The “Jews” in Luke-Acts

The term “Jews” (VIoudai/oi) is used seldom in Luke but frequently in Acts. Moreover, it occurs frequently in the latter part of Acts (after Acts 9) but seldom in the early chapters (only Acts 2). This distribution is significant: the term is used when foreigners or foreign places are involved in the story-line. Thus the term is part of the narrator’s description of the Centurion’s thinking (Luke 7:3); it is used by Pilate (Luke 23:3); and it is used in the title of Jesus nailed to the cross by the Romans (Luke 23:37-38). Finally, it is used to denote the city of Arimathaea as a “city of the Jews”—this designation reflects the author’s awareness of the need to explain to non-Jewish readers such as Theophilius the geographical location and native inhabitants of Arimathaea (Luke 23:51). These examples from Luke’s gospel establish the sense of “Jews” to be a contrasting identification of a nation. This may be an obvious point, but its significance lies in what “Jews” does not connote—it is not imbued with the sense of “enemies of the Gospel”, or “opponents of the apostles”, or “a rejected people”, and so on. The term does not carry an anti-Semitic sense; rather, it is a term naturally used in contexts where different nationalities or places outside the land of Judea are in the story.

In Acts, the same pattern of usage is evident: the reason why the term is frequent in the latter part of Acts lies in the fact that the Diaspora missions of Paul are the focus of the story. In foreign climes, an increase in the use of “Jews” is to be expected in a story that indentifies the different nationalities that the apostles’ encounter. Even in Acts 2, the same pattern is manifest—here the term is used in the account of Pentecost to identify the nationality of the crowd as comprising “Jews” from many different places; that is, they are ex-patriots or foreign-born Jews attending the feast. Examples of this pattern include the following episodes:

• Cornelius was a centurion of Italy (Acts 10:1), living in Caesarea; his servants, most likely foreigners, addressed Peter and praised their master as having a good report among the “nation of the Jews” (Acts 10:22). Peter replies to them and talks about his nationality (Acts 10:28), and later talks to Cornelius about the “land of the Jews” (Acts 10:39).
• Once preaching to Gentiles is started, Luke includes detail about preaching audiences. Thus in Acts 11:19, he records that missionaries had preached only to Jews.
• Herod, an Idumean, is well aware of ethnic groupings in his cities and sought to please the Jews in his persecution of the church (Acts 12:3).
• Jews formed communities in many cities of the Roman Empire.

There is another reason why “Jews” becomes frequent in the latter part of Acts. The Gentile missions produce converts and the church itself becomes comprised of Jews and Gentiles. Hence, it was a natural development in the speech of the apostles to refer to “Jews”.

Our conclusion therefore is that while some have argued that “Jews” is a pejorative term in Luke-Acts, it is in fact a term that is naturally distributed in the story when foreigners and foreign climes are involved.