Most commentators agree that in John 8.33 the Jews (Ἰουδαίους) are talking about spiritual freedom/slavery and not political freedom/slavery when they say, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone.” Both Barrett and Keener dismiss the idea that the Jews are talking about political subjugation as absurd.[1] Brown thinks the Jews have misunderstood Jesus’ words taking them in a political sense rather than in the spiritual sense.[2] Brown doesn’t explain how it is the Jews could makes what seems like a blatantly false claim even in their misunderstanding.
Is the political understanding that absurd? Warren Carter in his excellent book John and Empire argues that such a reading is in fact possible. Drawing upon social-scientific research Carter explores imperial negotiation in terms of social identity construction. In the ancient world antiquity was king. Groups turned to the past as a way of constructing identity. Remembering the past was always selective, constructing the past in life giving ways for the present. “This reconstructive process… comprises ‘a form of vital self-presentation and prideful self-assertion’ vis-à-vis other groups and powers with other interests who shape a different present.[3]
This look to the past provides the basis for Carter’s short investigation. Carter looks at two ways of remembering Abraham. The first way emphasizes Abrahams obedience to God and Torah and the covenant identity that separated the Jewish people from the nations. Carter points to Sirach, Jubilees, and the Apocalypse of Abraham as examples of this first type of remembering.[4] Sirach for example says:
Abraham was the great father of a multitude of nations,
and no one has been found like him in glory.
He kept the law of the Most High,
and entered into a covenant with him;
he certified the covenant in his flesh,
and when he was tested he proved faithful.
The emphasis is placed on Abraham’s observance of the Law even before the time of Moses and the giving of the law.
The second way of remembering Abraham focuses on Abraham as a means of integrating with Hellenistic and Roman culture. Carter points to 3 examples of this way of remembering: Artapanus, Philo, and Josephus. Artapanus taught the Egyptians to study the stars.[5] Philo remembers Abraham as the foreigner who left astrology and polytheism to seek truth and the one God. Abraham lives not just according to Torah, which is an image of the law of nature, but also according to the higher law of nature in good Stoic fashion. For Josephus, Abraham is a ideal statesmen, a platonic philosopher-king. He “engages in natural theology to be a monotheist.”[6] He exports culture to other people teaching the Egyptians arithmetic and astronomy. Abraham opposes the Sodomites because they hate foreigners, while he welcomes foreigners.[7]
With these two ways of remembering the past, Carter asks whether the Jews are associating themselves with the Abraham who is father of the Jewish nation, responsible for customs like circumcision which marked Jew out from Gentile? Or do the Jews associate themselves with the Abraham who is an exporter of culture, open to participation in Gentile culture?[8] Carters conclusion is that the Jews take the second route finding in this tradition:
a means of bridging Jewish and non-Jewish worlds that empowers their engagement with and significant accommodation to the imperial present. That is, they are descendants of Abraham, who was open to and an active participant in the Gentile world. They construct Abraham in their own image. Though under Roman rule, they are essentially free in most ways from Roman restraints but able to observe Jewish distinctive without interfering with significant degrees of societal interaction.[9]
While Carters’ argument is hardly comprehensive it at least suggests that the “spiritualized” understanding favored by most commentators might not be as obvious as most commentators have thought.
[1] Barrett, The Gospel According to St. John; An Introduction With Commentary and Notes on the Greek Text (New York,: Macmillan, 1962). Keener, The Gospel of John: A Commentary (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003).
[2] Brown, The Gospel According to John (Garden City, N.Y.,: Doubleday, 1966).
[3] Alcock, Susan as quoted in Carter, John and Empire: Initial Explorations (New York: T & T Clark, 2008), 94.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid., 103.
[6] Ibid., 104.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid., 105.
