Ioudaios

Framing Jewish and Gentile identities as the problem allows Christianity to become the solution, and this is part of a larger effort by Christian sympathetic scholars like Tom Holland to see in Christianity the root of all modern virtues, like ethnic reconciliation, charity, and even humility.

The problem remains, however, that our sources do in fact speak in ter- terms of binary opposites, hoi Ioudaioi in Greek, the Jews or Judeans, and ta ethnē, uh, the Gentiles or the nations.

So the influential Jewish text Jubilees commands Jews, "Separate yourself from the Gentiles, and do not eat with them." The Greek philosopher Epictetus ridicules the convert to Judaism, "Why do you act the part of a Jew when you are a Greek?" And the Roman historian repeats the anti-Semitic trope that Jews are extremely loyal towards one another, but towards every other people, they feel only hate and enmity, while converts to Judaism learn to despise the gods and to disown their own country.

The picture is of two mutually exclusive loyalties, not dissimilar to Kipling's essentialist vision of the world, "East is East, West is West, and never the twain shall meet." But history tells a different and, of course, far more interesting story.

Yes

... that the word translated the Jews in scripture, uh, hoi Ioudaioi.

Mm-hmm.

The Jews.

The Southern Kingdom going into exile.

Uh, the Jews of Christ's time, you know, the, all Jews are descended from, from those tribes in the Southern Kingdom, the Judahites, the Jews.

Uh, but in scripture, Ioudaioi can also mean a subset of Jews.

It can refer to the Judeans.