Charles Ellicott Commentary John 7:35

"The Jews therefore said among themselves, Whither will this man go that we shall not find him? will he go unto the Dispersion among the Greeks, and teach the Greeks?" — John 7:35 (ASV)

Where will he go that we will not find him?—He had said in John 7:33, I go unto Him that sent Me. And in John 7:28, He had declared that they did not know Him that sent Him. There is, then, no contradiction between these verses.

Their question, strange as it seems, is just another instance of their total inability to read any meaning that does not lie on the surface. He is going away, and they will not be able to find Him. They can only think of distant lands where other Jews had gone, such as Babylon, Egypt, or Greece. Will He join some distant colony of Jews where they cannot follow Him? They have no thought of His death and return to His Father’s home.

Will he go unto the dispersed among the Gentiles, and teach the Gentiles?—Better, Will He go unto the dispersion among the Gentiles, and teach the Gentiles?

The word for “dispersion” (διασπορά, diaspora) occurs again in the New Testament only in the opening verses of the Epistle of St. James and of the First Epistle of St. Peter, and in both these passages is represented by the English word “scattered.”

The only other instance of its occurrence in the Bible is in the Greek version (LXX) of Psalms 146:2 (in the Authorized Version, Psalms 147:2, He gathereth together the outcasts of Israel). It is also found in 2 Maccabees 1:27, Gather those together that are scattered from us. (Compare Josephus, Wars, 7.3.3; Antiquities, 12.1-3; 15.3.1.)

The abstract word is used like “the circumcision,” e.g., as a comprehensive title for the individuals included in it.

These were the Jews who did not live within the limits of the Holy Land but, spreading from the three main centers—Babylonia, Egypt, and Syria—were found in every part of the civilized world.

The Babylonian Diaspora owed its origin to the vast number of exiles who preferred to remain in the positions they had acquired for themselves in their new homes and did not return to Palestine after the Captivity. They were by far the greater part of the nation and were scattered throughout the whole extent of the Persian Empire.

Regarding the origin of the Egyptian Diaspora, we find traces in the Old Testament, such as in Jeremiah 41:17 and Jeremiah 42:18. Their numbers greatly increased under Alexander the Great and his successors, so that they extended over the whole country (Josephus, Antiquities, 16.7.2). Though much less numerous than their brothers in Babylonia and regarded as less pure in descent, they have, through their contact with Western thought and the Greek language, left a deeper and wider influence on later ages. To them we owe the LXX translation of the Old Testament Scriptures and the Alexandrian school of Jewish philosophers—two of the most important influences that first prepared the way for, and afterward molded the forms of, Christianity.

The Syrian Diaspora is traced by Josephus (Antiquities, 7.3.1) to the conquests of Seleucus Nicator (300 B.C.). Under the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes, they spread over a wider area, including the whole of Asia Minor, and from there to the islands and mainland of Greece. It was less numerous than either the Babylonian or Egyptian Diasporas, but the synagogues of this Diaspora formed the connecting links between the older and newer revelations and were the first buildings in which Jesus was preached as the Messiah.

But though scattered in this way, the Jews of the Diaspora regarded Jerusalem as the common religious center and maintained close communion with the spiritual authorities who lived there. They sent liberal offerings to the Temple, were represented by numerous synagogues in the city, and flocked in large numbers to the main festivals. (Compare the notes on Acts 2:9-11.)

The Diaspora, then, was a network of Judaism, spreading to every place of intellectual or commercial importance, linking it to Jerusalem, and serving as a means by which the teaching of the Old Testament was made well known, even in the cities of the Gentiles: Moses of old time hath in every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every sabbath day (Acts 15:21).

Such was the dispersion among the Gentiles of which these rulers of the Jews speak. They ask the question in evident scorn: “Will this Rabbi, leaving Jerusalem, the center of light and learning, go to those who live among the heathen, and become a teacher of the very heathen themselves?” We feel that there is some fact that gives point to their question and is not apparent in the narrative.

We will perhaps find this if we remember that He Himself had previously crossed the limits of the Holy Land and had given words to teach and power to save in the case of the Greek woman who was a Syrophoenician by nation. (Compare the notes on Matthew 15:21-28 and Mark 7:24-30.) Still more fully do the words find their interpretation in later history.

They are, like the words of Caiaphas (John 11:49–51), an unconscious prophecy and can be taken as summing up in one sentence the method of procedure in the earliest missionary work of the church.

The main routes of the Diaspora were those that the Apostles followed. It can be said that every apostolic church of the Gentiles grew out of a Jewish synagogue. There is a striking instance of historical irony in the fact that the very words of these Palestinian Jews are recorded in the Greek language by a Jew from Palestine presiding over a Christian church in a Gentile city.

For “Gentiles,” the margin reads “Greeks,” and this is the more exact translation. However, the word's almost constant New Testament use is in distinction from Jews, and our translators rightly felt that this is better conveyed to the reader by the word “Gentiles.” (Compare the notes on Mark 7:26 and Acts 11:20.)

We must be careful to avoid the common mistake of rendering the word as if it were “Hellenist,” which means a Grecized Jew. To do so is to miss the point of their scorn, which lies in the idea of His teaching those outside the pale of Judaism.