but this is hardly persuasive for internal memos and similar communications. See also David Goodblatt, “From Judeans to Israel: Names of Jewish States in Antiquity,” JSJ 29, no. 1 (1998): 1–36 for additional discussion on this point, including a significantly more detailed analysis of the names of ancient Jewish states, a discussion the later publication assumes. See also the section on 1 Maccabees in Chapter 5 below. 221 Cf. David Goodblatt, Elements of Ancient Jewish Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 136–37; Goodblatt, “Varieties of Identity," 17–18.
222 Goodblatt, “Israelites who Reside in Judah," 84, 86. For further discussion and explanation of this anomaly, see the section on 1 Maccabees in Chapter 5 below.
The most convincing explanation, as the present study will demonstrate, requires
abandoning the insider/outsider hypothesis, which not only cannot explain this anomaly but also requires marginalizing Jewish literature written in Greek or Aramaic. As Miller observes, the linguistic division between insiders and outsiders has difficulty accounting for multilingual Jews, who would presumably have had recourse to use both terms in either language, especially since Jews speaking any language would presumably be influenced by biblical language—a point to which we will return in Part II.223 The insider/outsider model also relies on several problematic methodological presuppositions, as noted by Graham Harvey:
This theory presupposes that the literature was interested in the accurate historical reporting of, for example, the words spoken by hostile Philistines.224 This is a dubious assumption which will not be followed here. These are not records by ‘outsiders’ of what real Philistines actually said. All that is available to us is the words of “insiders” to other ‘insiders’. The words attributed to “outsiders” must not be taken to be evidence of actual usage.… The majority of the literature discussed here (the majority of surviving ancient Jewish literature) is that of ‘insiders’ addressed to ‘insiders’. ‘Spectators’ in the literature and the intended audience of the literature are ‘insiders’. Neither the etymological nor the ‘insiders versus outsiders’ approach adequately explains why writers used one name rather than another. Nor do they properly explain the actual range of uses of each name and its different associations and referents.225
These ancient texts are not transcripts, and the insider/outsider theory requires a great many caveats and exceptions—exceptions that more ingenious interpreters such as Tomson and Lowe have managed to make into source-critical tools.226Ἰουδαῖος indeed occurs more
frequently than Ἰσραήλ in what might be considered “outsider” contexts, but correlation does not
223 Miller, "Meaning of Ioudaios," 108.
224 Harvey here points to the assertion of Tomson, "Names," 123, that “there is a significant difference between speech of the writer or redactor to his readers and speech of his dramatis personae between themselves.” 225 Harvey, True Israel, 7.
equal causation—it is a significant leap to conclude that the outsider context is what caused the preference for that term. Instead, it appears that Ἰουδαῖος was simply the standard gentilic (in both insider and outsider contexts) for the people group irrespective of insider/outsider
contexts.227 Since ethnic markers are most typically used to differentiate one group from another (and thus rarely needed in “insider” contexts), it is rather natural that the standard ethnic term occurs frequently in outsider contexts. In any case, upon a closer examination, Kuhn’s paradigm was itself rooted in far less benign assumptions about the subject matter.
The Insider/Outsider Model and the Influence of Nazi Germany
Paradoxically, the very familiarity of these terms and presumed familiarity with the subject matter is precisely what makes historical investigation into their meaning and
relationship especially difficult, as interpreters too easily assume that the ancient cognates have the same meaning as the modern terms. Indeed, just such a conflation of the modern and the